TED comes to India with its ideas for future

NEW DELHI - The world’s biggest conference of ideas, TED (technology, entertainment and design) is coming to India this November.

TED will hold the first India edition of its conference at the Infosys campus in Mysore Nov 4-7. It will also mark the Asian debut of this landmark annual event.

“TED, which has acquired a cult status with the cream of the world’s intellectuals, will attract the best of talent from the technology, entertainment and design sectors from across the world,” Lakshmi Pratury, who is bringing TED to India, told IANS.

“The idea is to stimulate the five senses. The ideas that emerge at TEDIndia might translate into world changing actions in the future. Moreover, it will also create new business and innovation networks and lifelong associations,” she said.

For instance, in 2008 at TED-Global in Long Beach, California, product designer Yves Behar met motorcycle enthusiast and technologist Forrest North. “Both got talking and this year (2009) they launched the world’s first eletrically powered motorcycle in the US. We expect similar things to happen at TEDIndia,” Pratury said.

The theme of TEDIndia will be “Future Beckons”.

“Over four days, the speakers will give the select audience of 400 the ‘talk of their lives’ and interact with them in special workshops bouncing ideas and discussing innovations,” the co-host said.

The audience will be selected and groomed by the TED team after a rigorous online test. “Those willing to attend will have to apply first, fill the test forms and then be screened because they will have to be participatory,” Pratury explained.

TED, held every year in Long Beach, California, sees the participation of over a 1,000 curious minds with the potential to transform the world.

Over the years the conference has attracted speakers like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, U2 musician Bono, founder of Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, mathematician-magician Arthur Benjamin, novelist Isabel Allende, oceanographer Sylvia Earle and religious scholar Karen Armstrong, said Pratury.

“Besides, it also features famous contemporary artists, musicians and performers.” Every year, TED also awards a prize of $100,000 to three exceptional individuals.

A venture capitalist and entrepreneur, Pratury works to strengthen ties between the US and India. She has been attending TED both as a guest and as a speaker since 1994.

TED, said Pratury, started in 1984 as a conference to bring together people from the fields of technology, entertainment and design to sound off ideas, but it gradually became bigger — spanning across genres, herding the world’s greatest thinkers and doers under one roof. It is now one of the most popular sites on the Internet (www.ted.org), with more than 1,000 web videos.

“The focus of TEDIndia will be India and South Asia,” Pratury said. “The speakers will address key issues of multidisciplinary problem solving, obstacles facing the developing nations in the subcontinent and innovations. It will also showcase the latest innovations in technology, design and entertainment from India and its neighbours at a special innovations lounge on the Infosys campus.”

The conference will begin Nov 4 with the TED University and Workshop round where at least 30 members of the select audience will be “taught” to speak.

The next two days will be a continuous round of at least nine sessions, where the speakers will address the audience.

The sessions will be broken with music, dance and art-based performances, Pratury said.

“My objective is to get the maximum number of Indians to get clued into what’s happening in the West and ensure that the best of Indian minds are around.”

The list of speakers will be released a month before the event, Pratury said.

TEDIndia will be partnered by Infosys, Sherpalo Ventures, Ramco Systems, Google and Nokia.

(Madhushree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)