Learn From The TED Conference

Perhaps you saw some of the articles that appeared in the New York Times last week about the TED Conference. TED is now considered one of the world’s premier conferences for bringing together experts, pundits, and celebreties from three industries: Technology; Entertainment; and Design. TED is mostly about who is there and who is presenting. The latter is perhaps the primary reason for librarians to check out TED. If you want to see great presentations and learn from them, you must be exploring TED. Some TED facts:

   * Only 1,000 people can attend.
   * The presentation auditorium only holds 500 people. Everyone else watches in another room
   * A ticket costs $6,000 (there is already a waiting list for 2008).
   * Speakers are not paid (they do get a free ticket)

I’m not sure that many talks from the latest TED are available online yet. My suggestion is to check the Ted Talks site. There is an archive of talks there, and new ones are posted all the time. In the past I have found a number of good talks that relate to design issues (hence the “D” in TED). If I come across any particularly good ones I’ll be sure to share them here.

 

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