It costs $6,000 to attend TED Global 2009. This year, the conference is held at Oxford, UK from 7/21 to 7/24, and there will be 1,450 attendees. Do the math, that’s about $8.4 million total ticket sales. Not bad for a 4 day event, wouldn’t you agree?
You’d figure at that price, they would happily admit anyone who is able and willing to attend. Not the case. You actually need to “apply” for a spot, and only the most “amazing people from numerous different fields” get picked. Also worth mentioning, TED 2010 in Long Beach is also sold out. Currently, your only choice to participate TED 2009 is to pay $995 to watch the talks live online, or to get on the waitlist for 2010, and hope that someone would give up their spot. A long shot.
I know what you are thinking, “if only we could do something like that…” Except you can’t. Because you would finish the 2nd half of that sentence with, “…we would be making $10 million per event, and do that twice or three times a year, blah blah blah.”
TED also does something that’s unthinkable in the movie, music, book or perhaps any business — they give away their products for free. Started in June 2006, anybody with Internet access could go to TED.com and watch the best TED talks. It’s all there, free of charge, with no registrations necessary. If you want, you are also encouraged to download and share the content on your own website, and not having to worry about annoying ads at the bottom of the screen or getting sued anytime soon. Their website is almost (I use “almost” because I am subscribed to TED updates, and don’t visit their website often) ad-free. With roughly 600,000 to 700,000 unique visitors every month (not counting the RSS feeds), surely they could generate some income through advertisements, couldn’t they? But they chose not to. You see, they are committed to “spread remarkable ideas” rather than “make a profit”, and they let their actions speak for themselves.
“If only you could do something like that”…
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