TED – worth the wait?

July 22, 2009 by
Filed under: The RSA 

What I wrote on the train …

As a child, I often set my heart on a present for my birthday or Christmas.  Often the desire sprang from watching TV adverts for toys or games.  I wanted Scalextric, Battling Tops, or KerPlunk.

But the combination of time passing between desire and fulfilment, and the inevitable gap between the real plastic in my hand and the TV version, which seemed to so delight its fictional family, often left me feeling cheated.

I was reminded of this feeling at the TED Global Conference I am attending in Oxford.  It’s not that the speeches aren’t up to the generally high TED standards – on the first day we had Stephen Fry, Alain de Botton, an inspiring world music entrepreneur, a pioneering stunt man and a juggling aphorist, not to mention a remarkably relaxed Gordon Brown. 

So why the feeling of disenchantment?

Since I first watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED lecture a few years ago, and fell in love with the organisation, I have come to the RSA, where events have always been free and open to the public – and, several of the speakers talking here have already spoken at John Adam Street.  TED delegates think of themselves as a hand-picked elite, and have paid about £3,000 for that status.

This makes me grumpy about things like TED having sold more tickets than there are seats in the theatre, while the MC never misses a chance to tell us how wonderful the simulcast rooms are!

Also, whilst almost all the speeches have been great, the experience of hearing talk after talk jades the intellectual palate.  Rather than a place for reflection or challenging debate, all the whooping and cheering makes it feel like ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for rich hippies.

So, I will pop in and out over the four days of the conference and catch up with what I missed on the net.  But rather like the Buckaroo I received in December 1970, there’s a bit of me wishes I could go back to the feeling of anticipation.

But what I’m saying at the coffee break …

The last session was very good.  I really hope we can get Evgeny Morozov on how social media can actually help authoritarian regimes and Stefana Broadbent on the way new media help ordinary people reconnect work and their personal lives to speak at the RSA.

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15 Comments on TED – worth the wait?

  1. cyberdoyle on Wed, 22nd Jul 2009 12:37 pm

    2. I get the same feeling, the talks I have heard or read reports on sound great. GB was very good. BUT there is no way it is gonna be a brave new world unless the ICT infrastructure in digitalbritain has a serious upgrade, it is just not going to cope with the demand, and UKplc is gonna be left out of the global village. Other countries who don’t have the benefit of our superior victorian phone network to use for broadband are deploying fibre at a rate of knots, and they will soon realise content and engagement from here is too slow to bother with. We need to take the tax off lighting fibre, share ducts, and get next gen connections out to people who don’t live on top of exchanges. We also need to get info to the digitalbritain team who are taking too much notice of the suits at OFCOM and BT. What they are proposing is a patch up job, not a revamp. Half of this country can’t access online banking, Egov sites or research when others are streaming Iplayer. Bottlenecks abound. Cmon baby light the fibre…
    Then TED will happen.

  2. David Gurteen on Wed, 22nd Jul 2009 1:07 pm

    3. Dear Matthew,

    I love watching the TED videos but would never ever pay to watch them live. They are chalk-and-talk, sit-and-git type presentations – the audience plays no part – they do not participate. Like you, I want debate, dialogue, conversation and interaction. I don’t understand why TED (and the RSA talks for that matter :-) ) persist in these outdated schoolroom style lectures.

    I have been running Knowledge Cafes for the last 7 years where the speaker is given about 20 minutes to speak but then conversation takes place amongst the audience (the participants) for an hour or more.

    And when speaking myself at a conference, I always allow time for conversation before the Q&A and when I chair an event I I allow time between every speakers talk and the the Q&A for conversation. This format is easy to implement and works so well.

    I doubt I can influence TED but you may be interested in trying the format at the regular RSA talks :-)

    Get in touch if you would like to talk about it and see here for my thoughts on particiaptory conferences:

    http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/conference-ideas

    especially see the video of a Knowledge Cafe I ran a few years back in Hong Kong which will give you some idea of the energy a Cafe can muster :-)

    Best wishes David

  3. John Humphries on Wed, 22nd Jul 2009 1:38 pm

    4. I felt like that about toys too and this was roughly the same time I was discounting the comments from my mum & dad that that they wouldn’t pay to go and see things you that your could ‘wait and see on the telly’.

    Now I’m at the same age they were, I also feel less inclined to shell out, just to get the buzz of collective immediacy. As for the ‘elite’ status of the people present at TED, it would be interesting to see if there was anyone there who was actually paying £3000 quid themselves, my betting is that almost everyone there would be either ; on the guest list, on the firm or on a tax perk.

  4. MJ Ray (mjray) 's status on Wednesday, 22-Jul-09 15:27:10 UTC - Identi.ca on Wed, 22nd Jul 2009 3:27 pm

    5. [...] http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/thersa/ted-worth-the-wait/ [...]

  5. Graham Leicester on Wed, 22nd Jul 2009 3:38 pm

    6. Matthew,

    Jaron Lanier had much the same experience earlier this year: http://is.gd/n1FD . But if bodies like RSA can pick up on some of these themes, and the contradictions between them, and give them the reflection they deserve then TED will have served a useful purpose.

  6. chrltms on Fri, 24th Jul 2009 11:52 am

    7. i’d be bummed if i stumped up the cash to go and didn’t get a seat, but ted’s still pretty cool.

    I don’t like going to hear people talk when they haven’t prepared properly. I think there’s alot of poorly prepared talks in London & bad public speaking generally. I get suspicious when people say ‘that they want to make it interactive’. This tends to just make me think – no damn it! I paid for my ticket (or at least I gave up my time to be here) – *you* do your work and entertain *me*. Lets face it anyway – alot of the time the questions that get asked at events are a total waste of time. I like the way at TED they have clear rules for all speakers and a count-down clock – if you break the rules you get cut.

    As I understand it TED was a closed shop until it was taken on by Chris Anderson. The more open it comes, the more it will probably be prone to the accusation of being elitist. I guess that’s a fairly classic predicament for any organisation that opens up. But I think they’re trying to work out ways of meeting these new expectations. In the last year they’ve come up with:

    http://www.ted.com/fellows
    http://www.ted.com/tedx
    http://www.ted.com/index.php/OpenTranslationProject
    http://conferences.ted.com/TED2010/program/TEDActive.php

    So fair play to them.

    It does cost a packet to go and you do have to be vetted, but at the end of the day they’ve turned a load of fairly fringe thinkers and made them accessible to millions of people across the world – which is what the focus should be on. And besides I’m pretty sure they’re a not for profit and some of them don’t take salaries.

    Hope you managed to enjoy the rest of it.

  7. matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 7:01 pm

    8. Thanks. I am sure my friend Helen Milner at UK Online Centres would agree.

  8. matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 7:02 pm

    9. Thanks for this David. I’m off for most of August but can we link up in September?

  9. matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 7:03 pm

    10. Thanks John. There were a lot of rich Americans who presumably had to pay for air fares on top of the £3k

  10. matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 7:04 pm

    11. Thanks Graham. I agree and am going to post tomorrow about two excellent talks on Friday which made the whole thing worthwhile from my point of view.

  11. matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 7:07 pm

    12. Thanks Charlie. Having TED is much better than not having it. Indeed my post tomorrow is about two stunning talks I heard on the last day. And as you say Chris uses our fees to try to open up ideas to a global audience. Sorry if I sounded churlish (or should that be English?)

  12. Why cash makes you stupid (sometimes) : Matthew Taylor’s blog on Mon, 27th Jul 2009 11:50 am

    13. [...] if some people thought I was a bit sniffy about TED last week (although I can’t quite bring myself to withdraw my ‘Britain’s Got Talent for rich hippies’ [...]

  13. david butter on Mon, 27th Jul 2009 5:20 pm

    14. I’m both an RSA Fellow and TED member – though by no means a rich hippie .
    I can appreciate Matthew’s reaction. It is of course over the top to hear 50
    eighteen minute speeches in four days, with little time to digest and contextualise.

    But the overall quality was as always very high, the stimulation to the senses amazing
    and the eclectic breaking down of silos unique.

    There’s much we can learn from TED (as well as vice versa). Maybe worth discussing further..

  14. soon ho park on Tue, 28th Jul 2009 8:11 am

    15. Hi, it was very helpful and enjoyable to read the article.
    Just an interest in TED Conferences, I would love to ask couple of question
    about atmosphere of the Conference. As I couldn’t find your e-mail address or anything, I’m leaving my e-mail address here – tnsghgk@naver.com
    Please, contact me to this e-mail anytime. Thanks.

    (Anyone who also attended to TED Conferences would be helpful too to contact me)

  15. Lumena on Wed, 16th Mar 2011 4:36 am

    16. Matthew,

    Have you considered talking for TED or confronting them about this issue? If more TED viewers, like me, were aware that intellectuals were turned off by some of TED’s practices, things could change. And I think they should. Something as important as TED or RSA should be free, easily accessible, and non-discriminatory in every way, or else it defeats the purpose of educating the masses. Don’t underestimate the power of TED viewers to demand re-structuring of anything fiscal or logistical. There are a lot of empowered young people who aren’t afraid to scream for positive change along every social avenue. Just look at North Africa.

    P.S. Are you in the TED Brain Trust? If not, please join. We need your powerful voice heard there. http://education.ted.com/content.php. <— this is something I can believe in, as I am a mere college student from Portland, Oregon who was invited to be heard in this private forum. Does RSA have something like this?

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