Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

June Cohen, director of TED Media, said putting conference presentations on the Internet helped increase exposure.

By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: April 16, 2007
THOSE who don’t have $6,000 or enough prominent connections to get into a TED conference can take heart. The price of admission just went to zero, provided you can settle for a more remote experience.

The TED organization (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design) runs an invitation-only conference in Monterey, Calif., every year for movers and shakers in business and nonprofit circles.

Yesterday, TED introduced a Web site that offers about 100 of its TED Talks, the polished 20-minute presentations for which the conference is renowned.

The new site will generate more advertising revenue for TED, but more important, conference leaders said, it will expose TED’s content to millions of people who would otherwise never attend the event.

In so doing, TED is at the vanguard of a trend in the conference industry, where organizers have begun to exploit assets that in years past evaporated as soon as speakers left the stage.

“I’m so struck by it anytime I’m at a great event,” said June Cohen, director of media for TED, a nonprofit business based in New York. “That was so wonderful, but now it’s gone. It’s a shame they’re not captured and preserved.”

Ms. Cohen said TED’s organizers began posting last June a handful of free videos from past conferences on TED.com, with “fairly aggressive goals for how I thought they’d do. But we blew past those pretty quickly.” By January, the number of TED Talks on the site had grown to 44, and they had been viewed more than three million times.

Article continues after the jump…

Based on that success, Ms. Cohen said that the organization pumped
hundreds of thousands of dollars into its video production operations
and into the development of a Web site to showcase about 100 of the
talks.

The presentations are arranged thematically on the site’s home page.
For example, visitors can browse on “Spectacular Performance” to find
one of 11 TED presentations chosen for the category by TED editors
(like a piano improvisation by the 14-year old prodigy Jennifer Lin in
2004), or find 22 TED Talks roughly related to “The Rise of
Collaboration.”

“We’re creating a TED experience online,” Ms. Cohen said, “and that’s
not about watching a single talk, but watching several in succession
that relate to each other in unexpected ways.”

With the new site, each presentation has its own Web page that includes
an overview of the Talk, a biography of the speaker, comments from
users, links to related Web pages and a way to rate the presentation
that differs from conventional methods. Users choose three
characteristics from a list that includes “long winded” and
“courageous,” among others.

Three of the more than 50 presentations from last month’s conference,
including high-definition video of former President Bill Clinton’s
speech, are featured on the new site.

From a business standpoint, Ms. Cohen said that giving away the
conference’s content in such a highly polished manner has “completely
transformed” the organization.

•

“Conventional business logic would tell you that in a community like
TED you have to keep your commodity scarce and expensive to retain
brand value,” she said. “But the same year we started releasing most of
our content for free we raised our conference price by nearly 50
percent and still sold out in 12 days.”

“This has actually created a huge challenge for us, in how to manage
our growth,” Ms. Cohen added. “We have a waiting list of a couple
thousand people for the event and we can’t grow it more. So the
question is how to expand it in other ways and do more online.”

Jack Pitney, head of marketing for BMW of North America, said visits to
the company’s Web site have jumped strongly in the last year, to about
1.7 million people a month. “That’s due to a confluence of a lot of
things, but the TED Talks certainly contributed to a lot more people
coming to the site,” he said.

Of the 11,000 or so trade shows and corporate events each year in the
United States, about 10 percent in the last year have begun to use
videos from their shows to generate more revenue, according to Darlene
Gudea, publisher of Trade Show Executive Magazine, an industry
publication. “Show organizers are realizing that only part of the
industry comes to a trade show, leaving a lot of educational
opportunities, and revenues, on the table,” Ms. Gudea said.

And trade shows themselves are a booming business. According to a
recent report from American Business Media, a business-to-business
media industry group, revenue from trade shows last year grew by 10
percent, to $11.3 billion, and for the first time exceeded revenue from
industry magazines.

One example of a company that is capitalizing on the trend is Reed
Exhibitions, a unit of Reed Elsevier, which organizes about 60
large-scale conferences in the United States each year. Two weeks ago,
Reed introduced out ISC365.com, a site devoted to ISC West, an Internet
security conference held in March in Las Vegas.

In a test that could eventually extend to all of the company’s events,
Reed will soon begin posting videos from some of the roughly 90
sessions held during the three-day event on ISC365.com. Dean Russo, a
Reed Exhibitions group vice president who oversees the company’s
Internet activities, said subscribers would pay about $300 to $350 to
download five of those videos. Other sessions, he said, would be
supported by advertising and will be offered free.

Mr. Russo said that about 25,000 people attended ISC West, and about
1,200 paid $400 to $1000 to attend educational sessions. “We’re
thinking in the first six months we could bring in at least that many
people with the online subscription, and it could potentially be many,
many times that,” he said.

Depending on the objectives of the conference speakers, that approach
could meet little resistance. Those who earn a living speaking on the
conference circuit may have to negotiate different agreements with
trade shows that seek to capitalize on those speeches in perpetuity.

But for others, like the New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, the exposure is enough payment.

Mr. Gladwell, who spoke at the 2004 TED conference, said his talk was
“a riff that was taken from a New Yorker piece just before it came out.
Certainly more people have read that story as a result of my talk being
online. If I can get people to read my stuff more, that’s all a plus.”

Please check out the new user interface, listen to, watch or download new talks and create your own profile on our member profile pages. It’s all free. And if you like what you see, tell your friends via email or via your blog. If you have critiques, issues, feedback or suggestions, please contact us.

June Cohen, Director of TED Media, led an incredible team of people including TED’s Jason Wishnow, Director of Film and Video, and the incredibly talented Emily McManus, Marla Mitchnick and Michael Glass; and the web design firm Method.

We are grateful to BMW, who returns as our inagural sponsor of the new TED.com, bringing a message about its vision of a world powered by hydrogen.

The complete TED.com announcement press release after the jump…

The TED Conference Launches All-New Website

Focused on the Distribution of Its Award-Winning Audio and Video Podcasts

Redesigned Website Promotes “Ideas Worth Spreading”

April 16, 2007—New York, NY—TED, known for its annual invitation-only summit of the world’s brightest minds, today unveiled the new TED.com (www.TED.com), showcasing the extraordinary talks that have made the conference famous. With its striking design and groundbreaking video technology, the free site encourages audience participation consistent with its tagline, “Ideas worth spreading.”

"This is an important moment in TED’s history," said Chris Anderson, Curator of TED. "With the launch of our new website, we’re really saying to the world: We want to share with you our best content for free, and we want you to connect with like-minded people inspired by these talks. In other words, we see the site as a way of dramatically expanding our community from the 1,000 people who attend the conference to millions of knowledge seekers around the globe."

TED is owned by a nonprofit foundation whose mission is to leverage the power of ideas. The new website was inspired by the viral success of TEDTalks, the audio and video podcast series, which premiered in June 2006 and has been viewed more than 8.5 million times worldwide. The TEDTalks series was exclusively sponsored by BMW, who returns as the inaugural sponsor for TED.com.

“We were astounded by how quickly the audience for TEDTalks grew. But what surprised us even more was the impact the talks had on viewers. The extensive discussion in the blogosphere, and the depth of the emotional response, inspired us to create this new site,” said June Cohen, Director of TED Media, who led the development of TED.com. “When you think about the impact a single talk can have on a single person, and multiply that millions of times, the overall effect can be world-changing.”

The new TED.com features:

• More than 100 full-length TED talks, including 30 never before seen outside the exclusive TED Conference

• First-of-its-kind video player with an elegant interface and innovative features including large-screen playback, automatic adjustment for bandwidth speed, and never-before-seen chapter-marking technology that lets users find and skip to key moments in a given talk

• A unique ratings system more nuanced than the typical 5-star approach, allowing users to describe talks with adjectives, such as "beautiful,” "eloquent” and "courageous"

• Unmatched high-resolution video that can be viewed online or downloaded for playback on a computer, iPod or set-top box

• Ideas, insight and inspiration from a diverse group of thinkers and doers, including Bono, Bill Clinton, Jeff Bezos, Jane Goodall, Stefan Sagmeister, Malcolm Gladwell, Eve Ensler, Nicholas Negroponte, Peter Gabriel, Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, Tony Robbins, Anna Deavere Smith, Hans Rosling, Jeff Han and many others

• Detailed talk summaries and speaker biographies to provide more context around each talk
Innovative ways to browse talks, which are grouped into TED-like themes, such as "Inspired by Nature," "How the Mind Works" and "Tales of Invention”

• Social-networking tools—including Profile Pages, Comments and Favorites—that allow for interaction among members of the extended TED community

• Free site membership for everyone worldwide

Among its innovations, the new TED features a groundbreaking sponsorship with BMW, built around the opportunity that online video affords for engaging more intelligently with customers. A homepage “Ideas from our sponsor” video helps explain BMW’s strategy for a post-carbon world, which centers around hydrogen as a source of clean energy.

“We are extremely pleased to be partnering with TED again on a venture that falls so perfectly in line with BMW’s commitment to technology, sustainability, passion and the profound experiences that the power of ideas can deliver,” said Jack Pitney, Vice President of Marketing, BMW of North America. “As inaugural sponsor of this project, we are helping TED deliver groundbreaking, inspiring content to everyone, everywhere. As evidenced by our previous project with TED, we truly believe that many of the breakthrough talks on TED.com—topics like as design innovation and sustainable energy alternatives, which are so central to BMW—will help shape our future.”

“BMW took a big chance on us when TEDTalks were just an idea, and we’re thrilled to have them back as our new website’s first sponsor,” Cohen added. "They share our commitment to ideas worth spreading."

The new TED.com was designed by New York- and San Francisco-based design and branding firm Method (www.method.com). TEDTalks are produced and edited by Jason Wishnow, award-winning filmmaker and TED’s Director of Film and Video.

———

About TED

TED is an invitation-only event where the world’s leading thinkers and doers gather for inspiration and insight. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design—three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. In fact, the event is broader still, showcasing ideas that matter in any discipline. Attendees have called it “The ultimate brain spa” and “A four-day journey into the future.” The audience—CEOs, financiers, inventors, intellectuals—is almost as extraordinary as the speakers, who have included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Quincy Jones, Frank Gehry, Paul Simon, Philippe Starck and Bono.

Each year, TED features 50 of the world’s most fascinating people. TED presenters run the world’s most admired companies and design its best-loved products; they invent world-changing devices and write best-selling books. They are trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. Collectively, they have won every major prize awarded for excellence, including the Nobel, Pritzker, Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, Tony and MacArthur "genius” grant. TED was first held in Monterey, CA, in 1984. In 2001, Chris Anderson’s Sapling Foundation acquired TED from its founder, Richard Saul Wurman.

Meanwhile, over at Sony Pictures Digital’s Imageworks animation and visual effects studio, they also popped open the champagne: Monster House was nominated for best animated feature, and Superman Returns was recognized for Sony’s breakthrough character animation of the title character, and the amazing Space Shuttle action scene, among the myriad effects. Congratulations to TEDsters Yair Landau, Tim Sarnoff, Don Levy, Bill Villareal and George Joblove.

"Monster House" Gil Kenan (Columbia Pictures; Sony Pictures Releasing)

"Superman Returns" Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover and Jon Thum (Warner Bros.)

"An Inconvenient Truth" Davis Guggenheim; A Lawrence Bender/Laurie David Production (Paramount Classics and Participant Productions)

"I Need to Wake Up" from "An Inconvenient Truth," music and lyric by Melissa Etheridge (Paramount Classics and Participant Productions)

She is a friend and protegé of and advocate for William McDonough, the green architect and co-founder with Michael Braungardt of the Cradle to Cradle design movement, who has spoken at several TED conferences in the past.

Zem’s column in H&G is as well-written and humorous as her blog, and teaches environmental know-how without preaching. Under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief Dominique Browning, H&G has been integrating green design editorial for many years now, and features Graham Hill, founder of Treehugger and Laurie David, executive producer of An Inconvenient Truth as contributors.

Is history truth, lies, context or just "one fooking thing after
another?" With more than a little echo of current U.S. educational
policy, Boys asks whether teachers prepare children for tests or impart a love of learning. 
Hilarious, erudite, and moving, Boys contains more neo-aphorisms
per minute that any other play in recent memories. The incredibly handsome and talented young cast acts out poetry (Auden), film (Brief Encounter, Now, Voyager), philosophy (Wittgenstein) and song (Cole Porter) in class. The production
features a marvelous isometric set that changes scenes while surmounted
by witty black and white film projections of the cast, accompanied by
period ska and New Wave music. You’ll love trying to catch all the allusions, of which there are hundreds. Soon to be a film from Fox Searchlight Pictures, directed by Nicholas Hytner, who also directed the play.  Through September 3rd.

In the style of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink revue musicals such as the Broadway Melody films and Hellzapoppin’, this song/dance/vaudeville/comic confection is unabashedly silly, politically incorrect and deeply hilarious. You’ll find parodies of dozens of broadway musicals (Dreamgirls, Les Mis) and their
personnel, including a nine foot Tommy Tune on stilts and a
myocardially infarcted Bob Fosse.  Short alter ego Jiminy Glick appears for an extended riff with a member of the audience. Ellen DeGeneres, Joan Rivers, the American Idol judges and myriad other celebrities are shredded by the talented supporting cast. Originally with Canada’s legendary
Second City Television troupe and then Saturday Night Live, Martin Short
demonstrates his absolutely perfect mockery of self-congratulation,
narcissistic performers and smugness that will have you wetting your pants. Buy your tickets early.

(From left to right: Make: magazine Creative Director David Albertson,
Editor-in-Chief and bOING bOING co-founder Mark Frauenfelder and Craft: Editor-in-Chief Carla Sinclair.)

Modern-day MacGyvers showed off one incredible invention after another,
all made from scratch, built from off the shelf parts or junk, or
modified from commercial products. Not your average craftmart the
Bizarre Bazaar offered gems like pink cotton candy candles and
hand-stitched journals made out of old Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew
books.  Seen around the grounds: Google co-founder Larry Page, Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Tim O’Reilly.

Mark Frauenfelder, the editor-in-chief of Make:, bOING bOING co-founder, and an accomplished artist showed kids how to silk screen custom artwork onto their cloth bags. (Where does he find the time?) Carla Sinclair (Mark Frauenfelder is her husband) and David Albertson, my longtime friend from New Trier high school, showed off galleys from the forthcoming Craft: magazine, a sister to Make: that bows in August.

My friend Marc Geller of the Electric Auto Association talked about the pros and cons of alternative energy vehicles and told me about the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? that played this weekend at the San Francisco International Film Festival (opens in the U.S. June 28, 2006.) He is a passionate advocate for all-electric cars which all-but disappeared over the past few years. Electric cars cost the equivalent of 70 cents a gallon to power! Some of his colleagues from CalCars were hacking a Prius so that it uses the electric motor a lot more, plugs in at night,  and gets 100 mpg. Expect to hear a lot more about plug-in hybrids.

Maker Faire buzzed with the kind of electricity you find at events that define the beginning of something new.  It reminded me of the early days of the computer business when people’s eyes gleamed with enthusiasm and true curiosity. The best part for me is that parents and kids were building robots (and myriad other projects) together.

David Albertson (with wife Anya) shows off the Craft: galleys.

More Maker Faire photos here.

Web sites like terrapass.com, carbonfund.org, nativeenergy.com and self.org focus on automobile emissions because drivers can become aware of their carbon footprint every time they fill up. An average car produces about 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Tom Arnold, one of the founders of Terrapass, a carbon-offset seller that, unlike most others, actually intends to make a profit, said that just as in the dawn of recycling a generation ago, the idea of carbon offsetting is being embraced at first by "greenies" who already plant trees, eat organic foods and buy fuel-efficient cars. As these environmentalists accept the altruistic good of doing something for the planet that will not immediately benefit them, they hope to spread the ideal of living a "carbon-neutral" life to nonbelievers.

More after the jump…

I purchased my TerraPass at the Green Expo in San Francisco in the
fall, feeling just slightly self-satisfied as a result of putting the
decal on my Prius. (more on Prius Smugness shortly.) Join me on my ego trip.

Seen at the reception: Sanjay Wagle, Global Mindshift‘s
Roberto Miller, Yahoo’s Kent Brewster and his wife Vickie; Clea
Sarnquist; Teddy Zmrhal; Anna Halpern-Lande; John Merrells; and Kevin
Bell. Email me with omissions.

Also on hand were: Timbuk2 CEO Mark Dwight (pictured) Stanford’s Stu Gannes and his daughter;
Long Now Foundation’s Stewart Brand; Marketing wiz David Hoffman; Spike
Source CEO Kim Polese; WIRED Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson whose
long-awaited book The Long Tail bows in June; Ed Driscoll; Laura
Moorhead; Kristin Windbigler; and TED team members June Cohen, Amy
Novogratz, and Tom Rielly.