There was very little "tech" at TED 2008. So, it sounds like "BIL" would have been a treat. I'm sorry I had to leave Monterey early.
At TED we were treated to an abundance of physics, energy and life sciences topics.
Re: Sarah Lacy - I think she's being silly and doesn't understand the model. TED isn't an invitation event. Not sure why people think it is. Chris Anderson explained that it wasn't. Why aren't "press" invited? Simple according to TED creator Richard Saul Wurman, who attended this year (several years after selling the event to Chris Anderson) - why give out a press seat when you can get someone to pay for it?
TED is a pay-to-attend event. If Sarah wants to attend all she needs to do is pony up $6K and apply early (2009 sold out several weeks ago). Or, have BusinessWeek pay her way. Several years ago I asked to get an "invitation" be applying to attend. That's it. Got the invite. Paid the bucks, and have been attending for several years.
I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone gets a pass to attend TED except the invited speakers. That means Meg Ryan, Tony Robins, Larry Page, Matt Groening, Paul Allen, etc., etc. are all paying $6,000.
Robert - you and Sarah should attend TED 2010! I suspect announcements and open invitations will be available next January. Apply early. Have your credit card ready. It sells out very quickly, though it grows by 10% each year (next year being the first year to be held in Long Beach, CA).
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
David: you might have mistaken me for a rich guy. I can't afford such an expensive conference unless my employer pays and since TED bans doing videos (even in the hallways) I doubt I'll be able to justify such an expense.
hehe you think that if you can't get to TED is bad? what about people like me form Europe that will never be invited to all that grate events that are in the US. the ticket flight alone is a huge expense.
you should feel lucky that you can go to other conference and meetings.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
That's the first time I can remember getting an audio answer in a comment!
In an answer to Dave Winer:
He says these conferences are boring. From what the attendees tell me, TED isn't boring. The speeches sounded really interesting. Glad to see Brian Cox thrilled (he thrilled me at LIFT two years ago). Seeing Robin Williams jump up on stage must have been pretty fun.
But I agree with Dave that the value is NOT in what is on stage. After all, they give that away!!!
There is SOME value in going to these kinds of conferences for what's on stage, to be sure. But that might be $400, maybe $1,000. So, why pay the other $5,000?
Easy: the networking.
If you have a reason to get in front of, say, Al Gore, then all of a sudden those conferences become hugely valuable.
After all, if you can convince some business person to do a million dollar deal because you were at TED, then the $6,000 becomes worth it instantly.
For me, that's why going to Davos was valuable. I now have a book of every attendee with their phone numbers. 3,000 people who run almost every kind of business. So, for a journalist, this becomes a rolodex-building experience.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Dave Winer ended by saying I missed the point, which is that the right question is "what do you want to do with your life?"
Good point.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
David: that's why I video everything (and often live) so that everyone gets to attend whatever I'm doing.
Dawid Gatti
· 1 year ago
Robert: and what do you think that i will stay up all night to 4am to watch it ;)
plus it is not the same. you can talk to actual people, share your ideas etc. i cant have that. yes i know i can send messages live to you, but you know that it is not the same.
Dave Winer
· 1 year ago
Thanks for transcribing my podcast (not!) -- I did it by voice because I thought it would be hard to explain in writing.
Try this out.
I bet when you go to a conference, you spend a lot of time listening to people who want to get five minutes of your time to hear their idea. Do you ever get tired of this? Do you wonder why you have to *pay* to have other people make demands on your time? Doesn't that sound like work??
Now imagine what it must be like to be Al Gore at one of these events. That's what I can't stop thinking about, and it's why I won't barge into their space with my pitch because I know he won't really be listening and there's zero chance that anything will come of it. In other words, that opportunity that you think you have is not actually an opportunity.
I don't know what the answer is. Maybe not defining your life in those terms. Or put yourself in places where there's a good balance, where you're as much sought after and well-known as everyone else. I don't think cornering celebrities, unless you're very beautiful and have something they want (which means they still aren't listening!), will get you anywhere.
Take your son for a walk today and tell him a story about your childhood? A funny one! What do I know. :-)
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Dave: yup, I get pitched all the time, but that's the life I chose for myself so I don't mind it. It's why I'm there. It's what I do for my community (try to find the next big idea and find ways to make my audience smarter).
There's a lot of what you say in TED's philosophy. They don't want press or company people there. They want to create an entertainment event for CEOs, famous people, rich people. That's why they don't want bloggers there (someone shot some video in the hallways and they asked that person to take it down, I learned yesterday from one attendee).
They also, really, don't want average everyday people there (who are who showed up to Bil, which is why I liked Bil a lot).
I've been to Davos. I don't need to go to another entertainment event. I also don't have anything to pitch these people.
Oh, and I saw multi-million-dollar deals getting done at Davos. Because Davos is a filtering mechanism, executives lower their guard (which is exactly why it's such a great place for journalists).
One other thing. Because these events are so expensive CEOs and other "unreachables" don't bring their PR staffs along, so it's very easy to talk with them.
Or, did you forget the three hours I spent with Mark Zuckerberg at Davos?
THAT is the real value for journalists and bloggers.
Buzz Bruggeman
· 1 year ago
I would love to go to TED, but it is twice the price of Pop!Tech. Pop!Tech allows you to kick back and just listen to smart people who can help you answer the question that Dave poses, e.g. what do you want to do with the rest of your life.
It seems to me that a significant part of business/economic success is the result of a lot of discipline and focus. With events like Pop!Tech or TED, you can sit back, and just listen, and think, and truly enjoy the brilliance of the people who have been asked to speak.
I frankly wish there were more events like them and that they were more accessible.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Buzz: agreed. Even if I had the $6,000, though, it's hard to make plans for more than a few months in advance. That requires me focusing my entire life around one conference. That's really tough. Heck, if you asked me a year ago I wouldn't have predicted I'd have a different job than I had a year ago. Or that I'd have a new kid on the way.
amorson
· 1 year ago
I really don't get most of those "events". I don't see them helping in my creativity nor my productivity, to the contrary, I could do and learn so much more than waste my time in pseudo-social "event".
Buzz Bruggeman
· 1 year ago
Making the plans would be easy, and I suppose if you allocated 1/3 of the price to each of the three compoonents, e.g. rock concert/leaning/networking it might be justificable, particularly if you had either a company that could justify it, or a higher net worth than I have.
I learned a while back that you meet some pretty interesting people when you are flying first class.
Wake up and smell the silicon
· 1 year ago
OMG its finally happened. Arrington and the A-list finally realize they are not the center of the universe worse still the mainstream influencers that really matter don't even know they exist let alone think they are interesting.
The daily techmeme noise of Arrington who bigs up his buddy Calacanis who disagrees with Winer which is video'd (qik) by Scoble and is reported as big news by Gabe (Techmeme) via Seesmic and then broadcast on to twitter. Here's the newflash no one cares.
To every entrepreneur grow your business, grow your business and sell because in a decade from now the pointless A-list bloggers will still be twittering (aka bitching) about something.
The reality is Robert both you and Arrington couldn't code your way out of a paper bag so what makes you think you should talk about tech.
Most of your posts are technically lightweight at best. All you both want is nano-traffic to fool dumb advertisers into thinking your opinion matters in exchange for ad dollars.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Buzz: I meet interesting people in coach, too. Especially flying back from Davos! I remember being in the last row of the plane coming back from my interviews at Microsoft. Who was sitting next to me? Larry Tesler (famous Apple/Xerox PARC geek).
Bill Gates, in fact, used to fly coach for a long time.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Wake up: so you're saying that only people who code should be able to talk about tech? Wow, now THAT is an elitist attitude!
Name droppers
· 1 year ago
God can you and Arrington stop dropping names. As I said to Bono and Sergey on the Google plane coming back from Davos ....
You love it when people big you up (Davos) but when they ignore you (TED)you bitch. Both events are great and you are lucky to attend one of them. I attended both and paid my own way.
BillyWarhol
· 1 year ago
I just wanna Shoot Photos at one of Arrington's Famous Parties! or does he even bother with those anymore??
I'm envious of Peeps like Tara Hunt who says she's blown away being in Aspen for TED* + I also wanna go to SXSW this week + then Holiday on Paul Allen's Yacht off Ibiza with Bikini clad Heidi Klum + Giselle Bundchen + Monica Belucci!!
It's a Shame Boring Rich People can Afford going to these things* I'll have to startup a conference called Bil.ly*
;))
Andrew Feinberg
· 1 year ago
Wow, shocking, the "if you can't code, shut up" attitude.
Maybe if more people told people like that to shut up and listen, the coders wouldn't keep getting slapped down by lawyers, regulators, and others who deal with people rather than machines for a living.
Hey "Wake up," people like Scoble (and myself, to a smaller degree) make a point of looking at the tech world from a "real world" perspective, from people who get real tans instead of monitor tans and don't go through live wearing t-shirts with DeCSS on them (although I do own one, but that's a story for another day).
To a great extent, Silicon Valley and DC area almost like sister cities, in that they live in a bubble all their own. The point is to break the bubble. We're helping, you're not.
Please read more.
Love,
Andrew
linkerjpatrick
· 1 year ago
I admit I love watching the videos from TED I download from iTunes. The topics are generally very fascinating and make for good "water cooler" talk but like so many other conferences I always feel left out for two reasons;
1.) The price - even $1,000 much less $6000 is way out of the realm of possibility for me or my company most of the time. Even if I had that much disposable income I doubt I would ever spend it on "high thinking" conference.
2.) Location - I live on the east coast and specifically in Greenville,SC also known as "Charlanta" as it's between Charlotte and Atlanta and unlike the rest of the area it's a growing area that attracts a lot of modern manufacturing and tech companies. Despite that you rarely see anything like TED, SXSW, MacWorld like events, CES, etc. coming this way. They are usually in L.A., S.F, Seattle or Vegas. It very hard for me to get away, buy a plane ticket and commit all that downtime to these events however I am hearing more and more from you A-List and tech celebrities that I'm not really missing anything by not going since I can pretty much access all I would really be interested in via the Internet
All that being said their is a part of me that is very jealous of those who can attend such event and often on a whim because they are either, "somebody", live or work close by or have employers who can foot the bill. Needless to say I am self-employed and still in the early days of my company. Some month are very good some not so good but regardless of the income I can't really afford to be away.
Is their a way we can have something "TED-Like" for the rest of us?
linkerjpatrick
· 1 year ago
Also do things like TED actually accomplish anything or do they just sound like they accomplish something? Reminds me of when I was in college and we used to stay awake till 3 in the morning talking about the feasabilty of time travel.
Buzz Bruggeman
· 1 year ago
Linkerjpactrick...
Pop!Tech came about because of a group people in Camden, ME wanted to get together and talk about the intersection of ideas and technology. No reason that couldn't happen in the SE. You have some pretty places, great weather, good food, etc.
So, just do it, start small, organize it around a theme, get a college involved, etc. Not impossible, but you have to start somewhere.
Julio Fernandez
· 1 year ago
A Fast Company, BusinessWeek, and TechCrunch Conference? I would go to that.
Loic
· 1 year ago
I video blogged a quick walk through their "simulcast lounge" and the TED bag, remained quiet with my video camera the rest of the time:
the formal request was no video cameras in the main hall and no laptops there except the last 3 rows at the back.
I do not think video blogging the hallways was in any way banned, you just feel like NOT doing that there.
other than that, blogging and twittering was perfectly allowed.
I loved TED, as I said, and will keep saying it, and I realize how lucky I was to be invited. It is worth any $ I have paid.
Solution for Scoble, Robert, Dave and Sarah: start your own very exclusive conference :)
David Geller
· 1 year ago
Someone asks "do things like TED actually accomplish anything." From my three TEDs I would say, emphatically, yes. Former VP Al Gore exposed his climate crisis slide show to the TED audience two years ago. Photoshop was first introduced at TED, many years ago. This year Dave Eggers (http://www.ted.com/index.php/pages/view/id/163) gave a passionate talk on education and tutoring and it led me to volunteer for his program the very same day.If you get a chance to watch his talk, do it! Last year E.O. Wilson (http://www.ted.com/index.php/pages/view/id/166) presented and, this year, introduced an amazing Encyclopedia of Life (http://www.eol.org) - documenting 1.8 million species.
TED, for me, is not about networking. Sure, I meet some fantastic people but I attend for the information, the sessions, the speakers. I don't go trying to sell myself or any of my ventures. Maybe this is simply because I'm a poor networker but, more than likely, because the days are crammed with information that after a 13 hour day, I'm exhausted. Most of the people I know attend all the sessions, talk over lunch, enjoy the evening cocktail party or reception and then crash.
Last year my father, a physician, attended with me (after I convinced him that it wasn't a computer event) and he loved it. One of his best moments was spending time talking to Jeff Skoll at one of the evening social events. Who's Jeff? He's a one of the first eBay employees and now a wonderful film producer - bringing to the screen projects like The Kite Runner and Syriana. I encouraged my dad to signup for this year's event. He hesitated just a tad too long - and it sold out.
Regarding the $6K price. It's a lot, for sure. Luckily, a bunch of people that attend TED spend even more than that so that others that are unable to pay the fee can attend. As soon as I'm in a position to do that I'll join their ranks. Few things would give me as much pleasure as being able to help someone else jump into the pool of energy and information that's presented at TED.
Diego
· 1 year ago
Oh please, Robert... don't go down this path and talk about being jealous or upset about not being invited to something. You'll bring yourself down to the level of the Arrington's and Winer's of this world. Whine too much and you'll stop being invited to the things you were once being invited to. Just go ask Dave about that. Some have such arrogant egos that it's quite off putting to read their dribble when they complain about not being invited somewhere.
Colleen
· 1 year ago
Julio & Robert - I'm actually working on a conference with some great people (to be announced once players are confirmed - should be by sxsw) that will be much like Fast Company, BusinessWeek, and TechCrunch combination. :) Planning for August. working on it now. more to come soon!
Christopher Coulter
· 1 year ago
Wow, so Jr. High. And so limiting a world view...
But Twitter and blog away...taking to thyselves about thyselves.
Dave
· 1 year ago
It ll ends up sounding like another A-list whine anyways.
TED... the retort is Bel. (Oops, sorry, it's "Bil".)
The weak head nod to being a supposed journalist. Then comes the admission that - HEY! - it's video that matters.
It's all the same... the bottom line is Robert *always* whines when he's dissed.
Does it matter? Only to him. But to those others who attended (or not) this TED thing... or Davos... or Bil....
You know, us commonfolk... this all simply flies over our collective heads.
How easily Robert can PR most of us with his manipulaive whining about being slighted. And that's shameful.
Stephanie Agresta
· 1 year ago
Hello Robert. Thanks for this post. I was just talking to some friends today about jealousy (as a concept). I have to say - I don't get it! I am trained to listen for the phrase, "I'm so jealous..." To me - using that language is an immediate red flag for a lack of love and compassion. If someone uses that language - I know to steer clear of them! This may sound too touchy feely for some - but let me sum it up (Nike style): Don't be jealous - just do it yourself! You can make anything happen, if you really want it. When someone shares a great experience they've had - I say, "I'm so happy for you!!" At every moment we should strive for gratitude in our own experience and compassion for others.
To me... jealousy for the day-to-day experiences of others just seems like a major waste of energy! It's really just a reflection of deep insecurity with self. And .. while that may drive traffic and sell newspapers, it surely will not make you a happier, more content person. True success comes from inner security.
P.S. - I'm so happy you met Annie Leibovitz. How totally cool and amazing!
swbuehler
· 1 year ago
Only reason I would be jealous is that here in Tampa Bay we never seem to have those "big" conferences, although we are hosting the Second Life Community Convention in the fall. In any event, I congratulate Loïc on getting an invite and I'm sure he's excited to be up close and personal with some of the best in the field. Hopefully it'll be a great learning opportunity.
As for Mr. Arrington: Get over yourself. It ain't about you. ;-)
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Stephanie: it was cool and amazing. She's someone I've always wanted to meet. If we get to go along with her on a shoot that will make a KILLER Photowalking show.
whurley
· 1 year ago
Can't wait to see you at BarCampAustin :)
Buzz Bruggeman
· 1 year ago
Getting AL...to go on a photowalk would be over the top.
You would have 1,000 people who would want to go with you.
Christian Scholz
· 1 year ago
Well, from what I hear from Mitch TED is all but boring:
But I also think people need to get over the left out feeling, there will always be events like that. From a european viewpoint it's all quite far away anyway ;-)
But as you said, there are Barcamps and other such events which are also quite inspiring. And luckily we in Germany now have a barcamp nearly every 2-3 weeks ;-) (ok, admitted that it might become less inspiring if you go to every one of them as topics and people might be the same but therefor it then feels more like family ;-) ).
And btw, even in open source settings there are sometimes events which are limited, like the recent Plone Strategic Planning Summit the Plone project did. Here some effort was done though to include community thoughts but the event itself was limited in order to handle the amount of discussions. Now of course it's the question if it wouldn't have worked with more people and certainly communication could always be enhanced but it seems that not too many people felt too left out.
And everybody feeling jealous about somebody else regarding a cool event maybe think again and you migth remember some cool event you attended which was unique and inspirational and which all those people did not attend.
Rosina Lippi
· 1 year ago
I'm not a big name; I'm not attached to any big names. I have a pretty active weblog, which I didn't try to hide. And I got into TED. And if I go, I'll blog about it.
The six grand will really hurt, but I would like to go for the experience. I don't imagine networking will be a big thing in my case. I find it hard to imagine that anybody would be interested in having a former academic/ novelist on their rolodex. Or Blackberry.
So I have to decide by the end of this month. It's hard to think about anything else.
All Comments
At TED we were treated to an abundance of physics, energy and life sciences topics.
Re: Sarah Lacy - I think she's being silly and doesn't understand the model. TED isn't an invitation event. Not sure why people think it is. Chris Anderson explained that it wasn't. Why aren't "press" invited? Simple according to TED creator Richard Saul Wurman, who attended this year (several years after selling the event to Chris Anderson) - why give out a press seat when you can get someone to pay for it?
TED is a pay-to-attend event. If Sarah wants to attend all she needs to do is pony up $6K and apply early (2009 sold out several weeks ago). Or, have BusinessWeek pay her way. Several years ago I asked to get an "invitation" be applying to attend. That's it. Got the invite. Paid the bucks, and have been attending for several years.
I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone gets a pass to attend TED except the invited speakers. That means Meg Ryan, Tony Robins, Larry Page, Matt Groening, Paul Allen, etc., etc. are all paying $6,000.
Robert - you and Sarah should attend TED 2010! I suspect announcements and open invitations will be available next January. Apply early. Have your credit card ready. It sells out very quickly, though it grows by 10% each year (next year being the first year to be held in Long Beach, CA).
http://sundaygang.com/misc/responseToScobleBlog...
OMG, it's Scoble! :-)
you should feel lucky that you can go to other conference and meetings.
In an answer to Dave Winer:
He says these conferences are boring. From what the attendees tell me, TED isn't boring. The speeches sounded really interesting. Glad to see Brian Cox thrilled (he thrilled me at LIFT two years ago). Seeing Robin Williams jump up on stage must have been pretty fun.
But I agree with Dave that the value is NOT in what is on stage. After all, they give that away!!!
There is SOME value in going to these kinds of conferences for what's on stage, to be sure. But that might be $400, maybe $1,000. So, why pay the other $5,000?
Easy: the networking.
If you have a reason to get in front of, say, Al Gore, then all of a sudden those conferences become hugely valuable.
After all, if you can convince some business person to do a million dollar deal because you were at TED, then the $6,000 becomes worth it instantly.
For me, that's why going to Davos was valuable. I now have a book of every attendee with their phone numbers. 3,000 people who run almost every kind of business. So, for a journalist, this becomes a rolodex-building experience.
Good point.
plus it is not the same. you can talk to actual people, share your ideas etc. i cant have that. yes i know i can send messages live to you, but you know that it is not the same.
Try this out.
I bet when you go to a conference, you spend a lot of time listening to people who want to get five minutes of your time to hear their idea. Do you ever get tired of this? Do you wonder why you have to *pay* to have other people make demands on your time? Doesn't that sound like work??
Now imagine what it must be like to be Al Gore at one of these events. That's what I can't stop thinking about, and it's why I won't barge into their space with my pitch because I know he won't really be listening and there's zero chance that anything will come of it. In other words, that opportunity that you think you have is not actually an opportunity.
I don't know what the answer is. Maybe not defining your life in those terms. Or put yourself in places where there's a good balance, where you're as much sought after and well-known as everyone else. I don't think cornering celebrities, unless you're very beautiful and have something they want (which means they still aren't listening!), will get you anywhere.
Take your son for a walk today and tell him a story about your childhood? A funny one! What do I know. :-)
There's a lot of what you say in TED's philosophy. They don't want press or company people there. They want to create an entertainment event for CEOs, famous people, rich people. That's why they don't want bloggers there (someone shot some video in the hallways and they asked that person to take it down, I learned yesterday from one attendee).
They also, really, don't want average everyday people there (who are who showed up to Bil, which is why I liked Bil a lot).
I've been to Davos. I don't need to go to another entertainment event. I also don't have anything to pitch these people.
Oh, and I saw multi-million-dollar deals getting done at Davos. Because Davos is a filtering mechanism, executives lower their guard (which is exactly why it's such a great place for journalists).
One other thing. Because these events are so expensive CEOs and other "unreachables" don't bring their PR staffs along, so it's very easy to talk with them.
Or, did you forget the three hours I spent with Mark Zuckerberg at Davos?
THAT is the real value for journalists and bloggers.
It seems to me that a significant part of business/economic success is the result of a lot of discipline and focus. With events like Pop!Tech or TED, you can sit back, and just listen, and think, and truly enjoy the brilliance of the people who have been asked to speak.
I frankly wish there were more events like them and that they were more accessible.
I learned a while back that you meet some pretty interesting people when you are flying first class.
The daily techmeme noise of Arrington who bigs up his buddy Calacanis who disagrees with Winer which is video'd (qik) by Scoble and is reported as big news by Gabe (Techmeme) via Seesmic and then broadcast on to twitter. Here's the newflash no one cares.
To every entrepreneur grow your business, grow your business and sell because in a decade from now the pointless A-list bloggers will still be twittering (aka bitching) about something.
The reality is Robert both you and Arrington couldn't code your way out of a paper bag so what makes you think you should talk about tech.
Most of your posts are technically lightweight at best. All you both want is nano-traffic to fool dumb advertisers into thinking your opinion matters in exchange for ad dollars.
Bill Gates, in fact, used to fly coach for a long time.
You love it when people big you up (Davos) but when they ignore you (TED)you bitch. Both events are great and you are lucky to attend one of them. I attended both and paid my own way.
I'm envious of Peeps like Tara Hunt who says she's blown away being in Aspen for TED* + I also wanna go to SXSW this week + then Holiday on Paul Allen's Yacht off Ibiza with Bikini clad Heidi Klum + Giselle Bundchen + Monica Belucci!!
It's a Shame Boring Rich People can Afford going to these things* I'll have to startup a conference called Bil.ly*
;))
Maybe if more people told people like that to shut up and listen, the coders wouldn't keep getting slapped down by lawyers, regulators, and others who deal with people rather than machines for a living.
Hey "Wake up," people like Scoble (and myself, to a smaller degree) make a point of looking at the tech world from a "real world" perspective, from people who get real tans instead of monitor tans and don't go through live wearing t-shirts with DeCSS on them (although I do own one, but that's a story for another day).
To a great extent, Silicon Valley and DC area almost like sister cities, in that they live in a bubble all their own. The point is to break the bubble. We're helping, you're not.
Please read more.
Love,
Andrew
1.) The price - even $1,000 much less $6000 is way out of the realm of possibility for me or my company most of the time. Even if I had that much disposable income I doubt I would ever spend it on "high thinking" conference.
2.) Location - I live on the east coast and specifically in Greenville,SC also known as "Charlanta" as it's between Charlotte and Atlanta and unlike the rest of the area it's a growing area that attracts a lot of modern manufacturing and tech companies. Despite that you rarely see anything like TED, SXSW, MacWorld like events, CES, etc. coming this way. They are usually in L.A., S.F, Seattle or Vegas. It very hard for me to get away, buy a plane ticket and commit all that downtime to these events however I am hearing more and more from you A-List and tech celebrities that I'm not really missing anything by not going since I can pretty much access all I would really be interested in via the Internet
All that being said their is a part of me that is very jealous of those who can attend such event and often on a whim because they are either, "somebody", live or work close by or have employers who can foot the bill. Needless to say I am self-employed and still in the early days of my company. Some month are very good some not so good but regardless of the income I can't really afford to be away.
Is their a way we can have something "TED-Like" for the rest of us?
Pop!Tech came about because of a group people in Camden, ME wanted to get together and talk about the intersection of ideas and technology. No reason that couldn't happen in the SE. You have some pretty places, great weather, good food, etc.
So, just do it, start small, organize it around a theme, get a college involved, etc. Not impossible, but you have to start somewhere.
http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/02/seesm...
ah, I actually also posted us all singing:
http://www.seesmic.com/Standalone.html?video=IT...
the formal request was no video cameras in the main hall and no laptops there except the last 3 rows at the back.
I do not think video blogging the hallways was in any way banned, you just feel like NOT doing that there.
other than that, blogging and twittering was perfectly allowed.
I loved TED, as I said, and will keep saying it, and I realize how lucky I was to be invited. It is worth any $ I have paid.
Solution for Scoble, Robert, Dave and Sarah: start your own very exclusive conference :)
TED, for me, is not about networking. Sure, I meet some fantastic people but I attend for the information, the sessions, the speakers. I don't go trying to sell myself or any of my ventures. Maybe this is simply because I'm a poor networker but, more than likely, because the days are crammed with information that after a 13 hour day, I'm exhausted. Most of the people I know attend all the sessions, talk over lunch, enjoy the evening cocktail party or reception and then crash.
Last year my father, a physician, attended with me (after I convinced him that it wasn't a computer event) and he loved it. One of his best moments was spending time talking to Jeff Skoll at one of the evening social events. Who's Jeff? He's a one of the first eBay employees and now a wonderful film producer - bringing to the screen projects like The Kite Runner and Syriana. I encouraged my dad to signup for this year's event. He hesitated just a tad too long - and it sold out.
Regarding the $6K price. It's a lot, for sure. Luckily, a bunch of people that attend TED spend even more than that so that others that are unable to pay the fee can attend. As soon as I'm in a position to do that I'll join their ranks. Few things would give me as much pleasure as being able to help someone else jump into the pool of energy and information that's presented at TED.
But Twitter and blog away...taking to thyselves about thyselves.
TED... the retort is Bel. (Oops, sorry, it's "Bil".)
The weak head nod to being a supposed journalist. Then comes the admission that - HEY! - it's video that matters.
It's all the same... the bottom line is Robert *always* whines when he's dissed.
Does it matter? Only to him. But to those others who attended (or not) this TED thing... or Davos... or Bil....
You know, us commonfolk... this all simply flies over our collective heads.
How easily Robert can PR most of us with his manipulaive whining about being slighted. And that's shameful.
To me... jealousy for the day-to-day experiences of others just seems like a major waste of energy! It's really just a reflection of deep insecurity with self. And .. while that may drive traffic and sell newspapers, it surely will not make you a happier, more content person. True success comes from inner security.
P.S. - I'm so happy you met Annie Leibovitz. How totally cool and amazing!
As for Mr. Arrington: Get over yourself. It ain't about you. ;-)
You would have 1,000 people who would want to go with you.
http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/marketi...
But I also think people need to get over the left out feeling, there will always be events like that. From a european viewpoint it's all quite far away anyway ;-)
But as you said, there are Barcamps and other such events which are also quite inspiring. And luckily we in Germany now have a barcamp nearly every 2-3 weeks ;-) (ok, admitted that it might become less inspiring if you go to every one of them as topics and people might be the same but therefor it then feels more like family ;-) ).
And btw, even in open source settings there are sometimes events which are limited, like the recent Plone Strategic Planning Summit the Plone project did. Here some effort was done though to include community thoughts but the event itself was limited in order to handle the amount of discussions. Now of course it's the question if it wouldn't have worked with more people and certainly communication could always be enhanced but it seems that not too many people felt too left out.
And everybody feeling jealous about somebody else regarding a cool event maybe think again and you migth remember some cool event you attended which was unique and inspirational and which all those people did not attend.
The six grand will really hurt, but I would like to go for the experience. I don't imagine networking will be a big thing in my case. I find it hard to imagine that anybody would be interested in having a former academic/ novelist on their rolodex. Or Blackberry.
So I have to decide by the end of this month. It's hard to think about anything else.