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The Haves and Have-Nots: The True Story of a Reader Suddenly De-Invited from TED

113 points by ssclafani 16y ago

greattypo 16y ago
tl;dr TED donor doesn't like man; man has his registration to TED conference cancelled. Meh..
- petercooper 16y ago
  Skipping over the part about the segregation, priority seating, etc.
  - joshu 16y ago
    Iirc only the front row or two are reserved, and it's for speakers and the major contributors. Everything else is random seating.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    So you're saying that it's newsworthy because they run it like a cinema where if you pay more you get a better seat?
ScottWhigham 16y ago
Just a rant, nothing more.
rexf 16y ago
Meatless TC post. TL;DR Redacted person invited to TED by donor. Whining. Next year, redacted kicked out of TED due to falling out with said donor. More whining.
- tptacek 16y ago
  I agree there's a strong whiff of sour grapes to this post, but, not having paid much attention to TED itself, I was unaware how cliquish it was. You have to "apply" to pay $6,000 to attend?
  - bitwize 16y ago
    No. You have to "be nominated" to pay $6000 to attend.
- dkarl 16y ago
  If his story is true, he was sponsored by the donor the first time he attended. He applied to come back and was accepted on his own merits, and then he was blacklisted. I think it's newsworthy if TED, which is purportedly a forum for sharing ideas, lets donors blacklist attendees. The TED talks are just a highbrow facade for a get-together that is actually all about access. Access (and money) is how they lure the presenters that give some substance to the facade. Sarah Silverman showed that she did not understand the nature of the event; she did not appreciate the privilege of having access to rich and powerful people, and somebody took offense. Apparently this guy was also not sufficiently deferential to some powerful person, so he is not an appropriate attendee for an event that is all about being grateful for their presence. Group A, (the people everyone would love to meet), and Group B (the people who want to meet those people.) The people in Group B spend the entire TED conference running around with business cards, hoping for, you know, five seconds of face time with Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack, Cameron Diaz, or the like. This part makes Group B sound like a bunch of insufferable assholes (which may be partly true) but when you consider the nature of the event, Group A is almost literally asking for it.
  - deleted 16y ago
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  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Apparently this guy was also not sufficiently deferential to some powerful person, so he is not an appropriate attendee for an event that is all about being grateful for their presence. You don't know what his relationship is. Maybe this donor thinks this person molested his daughter, but doesn't have enough proof to get a conviction. At the end of the day a donor has just as much right to pull or use any influence they have as this applicant has to attend a private conference. I've quite possibly never seen a more worthless piece of writing or topic. Although I'd have to go through the TC archives to be sure.
    - dkarl 16y ago
      And we have every right to draw conclusions about TED based on how they react to such pressure. (On a meta note, rights are a pathetic red herring pulled out when people don't want to defend something on other grounds. Should we refrain from criticizing anything unless we want to ban it? Should we refrain from praising anything unless we want to make it compulsory? If you condemn all criticism as a slippery slope towards taking away people's rights, we don't have much left to talk about.)
deleted 16y ago
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mquander 16y ago
I am so happy that I have helped make this post leave the front page.
kenjackson 16y ago
The fact that TED uninvited Sarah Lacey gives them a tad more credibility in my eyes.
- jmillikin 16y ago
  Sarah Lacey wrote the article. The person who was uninvited is unknown, as its name was redacted.
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bdhe 16y ago
Can someone explain how TED conferences work. Who decides the locations, dates, and the speakers?
- rdtsc 16y ago
  Apparently anyone who can spare $100K+/year ...
  - bdhe 16y ago
    I was looking for something more specific. What is Chris Anderson's role as the 'curator'?
StavrosK 16y ago
I don't get it. The post seems to imply that donor X banned person Y from TED, but didn't donor X put person Y in TED in the first place? He just withdrew his invitation, no?
- wmf 16y ago
  Perhaps person Y thought that once you're in, you're in. Apparently the little people are on perpetual probation at TED.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    I don't know if it's the "little people", but person Y knew that she was only going to TED because the donor had assigned a substitute. If the donor decided to go himself, or to send another substitute, why not? I don't see why person Y would assume the situation was permanent, when reading the one explanatory sentence person Y wrote immediately made me (an observer) understand otherwise.
- xiaoma 16y ago
  I don't get why people are upvoting this. Didn't anybody read the article? It clearly says that the donor made a call and requested that person Y be uninvited. It's also very clear that the donor was not involved in inviting the person to the 2011 conference. I sent a personal email to Chris Anderson, TED’s ‘curator,’ asking for an explanation. I got it. Here it is: I was uninvited to this year’s TED conference because the major TED donor I’ve referenced above and with whom, for reasons unknown, I have now not spoken to for more than two years (TED’s leadership tells me that this is because this person and I have had a ‘falling out’ of some kind) had seen my picture in the TED 2011 ‘Facebook.’ This person had called the conference organizers to express that my presence at the conference might result in this person feeling some ‘stress’ and – perhaps – not enjoying the conference as much as this person otherwise might.. Edit: No, it clearly wasn't just a matter of withdrawing sponsorship. It's right there two paragraphs further down the article. Please, just RTFA! The point is that TED’s leadership was unwilling to run the risk of one of their biggest donors feeling ‘stressed’ at TED
xiaoma 16y ago
That's definitely a bit creepy. It also goes a ways towards explaining the overall trend of the conference. When I found it in 2006, I absolutely loved TED. Nearly every talk was eye-opening and fascinating, from Ray Kurzweil to Juan Enriquez to Robert Wright to Hans Rosling, it was all awesome. Over time, I started seeing fewer eye-opening talks and more politically focused ones. Now, while I still regularly check TED, it's a very mixed bag. For quite a while I had thought it was an issue of the low-hanging fruit already having been plucked, but recently I've become less sure. This piece only adds to those doubts. If donors are calling all the shots, no wonder it's become driven by populist political causes and steeped in PC overtones.
- bdhe 16y ago
  > Over time, I started seeing fewer eye-opening talks and more politically focused ones. Now, while I still regularly check TED, it's a very mixed bag. Is that because eye-opening ideas and correspondingly talks don't come out as often as TED conferences are scheduled? Also, a lot of amazing insights only become insights years after the ideas are proposed and collectively understood by society.
kemiller 16y ago
The whole affair is reminding me of how Ivy League colleges (and Oxbridge) work. They used to be places where the privileged, moneyed elite could educate themselves in relative privacy, save for a few exceptional commoners allowed in on scholarship. Nowadays, the proportion of talented commoners to moneyed elite is considerably greater than it was even 100 years ago, but the basic principle remains: foster connections among the elites, and give them first crack at any emerging talent. This way anyone with a potentially destabilizing talent becomes attached to the existing power structure at an impressionable age. Better to invite them in and dilute the pool a bit than risk them draining it later. Any commoners who don't work out, they will drop without hesitation. I'm not saying this is evil. If you were among the elite, you'd probably do the same thing. And I also don't propose that this was all cooked in a room full of cackling conspirators rubbing their hands together. It's just the way a power structure works. From their point of view, I'm quite sure they see this as noblesse oblige: they're just reaching out, "giving back" and trying to help useful and interesting people succeed. But it nevertheless has embedded in it the idea that the most important part of success is meeting people who already have power. And as the complainant in the letter writes, it sounds like all the hoi polloi ("Group B") at TED actually buy into this as well. Maybe he should be working on something amazing instead of hoping Bill or Steve or Sergey notices him.
- forkandwait 16y ago
  New blood from the commoners actually helps sustain the system in two ways. (1) They usually don't dilute anything, but rather add talent and ambition. Remember -- they got their scholarship by being smart and hungry. If they adopt the norms of their new class and make a pile of bucks, why not let them marry your daughter and go to Nantucket with you. (2) They add plausible deniability to the class structure -- we can say "look, this kid from a middle class family in West Virgina made it, there's no such thing as class structure." (Or "Clarence Thomas made it -- don't tell me about systemic racism".)
- dlokshin 16y ago
  I'm the son of an immigrant, went to Harvard and have no idea what you're talking about concerning the Ivy League. Would you (or anyone who upvoted) care to explain?
PonyGumbo 16y ago
I produced for-profit conferences for years, including executive-level events. It's an invitation-only event. They have every right to do this.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  > If TED would just own up to being about making the wealthy, famous and powerful feel comfortable–like other high level affairs like Sun Valley or the World Economic Forum– I wouldn’t have an issue with it. Business conferences have good reasons to be elitist; deals are getting done and high-level conversations need to be private sometimes. > But when credentials are revoked at the last minute based purely on the whim of a more important member of the TED community, the inner workings are just too much like a country club for an organization whose stellar content is all about pluralism and uplift.
  - PonyGumbo 16y ago
    I read this too, but I don't understand how anyone could mistake a $6,000 invitation-only event for anything other than incredibly exclusive. To me, the letter just reads like sour grapes.
- xiaoma 16y ago
  Yes, they do. Reporters also have every right to call them out on it.
  - PonyGumbo 16y ago
    I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
- rhizome 16y ago
  Having a right and using it are two completely separate things. History is full of examples of people who had rights to do what they did (i.e. it was legal), but that they were aholes for actually doing it. Charlie Sheen has a right to speak his mind, for example.
rdtsc 16y ago
I think rich and powerful will always find subtle and less subtle ways to signal their status and power. Creating special clubs, with invite-only lists, and then exercise their power and influence in applying modifications to that list is one way to do it. - "Say John, how many people have you uninvited today?" - "Well, only 10. What about you?" - "Ha! I just booted 20 attendees whose haircuts I found deplorable. Then invited this one cousin of a friend who is a blogger and maybe he'll say something nice about me and TED to his online audience."
pedalpete 16y ago
This article is completely based on hearsay. I'd like to have seen the actual emails from TED, rather than just the authors translation/understanding of the responses. At the same time, I think the authors comments about Group A and Group B is a huge opportunity for another conference. He seems to think that all these 'group B' people are people who don't have anything interesting to say. How many people get up on stage at TED and make amazing presentations, and all of a sudden are then part of group A. The Group B's should be searching for other Group B's who have amazing stories and knowledge to share. That is why everybody is supposed to be at the conference. I've got a few friends who have an incredible nack for meeting ANYBODY and finding out something amazing about that person which adds to their understanding and appreciation about life. The Group A's are just Group B's that you already have some knowledge about.
cdibona 16y ago
So I have no clue about being uninvited from TED, but if you want to sit up front, there's plenty of opportunity to do so. I'm hardly an 'A' lister and I had no problem joining the scrum (which is everyone) at the rope to trot to the front rows for those sessions that I wanted to see closer. Mind you, I've only been to the one ted (2010) so maybe I'm not the big authority here, but I found 'A' people approachable and friendly and I'd say it was pretty great.
- wrs 16y ago
  I've been to many TEDs and can confirm: To sit in the first very few (3?) rows you have to be a Patron or whatever, but if you want to be in row 5 or so, you simply have to get in line 20 minutes early. (Kind of like the old Southwest Airlines system.) So I don't know what all that back-of-the-bus stuff was about. Oh wait...people who insist on typing on their computers during the talks are relegated to the "blogger zone" in the balcony. Maybe that's it.
  - cdibona 16y ago
    Was it like that last year ? I remember there were some speaker/reserved seats at stage right, but I wasn't actually aiming for the front row because that might introduce a crick in my neck :-) So I guess 'patron' rows would be possible. The shunting of those who want to blog/surf to the balconies was pretty nice for those who don't want the typey typey glowing screen distraction.
daimyoyo 16y ago
Before I make this comment, please understand that I've never been to a TED conference and am unlikely to go in the reasonably near future. Having said that what rational being would pay $6,000 to attend an event where he's treated like a second class citizen(I especially liked the "back of the bus" reference) and then next year reregisters for the same event?
- andybak 16y ago
  I read the article and was struck more by the difference between me and someone who would pay $6,000 to go to a conference than about the difference between Group A and Group B. GIve me $6,000 and I'm off on a round-the-world trip. I might take a few TED videos to watch on the way, though...
- ZachPruckowski 16y ago
  People tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive events. Being a member of Group B does give them a chance of getting a lucky meeting with some Group A luminary who can radically change their life. The problem is, there's a 0.1% chance of that, but they've thought about it enough and fantasized about it enough that they think their odds are considerably better - they think that by going to TED they've got a real shot at their dreams coming true.
stefanve 16y ago
do we know this story is true?, seems to be just a letter with no proof. or are there more people with similar experience?
protomyth 16y ago
I would really like to know what happened in the intervening year, but money does talk. It seems every group with any power has some perceptions that seem mean spirited or strange to the people they affect (ex. I got rejected from a summer internship because the high school I graduated from is in the same phone area code as the college I attended - like the rest of the state). Maybe the guy/girl did something wrong, or the patron thought they were acting out of their station by going without the patron's support. Scoble had an article not too long back on how SXSW was too big and needed to be cut down. I presume to the point that he started showing up. I remember in my early days thinking Gen-Con was cool up until the damn card people started showing up :). I think the really interesting thing is how to build a conference with better talks than TED, but not keep all the "commoners" out. Remember, Bill Gates wasn't "cool" many years ago. In a cynical moment, I wonder if it is possible to hold a conference that might inspire the next, unknown individuals or is it always going to slip into an "old boys" club patting themselves on the back.

113 points by ssclafani 16y ago

greattypo 16y ago

tl;dr TED donor doesn't like man; man has his registration to TED conference cancelled. Meh..

petercooper 16y ago
Skipping over the part about the segregation, priority seating, etc.
- joshu 16y ago
  Iirc only the front row or two are reserved, and it's for speakers and the major contributors. Everything else is random seating.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  So you're saying that it's newsworthy because they run it like a cinema where if you pay more you get a better seat?

ScottWhigham 16y ago

Just a rant, nothing more.

rexf 16y ago

Meatless TC post. TL;DR Redacted person invited to TED by donor. Whining. Next year, redacted kicked out of TED due to falling out with said donor. More whining.

tptacek 16y ago
I agree there's a strong whiff of sour grapes to this post, but, not having paid much attention to TED itself, I was unaware how cliquish it was. You have to "apply" to pay $6,000 to attend?
- bitwize 16y ago
  No. You have to "be nominated" to pay $6000 to attend.
dkarl 16y ago
If his story is true, he was sponsored by the donor the first time he attended. He applied to come back and was accepted on his own merits, and then he was blacklisted. I think it's newsworthy if TED, which is purportedly a forum for sharing ideas, lets donors blacklist attendees. The TED talks are just a highbrow facade for a get-together that is actually all about access. Access (and money) is how they lure the presenters that give some substance to the facade. Sarah Silverman showed that she did not understand the nature of the event; she did not appreciate the privilege of having access to rich and powerful people, and somebody took offense. Apparently this guy was also not sufficiently deferential to some powerful person, so he is not an appropriate attendee for an event that is all about being grateful for their presence. Group A, (the people everyone would love to meet), and Group B (the people who want to meet those people.) The people in Group B spend the entire TED conference running around with business cards, hoping for, you know, five seconds of face time with Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack, Cameron Diaz, or the like. This part makes Group B sound like a bunch of insufferable assholes (which may be partly true) but when you consider the nature of the event, Group A is almost literally asking for it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Apparently this guy was also not sufficiently deferential to some powerful person, so he is not an appropriate attendee for an event that is all about being grateful for their presence. You don't know what his relationship is. Maybe this donor thinks this person molested his daughter, but doesn't have enough proof to get a conviction. At the end of the day a donor has just as much right to pull or use any influence they have as this applicant has to attend a private conference. I've quite possibly never seen a more worthless piece of writing or topic. Although I'd have to go through the TC archives to be sure.
  - dkarl 16y ago
    And we have every right to draw conclusions about TED based on how they react to such pressure. (On a meta note, rights are a pathetic red herring pulled out when people don't want to defend something on other grounds. Should we refrain from criticizing anything unless we want to ban it? Should we refrain from praising anything unless we want to make it compulsory? If you condemn all criticism as a slippery slope towards taking away people's rights, we don't have much left to talk about.)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

mquander 16y ago

I am so happy that I have helped make this post leave the front page.

kenjackson 16y ago

The fact that TED uninvited Sarah Lacey gives them a tad more credibility in my eyes.

jmillikin 16y ago
Sarah Lacey wrote the article. The person who was uninvited is unknown, as its name was redacted.
- deleted 16y ago
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bdhe 16y ago

Can someone explain how TED conferences work. Who decides the locations, dates, and the speakers?

rdtsc 16y ago
Apparently anyone who can spare $100K+/year ...
- bdhe 16y ago
  I was looking for something more specific. What is Chris Anderson's role as the 'curator'?

StavrosK 16y ago

I don't get it. The post seems to imply that donor X banned person Y from TED, but didn't donor X put person Y in TED in the first place? He just withdrew his invitation, no?

wmf 16y ago
Perhaps person Y thought that once you're in, you're in. Apparently the little people are on perpetual probation at TED.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  I don't know if it's the "little people", but person Y knew that she was only going to TED because the donor had assigned a substitute. If the donor decided to go himself, or to send another substitute, why not? I don't see why person Y would assume the situation was permanent, when reading the one explanatory sentence person Y wrote immediately made me (an observer) understand otherwise.
xiaoma 16y ago
I don't get why people are upvoting this. Didn't anybody read the article? It clearly says that the donor made a call and requested that person Y be uninvited. It's also very clear that the donor was not involved in inviting the person to the 2011 conference. I sent a personal email to Chris Anderson, TED’s ‘curator,’ asking for an explanation. I got it. Here it is: I was uninvited to this year’s TED conference because the major TED donor I’ve referenced above and with whom, for reasons unknown, I have now not spoken to for more than two years (TED’s leadership tells me that this is because this person and I have had a ‘falling out’ of some kind) had seen my picture in the TED 2011 ‘Facebook.’ This person had called the conference organizers to express that my presence at the conference might result in this person feeling some ‘stress’ and – perhaps – not enjoying the conference as much as this person otherwise might.. Edit: No, it clearly wasn't just a matter of withdrawing sponsorship. It's right there two paragraphs further down the article. Please, just RTFA! The point is that TED’s leadership was unwilling to run the risk of one of their biggest donors feeling ‘stressed’ at TED

xiaoma 16y ago

That's definitely a bit creepy. It also goes a ways towards explaining the overall trend of the conference. When I found it in 2006, I absolutely loved TED. Nearly every talk was eye-opening and fascinating, from Ray Kurzweil to Juan Enriquez to Robert Wright to Hans Rosling, it was all awesome. Over time, I started seeing fewer eye-opening talks and more politically focused ones. Now, while I still regularly check TED, it's a very mixed bag. For quite a while I had thought it was an issue of the low-hanging fruit already having been plucked, but recently I've become less sure. This piece only adds to those doubts. If donors are calling all the shots, no wonder it's become driven by populist political causes and steeped in PC overtones.

bdhe 16y ago
> Over time, I started seeing fewer eye-opening talks and more politically focused ones. Now, while I still regularly check TED, it's a very mixed bag. Is that because eye-opening ideas and correspondingly talks don't come out as often as TED conferences are scheduled? Also, a lot of amazing insights only become insights years after the ideas are proposed and collectively understood by society.

kemiller 16y ago

The whole affair is reminding me of how Ivy League colleges (and Oxbridge) work. They used to be places where the privileged, moneyed elite could educate themselves in relative privacy, save for a few exceptional commoners allowed in on scholarship. Nowadays, the proportion of talented commoners to moneyed elite is considerably greater than it was even 100 years ago, but the basic principle remains: foster connections among the elites, and give them first crack at any emerging talent. This way anyone with a potentially destabilizing talent becomes attached to the existing power structure at an impressionable age. Better to invite them in and dilute the pool a bit than risk them draining it later. Any commoners who don't work out, they will drop without hesitation. I'm not saying this is evil. If you were among the elite, you'd probably do the same thing. And I also don't propose that this was all cooked in a room full of cackling conspirators rubbing their hands together. It's just the way a power structure works. From their point of view, I'm quite sure they see this as noblesse oblige: they're just reaching out, "giving back" and trying to help useful and interesting people succeed. But it nevertheless has embedded in it the idea that the most important part of success is meeting people who already have power. And as the complainant in the letter writes, it sounds like all the hoi polloi ("Group B") at TED actually buy into this as well. Maybe he should be working on something amazing instead of hoping Bill or Steve or Sergey notices him.

forkandwait 16y ago
New blood from the commoners actually helps sustain the system in two ways. (1) They usually don't dilute anything, but rather add talent and ambition. Remember -- they got their scholarship by being smart and hungry. If they adopt the norms of their new class and make a pile of bucks, why not let them marry your daughter and go to Nantucket with you. (2) They add plausible deniability to the class structure -- we can say "look, this kid from a middle class family in West Virgina made it, there's no such thing as class structure." (Or "Clarence Thomas made it -- don't tell me about systemic racism".)
dlokshin 16y ago
I'm the son of an immigrant, went to Harvard and have no idea what you're talking about concerning the Ivy League. Would you (or anyone who upvoted) care to explain?

PonyGumbo 16y ago

I produced for-profit conferences for years, including executive-level events. It's an invitation-only event. They have every right to do this.

steveklabnik 16y ago
> If TED would just own up to being about making the wealthy, famous and powerful feel comfortable–like other high level affairs like Sun Valley or the World Economic Forum– I wouldn’t have an issue with it. Business conferences have good reasons to be elitist; deals are getting done and high-level conversations need to be private sometimes. > But when credentials are revoked at the last minute based purely on the whim of a more important member of the TED community, the inner workings are just too much like a country club for an organization whose stellar content is all about pluralism and uplift.
- PonyGumbo 16y ago
  I read this too, but I don't understand how anyone could mistake a $6,000 invitation-only event for anything other than incredibly exclusive. To me, the letter just reads like sour grapes.
xiaoma 16y ago
Yes, they do. Reporters also have every right to call them out on it.
- PonyGumbo 16y ago
  I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
rhizome 16y ago
Having a right and using it are two completely separate things. History is full of examples of people who had rights to do what they did (i.e. it was legal), but that they were aholes for actually doing it. Charlie Sheen has a right to speak his mind, for example.

rdtsc 16y ago

I think rich and powerful will always find subtle and less subtle ways to signal their status and power. Creating special clubs, with invite-only lists, and then exercise their power and influence in applying modifications to that list is one way to do it. - "Say John, how many people have you uninvited today?" - "Well, only 10. What about you?" - "Ha! I just booted 20 attendees whose haircuts I found deplorable. Then invited this one cousin of a friend who is a blogger and maybe he'll say something nice about me and TED to his online audience."

pedalpete 16y ago

This article is completely based on hearsay. I'd like to have seen the actual emails from TED, rather than just the authors translation/understanding of the responses. At the same time, I think the authors comments about Group A and Group B is a huge opportunity for another conference. He seems to think that all these 'group B' people are people who don't have anything interesting to say. How many people get up on stage at TED and make amazing presentations, and all of a sudden are then part of group A. The Group B's should be searching for other Group B's who have amazing stories and knowledge to share. That is why everybody is supposed to be at the conference. I've got a few friends who have an incredible nack for meeting ANYBODY and finding out something amazing about that person which adds to their understanding and appreciation about life. The Group A's are just Group B's that you already have some knowledge about.

cdibona 16y ago

So I have no clue about being uninvited from TED, but if you want to sit up front, there's plenty of opportunity to do so. I'm hardly an 'A' lister and I had no problem joining the scrum (which is everyone) at the rope to trot to the front rows for those sessions that I wanted to see closer. Mind you, I've only been to the one ted (2010) so maybe I'm not the big authority here, but I found 'A' people approachable and friendly and I'd say it was pretty great.

wrs 16y ago
I've been to many TEDs and can confirm: To sit in the first very few (3?) rows you have to be a Patron or whatever, but if you want to be in row 5 or so, you simply have to get in line 20 minutes early. (Kind of like the old Southwest Airlines system.) So I don't know what all that back-of-the-bus stuff was about. Oh wait...people who insist on typing on their computers during the talks are relegated to the "blogger zone" in the balcony. Maybe that's it.
- cdibona 16y ago
  Was it like that last year ? I remember there were some speaker/reserved seats at stage right, but I wasn't actually aiming for the front row because that might introduce a crick in my neck :-) So I guess 'patron' rows would be possible. The shunting of those who want to blog/surf to the balconies was pretty nice for those who don't want the typey typey glowing screen distraction.

daimyoyo 16y ago

Before I make this comment, please understand that I've never been to a TED conference and am unlikely to go in the reasonably near future. Having said that what rational being would pay $6,000 to attend an event where he's treated like a second class citizen(I especially liked the "back of the bus" reference) and then next year reregisters for the same event?

andybak 16y ago
I read the article and was struck more by the difference between me and someone who would pay $6,000 to go to a conference than about the difference between Group A and Group B. GIve me $6,000 and I'm off on a round-the-world trip. I might take a few TED videos to watch on the way, though...
ZachPruckowski 16y ago
People tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive events. Being a member of Group B does give them a chance of getting a lucky meeting with some Group A luminary who can radically change their life. The problem is, there's a 0.1% chance of that, but they've thought about it enough and fantasized about it enough that they think their odds are considerably better - they think that by going to TED they've got a real shot at their dreams coming true.

stefanve 16y ago

do we know this story is true?, seems to be just a letter with no proof. or are there more people with similar experience?

protomyth 16y ago

I would really like to know what happened in the intervening year, but money does talk. It seems every group with any power has some perceptions that seem mean spirited or strange to the people they affect (ex. I got rejected from a summer internship because the high school I graduated from is in the same phone area code as the college I attended - like the rest of the state). Maybe the guy/girl did something wrong, or the patron thought they were acting out of their station by going without the patron's support. Scoble had an article not too long back on how SXSW was too big and needed to be cut down. I presume to the point that he started showing up. I remember in my early days thinking Gen-Con was cool up until the damn card people started showing up :). I think the really interesting thing is how to build a conference with better talks than TED, but not keep all the "commoners" out. Remember, Bill Gates wasn't "cool" many years ago. In a cynical moment, I wonder if it is possible to hold a conference that might inspire the next, unknown individuals or is it always going to slip into an "old boys" club patting themselves on the back.