The Talk of TED

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From the small stage with dramatic, blue-spotted backlighting and a floor-to-ceiling screen for visual aids, an eclectic group of speakers have offered rousing thoughts and opinions. We've seen two rounds of DNA strands and photos of Saturn, an Internet art project and animated data.

Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco began the conference by showing photographs of Saturn and its moons, walking the audience across the pictorial coastline of another planet. "If we can demonstrate that Genesis has happened not once [on Earth] but twice [including Saturn] in the solar system, then by inference that means it has occurred a staggering number of times across the universe in its 13.7 billion year history."

After the kinetic professor Hans Rosling, a veteran speaker, showed how his data animations bring statistics to life (viewable at www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=hans_rosling), he ripped off his button-down shirt to reveal a black tank top with gold sparkles and, in a single motion, slid two feet of metal—a Swedish sword from the early 1800s—down his throat. He had to do something to top last year's presentation.

Side Talks

Founder of Intellectual Venture and former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold managed to hit everything from penguin poop to intelligent life on other planets to whale sex in his 18-minute talk. He followed Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, who used the platform to drive home the difference technology has made for children. "Kids are different from us," he told the audience. "We watch TV, they make TV."

As usual, much of TED's magic happens in the all-too-brief windows of time between sessions. That's when investors and mentors approached NYU grad student Jeff Han after he presented his interactive touch-screen technology last year. He has now started his own company.

It's also when architect Cameron Sinclair, having won the TED Prize, met Dan Shine, director of AMD's 50x15 initiative. And it's why, despite the fact that TED's talks are now available over the Internet for free, and despite the fact that Anderson jacked the price to $6,000, next year's conference sold out just 10 days after registration opened.

Surely the conference isn't the only place to collect new ideas and build the relationships to put them into action, but amid a growing number of similar confabs—Pop!Tech, for example, or even Davos—it's still a hot ticket.

Hempel is BusinessWeek's Innovation editor in New York.