Right now there’s a lot of buzz about Davos, both pro- as well as anti. Part of the anti-buzz is generated by the “artificial scarcity” of the event, its inaccessibility. And talking about inaccessible events, that brings me on to TED.
I love TED. Even though I’ve never been. [I have actually paid out of my personal pocket to go to TED, it was TED Africa last year, but a heart attack made sure I couldn’t do it].
So. My experience of TED has been restricted to watching the videos. Which I do, religiously. I would encourage everyone to take a walk around the videos, they’re excellent; easily accessible, appropriately short, superbly produced.
It will give you an idea as to why TED is such a hot ticket. Which might explain this: a TED main hall pass is available for purchase on eBay; the auction price is currently $32,100; with nine days to go, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pass $100,000, somewhat too rich for my blood.
It’s for a good cause, Architecture for Humanity, so if you can afford it, go for it. If you’re not sure, sample the videos, available here. There are over 180 of them so far, I’ve personally watched over 170 of them; it’s easy to get them on to your iPod and to watch the videos while you travel.
Hi JP, I’ve been watching TED for a couple of months now too and agree they’re great. I did find Vilayanur Ramachandran’s talk a little spooky – any relation to you?
Hey Ashok, nice to hear from you. You do realise the way you wrote the comment, I could infer that you think I’m a little spooky? :-)
And no, I don’t know him. His name suggests that he is a Tamil, so we have that in common. But that’s it.
The TED site and video player was designed by San Franciso-based Method, and includes chapter-marking, allowing users to “find or skip to key moments in the talk”. In the absence of video speech indexing or any method of pointing (a URI) to a given timepoint in time-based media this is great step forward.
That oil endgame video was superb. And good coverage of IDEO – the google of designers.