LONG BEACH, California — It's not unusual for the audience at the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference to be shown out-of-this-world presentations, but this year at least one presenter will literally be out of this world.
Astronaut Catherine “Cady” Colemanwill launch the four-day affair over a live video uplink from her current home in space where she's one of six crew members aboard the International Space Station.
After that, the four-day conference, beginning Tuesday in Long Beach, California, will mostly stay earthbound, wandering from one edge of the globe to the other with Swiss Explorer Sarah Marquis, who's in the midst of a two-year, 12,500-mile foot trek from Siberia to Australia; then across the polar icecaps with wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen before plunging the depths of the oceans with deep-sea explorer Edith Widder.
These are just a few of the more than 50 speakers an artists appearing at the invitation-only event, dubbed “Davos for the Digerati set." The annual conference, which costs $6,000 per person, gathers industry titans, celebrities, academics and alpha geeks for its 27th year. This year’s overall theme is “The Rediscovery of Wonder,” with separate themes listed for each track of speakers.
Two of the sessions are being guest-curated by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and futurist Juan Enriquez. Gates made headlines at TED two years ago when he released a handful of mosquitoes on stage to draw attention to malaria, will preside over a session dubbed “Knowledge Revolution," that will include a presentation on efforts to eradicate policy by epidemiologist Bruce Aylward.
Other speakers at the conference include:
- Film critic Roger Ebert discussing the health problems that cost him his physical voice but gained him a new and compelling literary voice;
- Wadah Khanfar, director general of the Al Jazeera Network, who will discuss the revolutionary upheavals that have toppled long-standing governments in the Middle East;
- Director Julie Taymor will discuss the steps and missteps behind the new $65 million Spider-Man musical;
- Four-star General Stanley McChrystal, who lost his command after making impolitic remarks about the U.S. leadership to a Rolling Stone reporter, will discuss what makes a good leader;
- Dr. Anthony Atala, professor of surgical sciences and one of the pioneers of organ regeneration, will demonstrate a 3D printer that produces live-cell organs.
- As respite from the often rich and heady presentations of TED speakers, an array of musicians and artists – including Jason Mraz and Bobby McFerrin will entertain the audience.
Continuing this year is the TED fellowship program that opens TED’s elite doors to more than three dozen up-and-coming thinkers and doers from developing regions who are invited to attend for free.
Founded in 1984 by architect and designer Richard Saul Wurman as a kind of dream dinner party with interesting people he wanted to meet, the conference was bought by publisher Chris Anderson in 2001 (not Wired’s Chris Anderson). Anderson’s nonprofit, Sapling Foundation, now runs the conference, along with the TED Global conference held in Oxford, England, each year, and the satellite TED Africa and TED India events.
Since taking over, Anderson has focused the conference on philanthropy and social consciousness. The primary purpose is to cross-pollinate people from various fields to share knowledge about the latest developments in the sciences and arts and to inspire attendees to think imaginatively about their own contributions to the world.
The conference attracts a wide range of attendees, whose accomplishments and notoriety often rival the speakers — Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, musician Peter Gabriel and comedian Robin Williams have appeared at past events. Past speakers have included former Vice President Al Gore, filmmaker J.J. Abrams, Sims creator Will Wright and physicist Stephen Hawking.
Generally, one talk stands out each year as the crowd favorite, for varying reasons. In 2008, it was neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s riveting account of a stroke she experienced years earlier. In 2006, Hans Rosling, a geeky professor of international health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, became the resident rock star for his surprisingly stunning presentation on statistics and the developing world.
Among the annual features of the conference is the TED prize, generally given to three recipients. This year it will be given only to one — street artist JR, a "guerilla" photographer who captures the gritty lives of people in Kenyan slums and Brazilian favelas and then pastes his huge blown-up images on rooftops and the sides of buildings and trains, forcing viewers to take note of troubled regions. His latest project, "Women Are Heroes," depicts women around the world affected by war, poverty, violence, and oppression.
The prize is an annual award launched in 2005 to recognize individuals whose work has had and will have a powerful and positive impact on society. It provides each recipient with $100,000 and the chance to ask for help from the TED community in achieving one grand wish to change the world. JR will be presented with his prize at a ceremony Wednesday evening, at which he will reveal his wish.
Last year's winner was celebrity chef and author Jamie Oliver. Previous winners have included U2 singer Bono, former President Bill Clinton, oceanographer Sylvia Earle, astronomer Jill Cornell Tarter, and former economist and trained musician Jose Antonio Abreu.
Those who aren’t invited to TED can see the conference presentations as they’re posted to the web over several weeks after the conference ends. Since TED began posting videos of its talks in 2006, more than 15 million visitors have viewed them.
Last year TED launched a translation/transcription version of its talks.
The tool combines crowdsourcing with smart language markup to provide translated and transcribed videos in more than 40 languages — from Arabic to Urdu — that can be indexed and searched by keywords. Users can click on any phrase in the transcript of a talk, and jump to that point in the video.
Wired.com will publish stories from the conference all week.
Photo: Astronaut Catherine G. Coleman, International Space Station flight engineer. Photo by NASA
