TED (conference)

TED Conferences, LLC, which stands for "Technology, Entertainment, and Design," is a media company based in the United States and Canada that publishes presentations online and makes them available for free distribution under the motto "ideas worth sharing." Richard Saul Wurman was the brain behind the idea for TED, and he and Harry Marks started it off as a conference back in February of 1984. Since 1990, it has been done so on a yearly basis. The early focus of TED was on technology and design, which was appropriate given the organization's roots in Silicon Valley. Since then, it has widened its scope to include discussions on a variety of scientific, cultural, political, and humanitarian subjects in addition to academic ones. Since July 2019, a British-American businessman named Chris Anderson has been serving as the event's curator on behalf of the charitable organisation known as TED (originally by the non-profit Sapling Foundation).

The Vancouver Convention Centre is the location of the annual TED Conference, which takes place in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the country of Canada. Before 2014, the conference was regularly held in Long Beach, which is located in the state of California, in the United States. TED events are hosted not just in North America but also in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and live streaming of the speeches is available in all of these locations. Using narratives as their primary method, they discuss a diverse variety of issues pertaining to the study and application of scientific and cultural principles. The time limit for each speaker's presentation is set at a maximum of 18 minutes, during which they are expected to deliver their views in the most creative and interesting methods possible.

Through TED.com, TED Talks have been made available for free viewing online since June 2006, and are distributed under a Creative Commons licence that requires attribution, prohibits commercial use, and prohibits derivative works. By the end of the year 2020, more than 3,500 TED Talks will be publicly accessible on the internet. As of June 2011, the total number of times TED Talks had been seen globally had surpassed 500 million; as of November 2012, the number of times TED Talks had been viewed had surpassed one billion. While TED Talks may be seen online at no cost for the purpose of individual education, the distribution of TED material in professional settings (for instance, in the context of corporate learning and talent development) needs a licence.