Background
TED's mission statement begins:
We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.
The TED staff is headquartered in New York City and Vancouver. The conference was held in Monterey, California until 2009. It was then relocated to Long Beach, California due to a substantial increase of attendees.
TED was founded by architect and graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks in 1984, and has been held annually since 1990. Wurman, credited with having coined the term information architect in 1979, left after the 2002 conference; the event is now hosted by Chris Anderson and owned by his non-profit organization, The Sapling Foundation, devoted to "fostering the spread of great ideas." In 2006, attendance cost was $4,400 and was by invitation only. The membership model was shifted in January 2007 to an annual membership fee of $6,000, which includes attendance of the conference, club mailings, networking tools and conference DVDs.
Since June 2006, TED Talks have been made available online on the websites of TED, YouTube, and iTunes, and since late 2009, there have been free apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android, webOS and Windows Phone 7. In 2009, the TED website won the award for Best Use of Video or Moving Image at the 13th Annual Webby Awards.
In 2012, TED Talks became available to stream through Netflix. TED.com won a Peabody Award in April 2012.
TED 2011, The Rediscovery of Wonder, was held in Long Beach, California, 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, UK, July 21–24, 2009. 2010's TEDGlobal (again in Oxford) was themed And Now The Good News; in 2011 the conference moved to a new home in Edinburgh and was held from July 12–15 with the theme The Stuff Of Life. The 2012 TEDGlobal conference Radical Openness was held in Edinburgh from June 25-29.
Read more about this topic: TED (conference)
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