RuthAnnHarnisch.com

InteresTED?

by Ruth Ann Harnisch on 02/15/09 at 1:23 pm

I know, I know, enough about TED.  But whatever you care about, someone at TED is probably doing something about it. One of my core principles is “non-duplication of effort.” Why should you work so hard to do something that’s already been done, or that other people have figured out a way to do that will save you untold amounts of time and resources?

Seth Godin’s books can help you avert a lifetime of unfulfilling wheel-spinning.  Don’t have time to read his latest, Tribes? Watch the interview at www.tedfellows.posterous.com and get the gist.  Don’t have the time or $ to attend a TED conference? Watch the TED Talks free online at www.ted.com.

When I spoke via Skype at SoCon2009 and talked about how TED Curator Chris Anderson had made the previously hush-hush super-exclusive TED more accessible, I got pushback from someone who says a $6000 conference pricetag is still  elitist.  The Palm Springs satellite conference is cheaper. As for the Long Beach event, if you are chosen as a TED Fellow, you don’t pay. If you are invited as a guest of TED, you don’t pay. There are ways to go to the in-person events without paying.  But my larger point was that before Chris bought TED from the founder, Richard Saul Wurman, it was deliberately small and secretive. Back then, your high-priced ticket bought exclusive info and access.  Now, the fee helps underwrite the worldwide dissemination of TED’s “ideas worth spreading.” Big difference.

I admire Chris for his willingness to trade comfortably smug exclusivity for risky, less personal outreach. If it’s an idea worth sharing at TED, it’s an idea worth spreading. It’s Chris’s great gift to the world, putting his own comfort, his own resources of time, cash, energy, skill, and talent, in the service of this work. And to his further credit, he acknowledges that the TED community has agreed with this shift and is willing to help him by giving up their precious little club of insiders in order to offer the ideas and sense of community to all. To YOU.  You are inviTED. Are you interesTED?