TED (conference)


TED Conferences, LLC is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything". It was founded by Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks in February 1984 as a technology conference, in which Mickey Schulhof gave a demo of the compact disc that was invented in October 1982. Its main conference has been held annually since 1990. It covers almost all topics—from science to business to global issues—in more than 100 languages.
TED's early emphasis was on technology and design, consistent with its Silicon Valley origins. It later broadened to include scientific, cultural, political, humanitarian, and academic topics. It has been curated by Chris Anderson, a British-American businessman, through the non-profit TED Foundation since July 2019.
The main TED conference has been held annually in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at the Vancouver Convention Centre since 2014. The first conferences from 1984 through 2008 were held at the Monterey Conference Center in Monterey, California. From 2009 to 2014, it was held in Long Beach, California, United States. TED events are also held throughout North America and in Europe, Asia, and Africa, offering live streaming of the talks. TED returned to Monterey in 2021 with TEDMonterey. The talks address a wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture, often through storytelling.
TED conferences are invitation-only events with an admission of $6,000.
Since June 2006, TED Talks had been offered for online streaming. By June 2011, TED Talks' combined viewing figures surpassed 500 million.

History

1984–1999: Founding and early years

TED was conceived in 1984 by Richard Saul Wurman, FAIA '76, and co-founded by Emmy-winning broadcast and graphic designer Harry Marks and CBS President Emeritus Frank Stanton. The conference featured demos of the compact disc, co-developed by Philips and Sony, and one of the first demonstrations of the Apple Macintosh computer. The first presenter was The Funky Duck. Presentations were given by the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and others such as Nicholas Negroponte and Stewart Brand. The event was financially unsuccessful; six years elapsed before a second conference was organized.
TED2 was held at the same Monterey Conference Center in California in 1990. From 1990 onward, a growing community of "TEDsters" gathered annually with Wurman leading the conference in Monterey until 2009, when it was moved to Long Beach, California due to a substantial increase in the number of those attending. Speakers were initially drawn from the fields of expertise behind the acronym TED; but during the 1990s, presenters broadened to include scientists, philosophers, musicians, religious leaders, philanthropists, and many others.

2000–present: recent growth

In 2000, Wurman, looking for a successor at age 65, met with new-media entrepreneur and TED enthusiast Chris Anderson to discuss future happenings. Anderson's UK media company Future bought TED for $14 million. In November 2001, Anderson's non-profit The Sapling Foundation acquired TED from Future for £6m. In February 2002, Anderson gave a TED Talk in which he explained his vision of the conference and his future role of curator.
In 2012, TED community director Tom Rielly helped the producers of Prometheus gain approval for the use of the TED brand in the promotional short film TED 2023, designed by Rielly with Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof, directed by Luke Scott, and starring Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland, who in the film speaks at a fictional TED conference at Wembley Stadium in the then-future of 2023; on the film's release, Rielly noted that the association had generated millions of unique visits to the TED website.
In 2014, the conference was moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
TED is currently funded by various revenue streams, including attendance fees, corporate sponsorships, foundation support, licensing fees, and book sales. Sponsors do not participate in the event's creation and do not present on the main stage.
In 2015, TED staff consisted of about 180 people headquartered in New York City and Vancouver, British Columbia. On July 1, 2019, the TED Conferences LLC was transferred from Sapling Foundation to TED Foundation to "align with our brand and make it easier for our donors to connect TED donations to TED Conferences, LLC."
In 2021, TED launched the TED Audio Collective with a number of podcasts featuring previous TED Talks and other relevant topics.
TED 2022 was held in Vancouver. There was criticism after Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, flew to speak about climate change and the need for reduced carbon emissions.
In 2025, it was announced that the annual conference would move to San Diego, California beginning in 2027.

TED Prize

The TED Prize was introduced in 2005. Until 2010, $100,000 was given annually to three individuals with a "wish to change the world". Each winner unveiled their wish at the main annual conference. The winners from this period are as follows:
Since 2010, a single winner has been chosen to ensure that TED can maximize its efforts in achieving the winner's wish. In 2012, the prize was not awarded to a person, but to a concept connected to the current global phenomenon of increasing urbanization. In 2013, the prize amount was increased to $1 million. The winners from this period are as follows:
TED Conference commissioned New York artist Tom Shannon to create a prize sculpture for all TED Prize winners. It consists of an aluminum sphere magnetically levitated above a walnut disc. As of 2018, the prize has been recast as The Audacious Project.

TED.com

In 2005, Chris Anderson hired June Cohen as Director of TED Media. In June 2006, after Cohen's idea of a TV show based on TED lectures was rejected by several networks, a selection of talks that had received highest audience ratings was posted on the websites of TED, YouTube and iTunes under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0. Only a handful of talks was initially posted to see if there was an audience for them. In January of the following year, the number of talks on the sites had grown to 44, and they had been viewed more than three million times. On the basis of that success, the organization pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into its video production operations and the development of a website to feature about 100 of the talks.
In April 2007, the new TED.com was launched, developed by New York and San Francisco-based design company Method. The website has won many prizes, including seven Webby Awards, iTunes' "Best Podcast of the Year" ; the Communication Arts Interactive Award for Information Design ; the OMMA Award for Video Sharing, the Web Visionary Award for Technical Achievement, and The One Show Interactive Bronze Award ; the AIGA Annual Design Competition ; and a Peabody Award.
In January 2009, TED videos had been viewed 50 million times. In June 2011, they reached 500 million views.
In March 2012, Netflix announced a deal to stream an initial series of 16 two-hour collections of TED Talks on similar subjects. It was made available to subscribers in the United States, Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Hosted by Jami Floyd, TED Talks NYC debuted on NYC Life on March 21, 2012.

Related projects and events

TED conferences

DateConferenceThemeLocationNotable speakers
April 15–19, 2024TED 2024The Brave and The BrilliantVancouver, British ColumbiaSam Altman, Eric Schmidt, Palmer Luckey, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins
April 17–21, 2023TED 2023PossibilityVancouver, British Columbia
April 10–14, 2022TED 2022A New EraVancouver, British ColumbiaElon Musk, Garry Kasparov, Al Gore, Alexis Nikole Nelson, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allyson Felix
October 12–15, 2021TED Countdown SummitEdinburgh, Scotland
October 10, 2020TED Countdown 2020Online
May 18, 2020 − July 10, 2020TED 2020UnchartedOnline @ TED.com
July 21–25, 2019TEDSummit 2019A Community Beyond BordersEdinburgh, ScotlandNicola Sturgeon, Carole Cadwalladr
April 15–19, 2019TED 2019Bigger than usVancouver, British ColumbiaAmerica Ferrera
November 28–30, 2018TEDWomen 2018Showing upPalm Springs, CaliforniaStacey Abrams, Pat Mitchell, Cecille Richards
November 14–16, 2018TEDMED 2018Chaos+ClarityPalm Springs, California
April 10–14, 2018TED 2018The Age of AmazementVancouver, British Columbia
November 1–3, 2017TEDWomen 2017BridgesNew Orleans, Louisiana
August 27–30, 2017TEDGlobal 2017Builders. Truth-tellers. Catalysts.Arusha, Tanzania
April 24–28, 2017TED 2017The Future YouVancouver, British ColumbiaRobert Sapolsky
November 14, 2016TEDYouth 2016Made in the FutureBrooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
October 26–28, 2016TEDWomen 2016It's about time.San Francisco, California
June 26–30, 2016TEDSummit 2016Aim higher. Together.Banff, Alberta
February 15–19, 2016TED 2016DreamVancouver, British Columbia
November 14, 2015TEDYouth 2015Made in the FutureBrooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
November 1–6, 2015TED Talks LiveSix nights of talks on BroadwayTown Hall Theatre, New York, New York
May 27–29, 2015TEDWomen 2015MomentumMonterey, California
March 16–20, 2015TED 2015Truth and DareVancouver, British ColumbiaBill Gates
March 16–20, 2015TEDActive 2015Truth and DareWhistler, British Columbia
November 15, 2014TEDYouth 2014Worlds ImaginedBrooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
October 6–10, 2014TEDGlobal 2014South!Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
March 17–21, 2014TED 2014The Next ChapterVancouver, British Columbia
March 17–21, 2014TEDActive 2014The Next ChapterWhistler, British Columbia
February 25 – March 1, 2013TED 2013The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.Long Beach, CaliforniaMiranda Wang, Jeanny Yao
February 25 – March 1, 2013TEDActive 2013The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.Palm Springs, California
February 27 – March 2, 2012TED 2012Full SpectrumLong Beach, California
February 27 – March 2, 2012TEDActive 2012Full SpectrumPalm Springs, California

TEDGlobal

In 2005, under Anderson's supervision, a more internationally oriented sister conference was added, under the name TEDGlobal. It was held, in chronological order: in Oxford, UK, in Arusha, Tanzania, in Oxford again, and in Edinburgh, UK. In 2014, it was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Additionally, there was TED India, in Mysore and TEDGlobal London in London. TEDGlobal 2017 was held again in Arusha, Tanzania, and it was curated and hosted by Emeka Okafor.
TED's European director is Swiss-born Bruno Giussani.
The TED 2011 conference, The Rediscovery of Wonder, was held in Long Beach, California, US, from February 28 to March 4, 2011. The TED conference has a companion conference, TEDGlobal, held in the UK each summer. The 2009 TEDGlobal, The Substance of Things Not Seen, was held in Oxford, July 21–24, 2009. 2010's TEDGlobal was themed And Now The Good News; in 2011 the conference moved to a new home in Edinburgh and was held July 12–15 with the theme The Stuff Of Life. The 2012 TEDGlobal conference Radical Openness was held in Edinburgh, June 25–29.

TEDx

TEDx was founded by Lara Stein. TEDx are independent events similar to TED in presentation. They can be organized by anyone who obtains a free license from TED, and agrees to follow certain principles. Speakers are not paid and must relinquish the copyrights to their materials, which TED may edit and distribute under a non-commercial Creative Commons license.
In March 2013, eight TEDx events, which are "essentially, do-it-yourself TED conferences" raised up from five in June 2012, the previous year, in 133 countries.
TEDxPortland in Portland was the largest indoor TEDx event in the world, with over 8,000 attendees, making it the largest TEDx conference in North America.
In 2024, Raymond Rodriguez-Torres presented the TEDx talk Tragedy to Triumph: Live Like Bella about his daughter Bella Rodriguez-Torres, which received widespread attention online.

TEDx Youth

TEDxYouth is a programme of independently organised events licensed by TED that focus on engaging young people in sharing ideas and experiences. These events are typically organised by schools, youth groups, or community organisations, and feature speakers—often students or young professionals—alongside educators, artists, and innovators. Like other TEDx events, TEDxYouth conferences operate under free licences granted by TED, but are planned and coordinated locally. The format usually includes short talks, performances, and interactive activities designed to inspire creativity, critical thinking, and community involvement among younger audiences.
CountryTEDxYouth events
IrelandTEDxYouth@Dún Laoghaire in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, Ireland
VietnamTEDxYouth@AIS Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City
IndiaTEDxYouth@VSA Youth in Bangalore
KyrgyzstanTEDxYouthBishkek, organized in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
ThailandTEDxYouth@ChiangMai in Chiang Mai
QatarTEDxYouth@Doha in Doha Kiwix

TED Fellows

TED Fellows were introduced in 2007, during the first TEDAfrica conference in Arusha, Tanzania, where 100 young people were selected from across the continent. Two years later, during TEDIndia, 99 fellows were recruited, mainly from South Asia.
In 2009, the fellows program was initiated in its present form. For every TED or TEDGlobal conference, 20 fellows are selected; a total of 40 new fellows a year. Each year, 20 past fellows are chosen to participate in the two-year senior fellows program.
2019 marked the tenth anniversary of the TED Fellows program.
Acceptance as a fellow is not based on academic credentials, but mainly on past and current actions, and plans for the future. Besides attending a conference free of charge, each fellow takes part in a special program with mentoring by experts in the field of spreading ideas, and can give a short talk on the "TED Fellows" stage. Some of these talks are subsequently published on TED.com. Senior fellows have additional benefits and responsibilities.

TED Audio Collective

The TED Audio Collective is a collection of podcasts with over 25 shows.
One of those shows is the TED Interview podcast which launched on October 16, 2018, during which Chris Anderson holds conversations with speakers who have previously given a TED talk, providing the guest a chance to speak in greater depth about their background, projects, motivation, re-evaluation of past experiences, or plans for the future.
No. in seasonTitleAirdate
IntroChris AndersonSeptember 25, 2018
1Elizabeth Gilbert shows up for... everythingOctober 2018
2David Deutsch on the infinite reach of knowledgeOctober 2018
3Sam Harris on using reason to build our moralityOctober 2018
4Dalia Mogahed on Islam in the world todayNovember 2018
5Steven Pinker on the case for optimismNovember 2018
6Robin Steinberg's quest to reform cash bailNovember 2018
7Mellody Hobson challenges us to be color braveNovember 2018
8Ray Kurzweil on what the future holds nextDecember 2018
9Daniel Kahneman wants you to doubt yourself. Here's whyDecember 2018
10Sir Ken Robinson still wants an education revolutionDecember 2018
BonusChris Anderson on the Ezra Klein ShowDecember 20, 2018

No. in seasonTitleAirdate
BonusParag Khanna: On global connectivitySeptember 25, 2019
1Dan Gilbert on the surprising science of happinessOctober 2019
2Anil Seth explores the mystery of consciousnessOctober 2019
3Elif Shafak on the urgent power of storytellingOctober 2019
4Michael Tubbs on politics as a force for goodOctober 2019
5Kate Raworth argues that rethinking economics can save our planetNovember 2019
6Donald Hoffman has a radical new theory on how we experience realityNovember 2019
7Frances Frei's three pillars of leadershipNovember 2019
8Christiana Figueres on how we can solve the climate crisisDecember 2019
BonusTom Rivett-Carnac is optimistic about the fate of our planetDecember 23, 2019

TEDMED

is an annual conference concerned with health and medicine. It is an independent event operating under license from the nonprofit TED conference.
In 2011, Jay Walker and a group of executives and investors purchased TEDMED from Hodosh for $16 million with future additional payments of as much as $9 million. The conference was then moved to Washington, DC.

Other programs

  • TED Radio Hour: A radio program, with audio downloads and a podcast RSS feed, hosted by Manoush Zomorodi, previously Guy Raz, and co-produced with NPR. Each episode uses multiple TED Talks to examine a common theme. Originated and executive produced by Deron Triff and June Cohen, the first episode was broadcast in 2012.
  • TED also offers other podcasts such as Sincerely, X.

Criticism

Pricing

of BusinessWeek and TechCrunch wrote in 2010 that TED attendees complained of elitism from a "hierarchy of parties throughout the LA area with strict lists and security" after the sessions. She gave credit for freely live-streaming and posting videos of its talks.

TED Talk content

Disagreements have occurred between TED speakers and organizers. In her 2010 TED Talk, comedian Sarah Silverman referred to adopting a "retarded" child. TED organizer Chris Anderson objected via his Twitter account, leading to a conflict between them conducted over Twitter.
Also in 2010, statistician Nassim Taleb called TED a "monstrosity that turns scientists and thinkers into low-level entertainers, like circus performers". He claimed TED curators did not initially post his talk "warning about the financial crisis" on their site on purely cosmetic grounds.
In May 2012, venture capitalist Nick Hanauer spoke at TED University, challenging the belief that top income earners in America were the engines of job creation. TED attracted controversy when it chose not to post Hanauer's talk on their website. His talk analysed the top rate of tax versus unemployment and economic equality. TED was accused of censoring the talk by not posting it.
On May 7, 2012, TED curator Chris Anderson, in an email to Hanauer, commented on his decision and took issue with several of Hanauer's assertions in the talk, including the idea that businesspeople were not job creators. He also made clear his aversion to the talk's "political nature".
The National Journal reported that Anderson considered Hanauer's talk one of the most politically controversial they had produced, and they needed to be careful about when they posted it. Anderson responded on his personal blog that TED posted only one talk each day, selected from many. Forbes staff writer Bruce Upbin noted that Hanauer's claim of a relationship between tax rates and unemployment was based entirely on falsified unemployment data, while New York magazine condemned TED's move.
TEDx talks have been criticised for having a lower quality control than actual TED talks, with a number of TEDx talks being ridiculed by critics for promoting pseudoscience. Wired and the Harvard Business Review suggested that this lack of quality control in TEDx talks damaged the broader TED brand.
Following a TEDx talk by parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, TED issued a statement saying their scientific advisors believed that "there is little evidence for some of Sheldrake's more radical claims", and recommended that it "should not be distributed without being framed with caution". The video was moved from the TEDx YouTube channel to the TED blog, accompanied by such framing language. This prompted accusations of censorship, which TED rebutted by pointing out that Sheldrake's talk was still on their website. A 2013 talk by Graham Hancock, promoting the use of the drug DMT, was treated the same way.
According to Professor Benjamin Bratton at University of California, San Diego, TED Talks' efforts at fostering progress in socio-economics, science, philosophy and technology have been ineffective. Chris Anderson responded that some critics misunderstood TED's goals, failing to recognise that it aimed to instill excitement in audiences in the same ways speakers felt it. He said that TED wished only to bring awareness of significant topics to larger audiences.

In popular culture

The Alien franchise features a fictional portrayal of a 2023 TED Conference, in the form of a short film called "The Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023". It was a part of the viral marketing campaign for the franchise's film [Prometheus (2012 film)|Prometheus].
Episode 08, season 20 of the animated TV series Family Guy features a cutaway scene of Peter Griffin giving a TED talk about birthdays.
Australian alternative rock band TISM parodied TED talks at their 2 March 2024 concert in Launceston, Tasmania as "TISM Talks", which included a skit parodying TED talks running behind the band for the duration of the show.
Episode 16 of series 2 of the TV series Elementary, "The One Percent Solution", features ex-Scotland Yard Inspector Gareth Lestrade presenting a "DUG Chat". According to a tweet from the @ELEMENTARYstaff Twitter account, "We had to call them 'Dug' chats because we weren't allowed to use the name 'Ted Talk.