TED lost money at its debut and took six years to try again
The first TED conference in 1984 featured a compact disc demonstration, an early look at the Apple Macintosh and a talk by Benoit Mandelbrot. It still lost money, and a second event did not happen until 1990. Today its free online talks run in more than 100 languages.
Richard Saul Wurman dreamed up the gathering, co-founding it with broadcast designer Harry Marks and former CBS president Frank Stanton. The letters stood for technology, entertainment and design, reflecting its Silicon Valley roots, but through the 1990s the speakers widened to include philosophers, musicians, religious leaders and philanthropists. It met annually in Monterey until crowds forced a move to Long Beach in 2009, then to Vancouver in 2014, with San Diego planned from 2027.
At 65, Wurman sought a successor and found the media entrepreneur Chris Anderson. Anderson's company Future bought TED in 2000 for 14 million dollars, and his nonprofit Sapling Foundation acquired it the following year. The main event stays invitation-only, with admission at 6,000 dollars.
The pivotal shift came from a rejected pitch. Director of TED Media June Cohen wanted a television show based on the lectures, and when several networks said no, the team posted a handful of highly rated talks online in June 2006 under a Creative Commons licence. By January 2007, 44 talks had been viewed more than three million times, so TED poured money into video and a new website. Views hit 50 million by early 2009 and 500 million by mid-2011.
The brand then spread by licence. TEDx lets anyone with a free permit host a local event, provided speakers go unpaid and hand over copyright, and by 2012 such events were running at about five a day in 133 countries. A fellows programme, begun with 100 young Africans in Arusha in 2007, now selects 40 new fellows every year.
Source: TED (conference)
