Blogging the TED conference

I’m writing from the front of a NWA plane, a place that’s roughly as fammiliar to me these days as my living room should be. I’m returning to San Francisco from a 30-hour trip to Toronto, and will be heading down to the TED2006 conference this evening, hoping to make it in time to blog Al Gore’s speech.

I’ll be fascinated to see how TED is similar and different to conferences like Pop!Tech and ETech. TED’s legendary for being highly professional, polished and posh – I’m grateful that the conference organizer, Chris Anderson, has made it possible for me to be there, as the price tag for the conference otherwise puts it out of my reach.

As with Pop!Tech, the Al Jazeera Forum and the other conferences I attend, I’ll be doing my level best to blog comprehensively from the audience. Usual caveats apply – I’m transcribing talks to the best of my ability, and trying to avoid editorializing. This means that I’ll be posting things that I sometimes disagree with and others that I can’t support with specific facts – please take this as reporting, not as expression of my own opinion. And please understand that, with talks as short (18 minutes!) as they are, I may not be able to post every single talk. We’ll see how I hold up…!

If you’re interested on what’s going on at TED, pay close attention to my friend Bruno Giussani’s “Lunch over IP” blog – he’s an organizer of the European TED Global conference and a brilliant blogger – I hope he’ll be liveblogging as well so I can take a break now and again…