TED2009 Part VII - The Good, the Bad, and the even Better

So - after one conference, under my (expanded) belt I am no longer a TED Virgin. Here's a quick summary of the Good, Bad and so ons.

The Goods:

The 18 minute prepared talks were in the main absolutely superb and I have seen some truly inspirational stuff this week. I've already blogged the big trends over the last few days - Robotics and Not For Profit entrepreneurialism, the Practical Greens, and The Predictors. I even enjoyed the talks I disagreed with, the presenters were very good. Other things that I enjoyed were:

Course Sex - check out www.makelovenotporn.com, and Mary Roach's talk on Orgasm (and the Danish video on how a farmer should give a sow foreplay) had them rolling in the aisles and tittering nervusly

Avatar Award Actresses - Zero (Natasha Tsakos) and Sarah Jones did excellent performance pieces - Zero mixing dance with 3D graphics and Sarah doing accents - watch out Rory Bremner!

Music- Naturally7, Regina Spektor, Herbie Hancock and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra stood out for me

Talks outside my fields, especially those on biotechnology, were great introductions, Bonne Basler's talk on how virusses self organise was very illuminating. TED is Renaissance Man territory, and once you learn how to avoid the people looking for funding/contact shopping (see below) you can have a great time in conversation

Ueli Gegenschatz for being a total loony (see video above)

The Bads:

On the final day there was (at last) some admission that two things about TED this year were a "bit off":

Firstly, that this Good Stuff was actually floating in a massive sea of despond. This was my biggest criticism of TED - the near total lack of engagement with the Big Issue of Today, which has a massive knock on impact on the Big issues being discussed). I think some of the feedback was starting to get to the organisers, as I know I wasn't the only one getting increasingly concerned that this conference was in danger of becoming a violin playing bubbleworld of its own. The story was that TED focusses on Big Ideas - but I think they lost sight of the dependency chains. In a similar vein, I felt many Big Ideas were "glass runneth over" and Panglossed over the potential pitfalls

Secondly, that it was hard to chat easily to other TEDsters - I wrote about this in a blog post I later chose not to publish (as it was very snarky, even for moi ), but it seems like I merely predicated what a lot of other also felt, ie that there was less interaction than I had been led to expect from reading about TED. This was felt to be mainly because:

- The program was very cramped - I didn't get a lot of value out of many of the TED "old boys" 3 - 8 minute slots, they were in general less well prepared - I'd have preferred to spend that time talking to the attendees - why go to the bother of screening the attendees to make sure they are amazing people, then not let them talk to each other.

- Something that apparently worked very well in Monterey was a simulcast lounge, a shared space that allowed people to experience TED in a more laid-back fashion. That "shared space" didn't really exist except on the first day when the outdoor tables allowed informal gatherings - I had a great discussion on Green economics over lunch that day

- Maybe it was just me, but I think some of the attendees were using it as a market, not a conversation forum - I got a bit tired of people continually looking past me to see if there was someone more interesting to talk to (OK, OK...I know I'm dull etc ). I learned to avoid anyone with "CEO - Tinpotstartup.com" on their badge and began to be able to tell Old Timer TEDSters by end Day 2.

The Even Better

In a way, my Best TED was after the conference - on the Saturday closing picnic, on Saturday night over a good meal, and again on a long Sunday brunch, I had scintillating conversations with great people - that was what I was expecting at TED, but after it ended we had the time and space to relax, unwind and discuss.