See a TED talk

“It felt like coming home, even though it was my first TED conference — 500 people that are as excited about meeting you as you are about meeting them. Watching TED Talks at home is awesome, watching the four-day webcast of TEDGlobal was already transformative, but engaging in a crowd of like-minded people, watching talks, talking about them and life in general is an entirely different experience that I find hard to put into words. The best way to describe it is maybe the difference between listening to your favorite song at home alone and going to a four-day music festival with your best friends.”

“For me, the experience was just beyond what words can describe. All those big adjectives are absolutely correct but still far from enough. TED is nothing like your ordinary conference. The experience of TED actually started months before the “conference” took place with email, the TED Blog and the TED Bookclub to help you prepare and get in the mood for the big event. Also, TED community tools for the attendees (the Google group and Twitter list) help you reach out and connect with people even before you meet. It’s also about the energy in the atmosphere — a typical day at TEDActive literally starts at 7 am and lasts all the way till midnight, non-stopping. People slept very little during the whole conference, yet everyone looked full of energy and nobody fell asleep in the middle of a talk.”

“I was wrong about TED. In a big way. … Not only did I find TED to be an exceptional event attended by remarkable people … on several occasions, listening to some of the scientists and technologists who were presenting talks about their work, I was actually moved to near tears. Actually it was more like an existential gut punch.”