Gave content away free, raised live show seat price 50% to $6,000: still sold out
TED risked everything by putting their precious content online for nothing, but it paid off, they are now bigger than ever: the future is live
This is another of those non-TED videos that’s all about TED, but with still more riveting new stuff about this extraordinary phenomenon. At the iij we’re shamelessly captivated by TED’s aspiration: ‘radical openness’. She’s that same presenter as the last time we covered TED: this time she’s bringing even more insight into what makes TED unique
If you’d like to work your way through her slide show for this talk, which was called:
“TED: The First 21st Century University?”, it’s here in a pdf
Here’s some background on June Cohen:
“imagine the potential we have right now to be able to marry the newest technologies with the oldest and still most powerful education technology we have, and that is a great teacher”
June Cohen, TED
“imagine the potential we have right now to be able to marry the newest technologies with the oldest and still most powerful education technology we have, and that is a great teacher”
June Cohen, TED
She’s Executive Producer of TED Media for the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference.
She led the effort to bring the conference online, launching the TED Blog in 2005, the podcast series TEDTalks in 2006, the redesigned TED.com in 2007, and the TED Open Translation Project in 2009.
Cohen joined the TED staff in 2005.
She co-hosts the conference with TED curator Chris Anderson
TED.com has won numerous awards, including seven Webby Awards, and the Communication Arts 2008 Interactive Award for Information Design.
According to announcements made at the TED Conference in February 2010, TEDTalks were watched 250 million times in the first 3-1/2 years they were available.
Some of the talks, like those by Hans Rosling, Ken Robinson and Jill Bolte Taylor have become viral hits.
From 1994 to 2000, Cohen worked for HotWired, the first commercial web magazine.
She was part of the team that launched the site in 1994.
In 1996 she launched Webmonkey, the how-to site for web developers.
In 1997, she led the widely publicized launch of HotWired 4.0 which featured extensive use of JavaScript and dynamic HTML.
Cohen was an early innovator in new media.
In 1991, she led a team at Stanford University that developed one of the world’s first multimedia magazines, called “Proteus“.
It was built in HyperCard, and used newly released QuickTime to integrate video.
It was made available over the campus computer network, as a supplement to the campus newspaper, and was phased out after the advent of the web.
Cohen is a graduate of Stanford University, and was Editor-in-Chief of The Stanford Daily from 1991-1992
This presentation was given at the Gov 2.0 Summit
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It was held on August the 6th 2010 in San Francisco and was billed as “Opening the Door to Innovation”.
Here’s the announcement:
The entire program is dedicated to learning about the latest technology and its application, and breaking down the barriers to its adoption.
Innovators from government and the private sector will come together to highlight technology and ideas that can be applied to the nation’s great challenges in areas as diverse as education, health care, energy, jobs, and financial reform.
Gov 2.0 Summit will uncover unique opportunities to rethink how government agencies perform their mission and serve citizens.
Modeled after UBM TechWeb and O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit, the Gov 2.0 Summit will be limited in size, and focused on strategy and networking.
The format will be a two-day executive-level conference featuring insightful on-stage interviews with senior officials and executives, ground-breaking case studies and networking events.
Additional information on Gov 2.0 Summit content, invitation information, and promotional opportunities available at www.gov2summit.com.
Gov 2.0 Summit is an exclusive gathering of technology and government executives focused on fostering thought leadership and driving forward progress in government technology policy.
The Gov 2.0 Summit is a companion event to the annual Gov 2.0 Expo.
Gov 2.0 Summit 2010 proudly presents Diamond sponsor Booz Allen Hamilton; Platinum sponsor ESRI; Gold sponsors IBM, Microsoft , and Palantir; and Silver sponsors Alfresco, Google, Intel, and Omidyar Network.
I encountered TED back in college, and I was pretty amazed by their vision on how people should view and digest innovation. I’m quite interested in TED being viewed as the 21st Century University. While this may sound great among technology enthusiasts, I wonder how this will strike along the social spectrum, given our differing tastes when it comes to technology and learning.
And not only that; the article’s title also says a thing or two about TED’s motivation for success in the innovation field. Is this a new practice that TED will now espouse, where in content may be free but access to these “live shows” only available to a chosen few? I do agree with it focus regarding government policy towards innovation and technology, but this article’s title doesn’t really help TED’s case of making innovation and technology readily and wholly accessible to the larger public.
Maybe Rob, but you still have access to the presentations if needed. Want to meet those people ‘live’, speak to them or land some business deals or create connections – go there and pay. I wouldn’t blame them for that, looking at how popular they got, had to introduce some method of allowing limited audience. Not the most fortunate maybe but still – a method.
I really like the fact that TED uses volunteer translators to work on their content – something that Wikipedia mastered quite some time ago. Just like 1st of their powerful lessons state:
“Harnass the power and wisdom of crowds”
Wonder how they evaluate translation’s quality?
That’s one good point Greg. That made me remember Google’s strategy regarding putting information in images as a sort of a game for users – users play a “game” where in if there are two people who put the same keywords in the same picture they earn the points. Quite ingenious, really, but the same point applies here, and that’s regarding the quality being placed on the content.
Great vid. June Cohen elaborates quite nicely on what we’ve come to know as Ted’s mission statement: According to their company’s info sheet, TED exists in order to cultivate ideas, powerful ones, that can change the world. TED’s aims are, shall I say the word, worthy… and, judging from the success of the TED talks, their efforts have really paid off.
I particularly like the TEDx platform, and the way that it allows more people to share, discuss, and participate; hold mini-TED conferences, if you will. TED addresses a much wider audience and although it certainly isn’t an alternative to an actual physical university, it gives people who normally wouldn’t have access to the kind of expert knowledge that TED speakers provide a chance to learn.
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