This book includes a plain text version that is designed for high accessibility. To use this version please follow this link.
ONE ON ONE WITH RICHARD SAUL WURMAN


Herbie Hancock. That tells you who’s going to be coming to this meeting. It’s allowed me to go very top-drawer, but also avoid politicians and avoid CEOs.


How did you come to create the TED conference? I was traveling a lot then, and it occurred to me that the only interesting people I was talking to were people in the technology business, the entertainment industry, and the design profession. I was a designer, and it seemed to me that when they were talking about some project that they were doing that was interesting to me, they unbeknown to themselves were involving the other two disciplines. And they didn’t understand at that time — it’s old news now, because everyone understands this, but then they didn’t — they did not understand the convergence of the technology business, the entertainment industry, and the design profession. They really thought of them as three separate entities. It was siloed. So I thought, I’ll call it TED and give away Teddy bears


and get these people together. It was quite a good conference. I couldn’t get people to come, and lost money. And then I waited a while and did it again, because people started asking me to and chatting about how good a conference it was. But


I waited quite a while. And then I did it again and then it was always sold. And I never advertised it and never announced it. I don’t have that luxury now. When you start something


from zero, like WWW, and when you’re an old guy like me, I have to announce what I’m doing. Everyone is saying they want to be there, but I’m not selling tickets. Nobody’s coming except the presenters. It’s not even invitation-only. I never had an invitation event. TED as an invitation event was done by the people who bought it. It was never invitation; first-come who sent their money got in, period. It was never an exclusive event. It just is now.


Did you cap TED’s attendance at a certain point? For four or five years, I kept it at what the auditorium would hold, which was 500. I sold 550 seats, because there was always 10 percent of the people wandering off. And then, downstairs in the same building there was a large exhibition space, so I decided I would try an experiment — out of avarice and greed — to say that if you couldn’t get in, because there was such a demand to come, that you could come and when there were seats empty in the main room you could sit in there, but otherwise there was going to be a simulcast room with


BEST IN SHOW: The first meeting that Wurman chaired was the International Design Conference in As- pen (IDCA), in 1972. “It was supposed to be at that time — and I think it was — the best conference in the world,” he said. “It was that way before me and after me; I didn’t make it the best conference in the world.”


88


pcma convene September 2011


www.pcma.org





IMAGES LEFT AND RIGHT COURTESY OF ADAMSMORIOKA ARCHIVES VAULT, AIGA, NEW YORK CITY


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108