Chris Anderson, TED’s curator, told us on day 1 that this would be the most ambitious TED conference yet and, for its organisers, the most terrifying because speakers had been invited to find new, powerful ways of extracting the most out of their talks. Each had been urged, said Anderson, to “find the prism that will show the full spectrum.”

Writing this at the start of TED’s last day, I’m not convinced they succeeded. A surprising number of speakers this year have read from prompt cards or even a script, not always fluently, and those amazing TED-style powerpoint presentations have been in shorter supply than usual. There’s also been a lot less innovation than I expected so far but, to be fair, the first session today, is focusing on science. And so will my next blog. more…

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” (EM Forster Howards End)

Here at TEDActive—the younger, funkier sister of California’s TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) annual conference—Forster’s 1921 theme “only connect” seems ever more relevant. more…

By the end of the third day it was clear that one of the major conference themes had become  “Revolution 2.0,”  political upheaval facilitated by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In the words of one speaker, “the internet didn’t cause the revolutions,but it allowed them to happen.”

Day one had had Al-Jazeera’s director general on stage in person. Subsequent days had prerecorded presentations from Egypt and China. more…

Day 2 began with a choice: a clinic on sand sculpting or breakfast with Al Gore, both scheduled to begin at 7am.

I felt I owed it to the VP. I had asked him about the health consequences of global warming after his 2006 TED talk, which formed the basis for “An Inconvenient Truth.”  What I brought back from that conversation helped prepare the ground for the Climate and Heath Council that was later set up. more…

The night before the TED conference began, “The King’s Speech” beat “The Social Network,” four Oscars to three. A friend with a stake in the outcome had argued that a story revolving around  21st century technology (Facebook) should have had an advantage over a story revolving around a 20th century one (radio). more…

US comedian Sarah Silverman courts controversy. She’s outspoken and provocative. After performing at the technology, entertainment, and design (TED) conference I attended in California last week, she deservedly received rapturous applause from a liberal audience that days earlier had shown near-unanimous support for gay marriage.

Silverman described how she wanted to adopt a terminally ill “mentally retarded” child so s/he died before she too became old and infirm. This gag followed ones about penises and Jews. The audience demanded an encore. But TED follows a tight schedule and our plea was rejected. more…

The woman who warned me I wouldn’t sleep was right. Even after just one day of talks about technology, entertainment and design (TED) at the Caflifornian conference of that name (What the world needs now, is this year’s theme) my head feels as it’s about to explode. more…

I just shared a sofa with a 25-year-old Canadian inventor, a Texan neuroscientist turned fiction writer who authored a recent BMJ editorial on synaesthesia, a former lawyer and journalist who now runs a global technology company, and a social entrepreneur whose mother took her out of school each summer to see the world. Some of us are meeting for dinner later. more…

Bill Gates’ talk on the first day of the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference got huge coverage, and within just a few hours some wag had turned Gates’ stunt of releasing mosquitoes into the audience into a Terry Gilliamesque game. more…

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a movement as much as conference. It started 25 years ago with a couple of hundred technology experts and enthusiasts. Last year it attracted more than 1000 people and outgrew its home in Monterey, so it’s moved to Long Beach, California. Long term TEDsters say it’s broadened in the past few years and become more about policy, global strategies, and green issues. But it’s still TED. more…