ARRIVAL

Some have been coming forever, some just started.  Me, this is my second year: first at Long Beach, after last year in Palm Springs.  The guy next to me on the plane from SF, this was his ninth year, so most of his history was in TED’s ancestral digs in Monterey.  People greet each other like long-lost brethren, sistren.  Given my famously porous memory for anyone including even brothers and sisters, I’m just glad to see the place lit so bright with smart and funny.

Rooming is in several hotels:  those within easy walking distance of the convention center, and the Holiday Inn, a $9 taxi ride each way in downtown Long Beach.    The former hotels are peopled by almost everyone.  The latter hotel is peopled by me, a few others who got the short straw, and by the people who run the TED bookstore.

I did a last-minute jump onto a bus headed for a pre-show activity, a tour of Digital Domain near Venice Beach in LA.  A spirited talk by the president, a discussion of the evolution of “story” into “entertainment property” as illustrated by the new TRON 2010 and its demo reel, and some Q&A.  Also a brief tour of the facility, which has moved away from modelmaking almost completely.  TRON was interesting, if only because there’s a plot secret in there for which they asked signed NDA’s. Odd, but oh well.

The Long Beach stage is much more formal than that in Palm Springs.  It’s a  full auditorium, and is almost completely lacking in blogger-friendly facilities.  No power, for example, and people pressing all around with no screen privacy, and my clicking keys likely to reverberate in nearby ears.  So I’m probably going to be mostly tweeting from the iPhone, which is rather a disappointment. 

People ask my opinion of Palm Springs compared to Long Beach now that I’ve been to both, and the best I can come up with is that Palm Springs is more “California.”  More space to move around, more casual including having a “pyjamas morning” for the Wednesday morning lectures, and a variety of seating styles in the formal hall:  sofas, carpets, counters, normal seats, and nice support for laptops for those who want to blog.  If you’re coming for the talks, both Palm Springs and Long Beach are a great places; if you’re coming to shmooze with the names and Names there, it’s probably a higher concentration in Long Beach although the crew at either location provide ample ground for rich connection.  There were 1500 people in Long Beach, 500 in Palm Springs.   

TUESDAY, February 9 2010

TED2010 UNIVERSITY

FIRST AFTERNOON

TED University is a session of shortened talks:  eight minutes, not eighteen.  They’re even more focused, yet a lot seem to pack in almost as much. 

Michael Martin

Encounter with a hurricane, and an economy

Catherine Mohr

Applied her analysis of the watt-hour investment in dabbing up a blot of yogurt to the building of a new house. 

Typical:  303 MWh

www.301monroe.com

Felix Kramer

Barefoot running?  Lightweight shoes, at least - he finds them a lot easier.

Daniel Kraft

How he met Harriet: genotyping as a social tool!  He offers a tasty 7-minute concentrate of the present and future of medicine, which is one of the best uses you will find for seven minutes. 

Kevin Stone

why replace that knee when you can regrow it yourself? S'happenin' now.  Figuring out more and more ways to get the body to regrow cartilage, meniscus, everything from its own goodies.  Replacements last only 20 years, but your own can last forever.

Jessica Green

is exploring what happens to hospital air when you open the windows.  Turns out that in the same way natural bacteria help us all build and maintain immune systems, they’re also important even in specialized environments. 

Phil Zimbardo

Heroes?  Phil shows how inaction helps villains more than it helps heroes. But he’s going a step further, and researching heroism: HIP in Action.  It turns out that there’s not much that has been done here, and everyday heroes are way under-rated. 

Cindy Gallop

turning tweets into microactions: making better teachers, better teaching. aroundtheworld.com