On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 21:54, Daniel Neugebauer <mailingli...@energiequant.de> wrote: > I heard about TED only recently and what I've read and seen about it so far > seems like an insult - conspirative pseudo-open meetings for well-paying > members of that strange elitist association. Talks seem to be only held by > those members or VIPs that are invited occasionally if any. Even if I would > tolerate all that, there would still remain a strange feeling about TED, > something I don't like. Maybe I just don't get something but that whole > elitarist stuff smells bad.
- They have an attendance fee like almost every other conference (it seems the fee is lower than for comparable conferences) - They have an attendance limit like almost every other conference so they have to chose whom to invite, those that cannot attend may follow the conference online or through TEDActive, visit one of the TEDx events, TEDIndia or TEDGlobal - Those that still cannot attend because they can't afford the fee or because there was no more room can apply for one of 20 seats reserved for people from the educational and nonprofit world (for one-third of the normal fee), or apply to become a TED Fellow to attend for free (~5% of all seats reserved for this, doesn't sound like much but how does that compare to other conferences? I have no idea.) - They invite speakers relevant to the field of this years tracks like (almost) every other conference does. - In contrast to a lot of other conferences they go to great lengths to make almost everything they do freely available under a liberal license (paid for by the high fees, thus making it possible to make the content available to a lot of people) - Unlike/Like a lot/some other conferences a non profit organization is organizing this - Unlike most other conferences they give 300.000$ to three people each year to fulfill a "wish to change the world" - Unlike most/all other conferences they provide some/most of the talks with subtitles of 40+ different languages They have a whole page devoted to this as I just found out[1]. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion and we obviously don't share the same. I would however encourage you to revisit the topic with some/this new(?) information and an open mind. I have found a lot of very interesting talks there and I'd hate to see you miss out on this opportunity for purely for the reasons you've stated. Even if you still think of it as elitist there are a lot of talks worth watching. > I'd better stay away from them and go to some real open conferences and > exhibitions instead. Please tell me about some "real open conferences and exhibitions" that I can attend that are in the same field as TED. I'd be _really_ interested to go if they are somewhere close or watch them online otherwise. Unfortunately I haven't heard anyone mention OSM yet but I hope that will change at some point. The next TED conference is starting in February. Cheers, Lars [1] http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/185 _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
