Magnetism of the Known
TED seems like such a cool conference. No doubt, they are doing something right when they sell out a year in advance of each conference! In an interesting twist, releasing much of their session content as free online videos has done nothing but drive further interest in the live event.
Anyway, there's a ton of great presentations archived at the TED site (including one by game design guru Will Wright) and I've made it a personal mini-goal to watch a bunch of them. Browsing the archive, I caught myself bookmarking all the speakers/topics I was already familiar with.
So what? There's gotta be some research out there already regarding the "magnetism" of the familiar. Well, the irony here is that TED is explicitly designed to cross-pollinate topics/speakers/areas of knowledge via their single track approach (and of course, very careful curation over the sessions) and their vetted attendee list. (For those interested, Convene profiled TED in their December 2007 issue.)
And, now that I think about it, I often do this at bigger multi-track conferences. Rather than looking for new stuff, I always go to see the topic I already know a lot about (ya know, so I can "compare notes" or more successfully heckle).
What about the idea of organizing an industry conference on all the stuff members don't know much about (aka, "The Stuff You Should Know, But Have No Clue You Should Know Conference"). Would anyone actually show up?
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Comments
Having attended TED-like conferences hosted by two different associations, I think the answer to your question is "yes." At one event, a participant noted that the purpose was to "get answers to questions we weren't asking." And like TED, we signed up for the next year's event before knowing what the agenda was.
Cheers
Ann
Posted by: Ann Oliveri | February 1, 2008 7:38 PM
Attending TED2006 ranks among my professional development highlights of my entire life.
A slew of TED-like conferences are available to select from though given TED's high cost and limited accessibility to new attendees.
A few would be: PopTech, Push the Future, ideaCity, and IdeaFestival.
I've long thought we should organize something similar for the association community at a price point more in line with what our folks would see as acceptable.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | February 1, 2008 8:19 PM
Wow, I had never even heard of TED until now, so thanks for mentioning it. I have checked out their website in depth and it looks fascinating.. I'd love to attend that conference, and I also love the idea of a similar conference within the association world.
Shame about the cost though.. maybe one day. But until then, you can count me in as one of the hypothetical attendees in the TAD conference of the future.
Posted by: Liam O'Malley | February 3, 2008 2:26 PM
Jeffrey,
What made you rank TED2006 so highly?
Was it the content, the process, the people - or the secret handshake they teach you when you are allowed to attend? (Just guessing given the sell out crowd)
Would love to hear what made the difference.
Posted by: Cynthia D'Amour | February 5, 2008 8:19 PM