TEDActive lets you watch every single talk of TED2013, but without having to sit in an auditorium for hours at a time. TEDActive attendees get to watch the conference while lounging around the La Quinta Resort and Spa in Palm Springs, taking part in participatory art projects and going on all kinds of field trips for adults. (Check out the 10 coolest things that have happened at TEDActive.)

Another regular feature of TEDActive? Campfires. Here, six people who you can make s’mores with this year.

Meet Diane Hatz…

What interests you?

People interest me—I love listening to what other people are doing and have done. I also am interested in philosophy, especially Buddhism.

What problem are you trying to solve?

I’m trying to shift the US food system to one that is sustainable, healthy and accessible to all. I raise awareness and put on special events (like TEDxManhattan) on issues related to sustainable food and farming.

What piece of advice would you give to someone coming to TEDActive for the first time?

Don’t force it—just let it happen.

Meet Thierry Pilette…

What interests you?

People, connecting, authenticity, family and friends, my children, seeking out fulfillment and happiness, TED, wine, learning, challenging preconceptions, making mistakes.

What piece of advice would you give to someone coming to TEDActive for the first time?

Be yourself and enjoy the ride.

What’s one thing you can’t live without?

Making my children laugh.

Meet Tereza Nemessanyi…

Where is your favorite place on earth?

Prague.

What interests you?

I love stories where someone creates something out of nothing. I never seem to tire of them. To me, this is the most fundamental mark of being human.

What problem are you trying to solve?

In the manufacturing era, innovation was treated as a special case, outside the edges. In the social era, it is the emergent norm, something that needs to happen everyday. The tectonic plates are delivering us into a ‘continuous deployment’ world. This suggests people will need to get ever better at innovating, and will need to do it over the entirety of their lifespan. And yet our vision of how innovation gets done is stuck in a 50-year-old framework of young men in garages. I am obsessed with finding new models of innovation that are lifespan sustainable, and inclusive and accessible to all walks of life.

Meet Robert Agouri…

Where is your favorite place on earth?

I could lie and say something profound but, really, it’s watching the Habs play at the Bell Centre. Outside of hockey season, any beach in the world.

What’s your favorite thing about TEDActive? 

It’s taken me a few years to figure out how to best enjoy it. In the first couple of years, I went to the parties and events, but I get so little time to myself in my everyday life that this time really became quite special because I now park myself in a spot, soak in the talks and go back to my room and think about what I’ve seen and heard. I go for a run, read, relax and catch up on sleep. It’s my 5-day reboot.

What’s your favorite TED Talk?

Rives’ 4 AM talk is a special kind of genius.

Meet Christopher Everett…

Where is your favorite place on earth?

My farm in Wisconsin.

What’s your favorite thing about TEDActive?

Finding a community of people like me—living on the edges of their lives and work—helps me feel less alone when I return home.

What’s one thing you can’t live without?

Three things: kindred spirits, examples of kindness, two red-headed poodles.

Want to be at TEDActive, February 25 through March 1 in Palm Springs, California? Find out much more information, including how to apply >>

And stay tuned to the TEDActive website for new attendee profiles, going up every week until the conference.

Read more on the official Google Blog >>

(This year’s countdown begins Dec. 24 at 2am Eastern.)

Today’s playlist are some of our favorite TEDTalks to come out from TEDActive in sunny Palm Springs, California.

Sebastian Wernicke shares a hilarious statistical analysis of TEDTalks to come up with a metric for creating “the optimum TEDTalk”.

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Mick Ebeling shares how he and a team of collaborators built an open-source invention that gave a paralyzed street artist the means to make art again.

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Even when our lives appear fine from the outside, locked within can be a world of quiet suffering, leading some to the decision to end their life. At TEDYou, JD Schramm asks us to break the silence surrounding suicide and suicide attempts, and to create much-needed resources to help people who reclaim their life after escaping death.

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Rives tells a typographical fairy tale that’s short and bittersweet ;)

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Designer Jessi Arrington packed nothing for TED but 7 pairs of undies, buying the rest of her clothes in thrift stores around LA. Her talk is a meditation on conscious consumption — wrapped in a rainbow of color and creativity.

As we begin planning for the experiences of TED2012: Full Spectrum, we’re pleased to announce an open call for proposals to exhibit innovative works of technology art at TEDActive 2012, February 27-March 2, 2012, in Palm Springs, California.

Each year at TEDActive, we host artists working in the field of technology to showcase their interactive pieces. Past artists exhibited have included Evan Grant showing his multi-touch sphere, a generative portrait created with Lincoln Schatz, a shadow puppet theater by Michael Kontopoulos and Nova Jiang, conversations around aerogel with Dan Goods and Gilad Lotan, the audiopad by TEDFellow James Patten, and an interactive architecture experiment with TEDFellow Oliver Hess and his partner Jenna Didier.

Proposals will be accepted until July 1, 2011. The proposals will be reviewed by our curatorial team here at TED, alongside some of our TEDActive community members who are experts in the fields of technology, art, and the sciences. Proposals should include your name, website, hi-res images of your work, a one-page description of the piece, and a video that demonstrates some of your past work.

If you or anyone you know would be interested in this opportunity to exhibit, please fill out this form to submit this information.

In February at TEDActive 2011, the TEDActive Projects were launched. Five teams came together to explore, collaborate and act on five vital issues: education, mobility, sustainability, social networks and travel, sharing ideas about how to create attitude shifts that might produce positive change. Now we’re taking those crowd-sourced solutions up a notch, and asking our TED.com community to join the conversations.

For the next 30 days, rotating after TEDTalks or on the TEDActive Projects site, you can watch mini-documentaries on each project and see how the TEDActive team answered a question around a big issue. If you have an idea, another question, a resource to offer or even an objection, jump into the discussion in the TED Conversation dedicated to each project. Lend your voice, and let’s see how exploration and collaboration might lead to action.

Go to the TEDActive Projects website to watch all the videos here >>

Join TEDActive in a TED Conversation on education >>

Join TEDActive in a TED Conversation on mobility >>

Join TEDActive in a TED Conversation on sustainability >>

Join TEDActive in a TED Conversation on social networks >>

Join TEDActive in a TED Conversation on travel >>