The TED Open TV Project and the End of "Elitism"

At a keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco yesterday, TED senior staffer June Cohen announced the TED Open TV Project, a new program that gives television broadcasters anywhere in the world the rights to broadcast TED talks for free. The initiative, which launches with more than a dozen major broadcast partners, is meant to bring great free content to audiences in the developing world where there is limited access to the internet. I believe that more than ever, this new program demonstrates how the accusations of TED elitism are fundamentally misguided. In fact, I believe they have created one of the most compelling examples of brand openness of any media company today.

First, the background. TED started as a conference celebrating "technology, entertainment, and design," in 1984, and for the first two decades or so of its life was the meeting place for the West Coast intellectualarati in those fields. In 2002, leadership transitioned from founder Richard Saul Wurman to new owner Chris Anderson's nonprofit foundation. Since then the event has expanded beyond its roots in technology and is now focused more broadly on "Ideas Worth Spreading."

Today, TED is less just a conference than ever before, and is really an integrated media platform driven by world changing ideas for the 21st century. Through a series of new programs, TED has opened its brand and content in ways few events or media companies can match.

The first step on this path was to make versions of the 18-minute TED Talks free online. At first, TED staffers were worried that these talks were their primary asset and that if they made them free, no one would want to come to the event. Instead, the opposite happened. More people than ever learned about the event through the online talks, and demand for the annual spring event skyrocketed. Since 2006 when they first came online, the TED talks have been viewed more than 250,000,000 times.

The talks, however, are all given in English. To provide better access to the content around the world, TED last year launched the Open Translation project, which leverages the linguistic talents of TED's multi-lingual members to translate talks into dozens of languages. Passionate community members have subtitled almost all the talks on the site, with unexpected languages like Bulgarian being some of the most often available languages, all due to the passion of members.

Yet for all of the amazing online content, there is something fundamentally different about experiencing something with another group of people in real life. For years, TED had been hearing from its community in places like Estonia, or even the Nairobi slums of Kibera, that the would love to come to a TED event, but couldn't afford it, or the travel.

The response was TEDx, which officially turned the TED brand into a platform for people to hold their own TED events around the world. In just over a year, more than 1000 events have been held, in which a collective 50,000 people have participated.

To recap, TED gives away all its content online, for free, finds ways to get it translated into dozens of languages for broader access, allows members of its community to plan their own events using its brand, logo, and support networks, and now is working with broadcasters to give the content even broader reach.

Yet to read much of tech media, TED is "controversial" because of supposed elitism. The charge comes from the fact that it is extremely hard to go to the main event in Long Beach each year. Only a few thousand people are allowed to register, and they sell out a full year in advance. Even those who can pay aren't guaranteed a spot.

But that, by itself, is something very different than elitism. That is demand greatly exceeding supply. Elitism can only be gleaned from the way people are allowed to participate. What's for sure is that TED works carefully to make sure its main event attendees are top of class and incredible. But what is also for sure is that at no point does TED ever argue that they are the most incredible, and that everyone who doesn't come is somehow second class. That would be elitist, but it is simply not the case.

From what I can tell, most new people come to TED based on the recommendations of existing TED community members. That is an imperfect system in the sense that if you don't know someone, even if you really should be there, you may not get in. But it is a system that accurately represents the reality that in a world that is absolutely chockerblock full of great ideas, and great people, we always, invariably turn to our friends for trusted recommendations. What's more, their new fellowship program is creating an entirely new pathway for people that are as yet unknown to the community to join.

Given all this, not only do I not think TED is elitist, I think they are a model for creating open source content and giving up control of their brand to gain something much more -- their community's trust and commitment.

Photo credit: Kris Krüg