Of course TED is elitist. Not elitist enough anymore for some of the founders, trust me. Looking in from the outside it may seem that attending TED is simply a

Of course TED is elitist. Not elitist enough anymore for some of the founders, trust me. Looking in from the outside it may seem that attending TED is simply a chance to view live the talks given there (many of which are informative and genuinely interesting). This is like saying that going to MIT is the chance to listen to the MIT OpenCourseWare lectures live. Going to TED, much like going to an upper echelon school, is not about the content/education alone. That's a big part of it, but the value is really the attendees. TED is about elite networking. Many of the talks are interesting people that TED attendees either want to meet or that add perceived value to the event. Tossing videos up online is great. I love some of them. But that's as much promotion of how elite and awesome actual attendance is as it is "giving back to the online community". Attending TED (while less exclusive than it used to be) has greater positional-experience value (conspicuous participation, establishing social dominance/hierarchy) if the rest of the world can look into the windows of the TED restaurant, breath fogging up the windows, while you order foie gras (or the TED equivalent of duck liver, Malcolm Gladwell). (for the record I enjoy elitism, foie gras and malcolm gladwell, though not necessarily in that order)