About TED
TED is an annual event where some of the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. "TED" stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. And 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 diverse audience — CEOs, scientists, creatives, philanthropists — is almost as extraordinary as the speakers, who have included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Paul Simon, Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck and Bono.
Learn more by visiting TED.com.
About TEDx
TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share ideas worth spreading. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks videos and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.
More about TEDx
TEDx Intro Video
About TEDxBITSGoa
TEDxBITSGoa is an independently organized TED like conference operated under a license from TED. It is scheduled on 5th February 2010 in the venue of BITS – Pilani, Goa Campus. Under the theme of Innovation, we will present to the world, Innovations that have pioneered change in the past and those that are going to change the future… Speakers will include innovators; visionaries and performers who will leave all bedazzled through their talks…
Learn more about the Program & Venue
Background
TED began in 1984 as a conference devoted to the converging fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design (hence its name). Over the years, the scope has broadened and the ambition level constantly raised. We now seek to bring together the world's leading thinkers and doers, no matter what field of endeavor they are working in. All knowledge is connected and TED has become the place where you can discover leading edge thinking in numerous fields, and how this relates to your own life and work. For many attendees, the result is: delicious, unexpected connections; extraordinary insights; powerful inspiration.
Past speakers and performers have included have included Nobel laureate Al Gore, architect Frank Gehry, primatologist Jane Goodall, musician Paul Simon, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Genomics pioneer Craig Venter, Tiananmen Square organizer Li Lu, biologist E.O. Wilson, playwright Eve Ensler, photojournalist James Nachtwey, Nobel laureates Paul Berg, Murray Gell-Mann and Jim Watson (of Watson & Crick), Lost producer JJ Abrams, jazz musician Herbie Hancock, Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, eco-architect William McDonough, architect & sculptor Maya Lin, evangelist Billy Graham, cellist YoYo Ma, Segway inventor Dean Kamen, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, former president Bill Clinton, and leadership coach Tony Robbins.
We also seek out emerging artists, scientists and thinkers, introducing them to the TED community well before they hit the mainstream. After all, TED is about much more than famous names. It is about passion, laughter, beauty, ingenuity and ideas capable of changing the world.
The presenters may run the world’s most admired companies or design its best-loved products; they invent world-changing devices, and create ground-breaking media. They’re trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. AND... TED’s audience is as extraordinary as its speaker line-up: Internet pioneers (including the founders of Google, Amazon, eBay), movie producers, architects, creative directors, CEOs, perhaps a dozen billionaires, authors, investors, celebrities, philanthropists and leading opinion formers of every kind. Indeed TED2009 sold out its 1,400 spaces a full year ahead of the conference.
What began as a for-profit endeavor, in 1984, was sold in 2001 to Chris Anderson's private foundation, devoted to leveraging the power of ideas to help make a better world. Since then TED has begun distributing its content online, free to the world, and has introduced the TED Prize, in which three individuals each year are granted "one wish to change the world" which they reveal at the conference. (see http://TEDprize.org).
There is much more about TED, and the foundation which owns it, at the website TED.com
Here are some pages you may want to check:
TEDx Homepage
Media Coverage of TED
Speaker and Attendee Comments on TED
Audio and Video Podcasts of the talks mentioned above
7-minute Taste of TED Documentary
