It’s time for another TED here in Long Beach, California – the big-ideas conference, where people you’ve never ever heard of before give wonderful talks about things you neither knew nor thought possible, in front of an audience of incredibly famous people that you’re forbidden to name.
It’s the antithesis of the Oscars held a few miles away at the weekend, with both having a theatreful of big names, but deep thinking and world-changing ideas being honoured onstage here rather than the celebrities off-stage getting all the awards.
Whereas tuxedos and designer dresses were the order of the day at the Oscars, here “no one wears suits, ties or sportscoats…and jeans are just fine”, according to the provided guide. The event runs from Monday to Friday at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, ending with a farewell picnic.
Outside the packed auditorium, there are all kinds of sponsored “social spaces”, from a paper airplane workshop to a Google Garage that has enough games for an amusement arcade and a Science Lab that will sample your DNA for sequencing and then turning it into a “genetic experiment in music”.
Buried in my introductory gift bag full of ecologically sound products, a Roku player and Jambox speaker, was a contacts book of TED attendees – listing web visionaries, dotcom billionaires, VCs, the odd movie star and people working for organisations whose existence I questioned.
Can there really be a Center for Advanced Hindsight, for example, and will the CEO and Founder of Stealth Startup, San Francisco at least spill the beans on its real name?
Anyway, the book is labelled “confidential” and its contents cannot be used “for any form of marketing or aggressive social networking”, while the media must not name any attendee without their permission.
(Just above the confidential label by the way is a quote I may memorise to cut these celebs down to size: “We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from,” it says.)
But the truth is I’m afraid that I lack the temerity to go up to, say, the Dalai Lama, should he be here, just to ask his permission to report I saw him standing in the coffee line.
At the end, if the leisurely five days of TED prove too much for you, there’s an opportunity to “decompress” at post-TED in Palm Springs at the weekend, with pizza parties and poolside brunches.
The 1,350 attendees from 43 countries pay $7,500 each for the conference, another audience in Palm Springs is paying half as much to see it streamed live and take part in other events. The costs may seem steep, but, believe me, these people can afford it, and TED says it helps finance all the good works it does for free around the world.
As a journalist, who needs to name names and arrived here late on Tuesday morning and flies out on Wednesday afternoon, I’m struggling to adjust to TED guidance to kick back and relax for five days. The advice to turn off my phone sounds insane for someone with constant deadlines, stories happening elsewhere to file and the need to be in constant touch with the office.
Nevertheless, as I sat in an inflatable igloo under pulsating, alternating coloured spotlights, to watch the sessions on large screens while checking email, a kind of peace descended on me.
My favourite talk of the day, and the one that seemed to get the best reception, was by Billy Collins, a two-term US poet laureate.
It was full of beautiful, wry verses, with accompanying animations and profound thoughts, such as – why did it take us so long to put the wheel and the suitcase together?
Ok, well he did claim to have put the fun in profundity and offered the advice: if at first you don’t succeed, hide all evidence you ever tried.
Which rather makes me want to delete this blog-post draft. Shame on me for trivialising TED with all these stats and curiosities. I promise to report on big ideas tomorrow.
