LONG BEACH, California -- It’s a problem shared by Google, Facebook, and just about any organization that begins from a relatively intimate core: When success comes, how do you scale to more ambitious heights without losing the intimacy and passion that was a hallmark of your original offering?
Here at Long Beach, during the four-day TED Conference -- which has grown from a relatively cloistered boutique gathering to an elaborate production designed to ultimately present its products to hundreds of millions -- it’s clear that what was once a conclave known for a funky kind of serendipitous magic has evolved into more of an efficient delivery service for enlightenment, astonishment and inspiration. Judging from this year’s program, which ranged from quantum physics to paper-cutting, TED has smoothly made the pivot.
For three years now, the hub of the TED Industrial Complex has been the Long Beach Convention Center, an auditorium several times the size of the conference’s former longtime home in Monterey, California. For most of the 12 sessions, it’s totally packed, including the balcony. All in all, there are more than a hundred speakers, and virtually every one of them goes off with nary a flaw. (One exception was a demo of a 3D iPad app, where the presenters were almost comically unable to point their devices towards the camera.) There are also three morning sessions of short talks known as TED U.
But you don’t have to be in the huge hall to bask in the TEDness. Spread around the grounds are several “simulcast” areas, some hosted by corporate sponsors like Blackberry, where the proceedings are shown on high-quality video displays. (People lounge on couches and peck on their iPads while sipping coffee drawn from “some of the best baristas in the world.” (At the Google Dome I had a macchiato prepared by the Norwegian champion.)
That’s in addition to a group of more than 500 watching at TedActive in a Palm Springs ballroom and more than 70 homegrown events by “TED Associates” who pay to stream the talks to friends and colleagues in offices or homes. Finally, and most emphatically, TED talks are offered free online, and have become hugely popular. There’s also a series of privately held, but officially sanctioned one-day TEDx events that adopt the format and spirit -- more than a thousand so far, held everywhere from the Amazon to the Berkshires.
Supersizing the conference to nearly 1,500 attendees -- a number clearly off the Dunbar scale -- has its effects. It’s possible (though admittedly unlikely) to go several days and still not run into someone you know -- or not catch a glimpse of Renee Zellweger. And the official nighttime events are fairly denuded of bigwigs, who generally hobnob in private dinners.
But there’s still plenty of opportunity for any old TEDster to say Hi to the bold-faced, and enough of an egalitarian spirit that they will talk back. In typical encounters this year, I came across Peter Gabriel on an elevator in the Westin Hotel across the street from the Long Beach Center -- twice. During one session, Bill Gates sat four seats to my right and Jeff Bezos was directly behind me.
And I got to give some notes to Julie Taymor to assist in her epic struggle to get Spider-Man right. (When I told her I would prefer a louder guitar for the Edge-like riffs that festoon the score, she told me that since my visit to the show last January that had already been taken care of. )
And what about the TED Talks? Over the years, largely because of the wide web exposure, a Ted Talk has been a genre in itself, a blend of personal revelation, geeky science, love of Africa and glaciers, and stirring proof of the indomitability of the human spirit, all wrapped up in a neat 18-minute package that ends with a standing ovation.
(So common are those standing o’s that this year TED’s MC and chief honcho Chris Anderson -- a different guy than my boss at Wired -- suggested the first day that TEDsters should ease up on the ecstasy inflation and recalibrate their responses to a tougher standard. It didn’t work.)
It did seem to me that this year didn’t present any of the off-the-charts, life-changing, rhapsodic explosions that TED has occasionally produced. (When I mentioned this to Anderson, he objected, citing three spontaneous, joyous standing o’s that seemed to fit that category. Also, I’m writing this before the final Friday sessions, and for all I know Gen. Stanley McChrystal will send angels down from the heavens during his time on stage.) But that might have been because, by and large, the quality of the talks were of a uniformly high level, as consistent a quality as I’ve ever seen at a TED.
The talks had their share of hand-wringing over the world’s problems: world slavery, dull teaching and climate crisis. (As a TED conference progresses, the probability that a speaker will show a slide of a polar bear approaches 100 percent.) But this year they seemed less proscriptive and more based on a novel approach to a problem or a scientific breakthrough.
Also, in contrast to the program two years ago, where there was hardly a mention of the catastrophic financial meltdown that was the major issue of the day, this year the TED stage had a speaker from Al-Jazeera addressing the democratic uprisings in the Middle East. And even more impressively, a feed from a satellite Tedx event in Cairo carried a stirring speech by Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who was a key figure in the Egyptian revolution.
Which were the consensus favorites? Everyone loved Salman Khan, the former hedge-fund analyst who makes 12-minute educational lectures that now are being proposed as the center of curricula in actual schools.
A performance poet named Sarah Kay blew down the house with her passionate wordplay. Julie Taymor shared a bit -- just a bit -- of her crucible in the midst of her artistic siege over Spider-Man.
Composer and conductor Eric Whitacre delighted TEDsters by showing how he assembled a virtual choir on YouTube. Everyone gasped as surgeon Anthony Atala demonstrated how he literally printed a replacement kidney from a 3-D printer geared for tissue replacement.
And one of the heroes of TED this year was Bill Gates, who curated a session that included Khan’s talk and later delivered a withering TED U presentation that eviscerated state governments for their budgetary misdeeds. Less successful was the CEO of PepsiCo, trying to engage TEDsters in a dubious earmark project that seemed too baldly self-promotional.
All of it, of course, will eventually be found on video on TED.com. But as of 2011, the best way to do TED is still in person. That Norwegian barista makes one nasty macchiato.
