California’s annual conference on technology, entertainment and design (TED) is coming to Oxford in July. The platform has built a global following by making some of the best presentations available for free online, such as Alex Tabarrok on how ideas trump crises, Ray Anderson on the business logic of sustainability and Charles Leadbeater on innovation.
The Oxford line-up includes business author Daniel Pink, star designer Stefan Sagmeister and best-selling author Naomi Klein.
The lecture rota will also include a handful of Londoners who are working on big ideas that could inspire entrepreneurs across the globe.
Lewis Pugh, a London-based arctic explorer, long-distance swimmer and environmentalist is one who will take the stage.
He has spent much of his life campaigning for sustainability and wants to use his lecture slot “to completely shift the mind-sets of the attendees to believing that we can solve climate change.”
Another Londoner who will speak is Dr Rachel Armstrong, a GP, science-fiction writer, multi-media producer and research fellow at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. Since May, she is also a TEDGlobal fellow.
“My personal vision is a new way of thinking about how we generate truly sustainable cities,” she says.
Dr Armstrong has long been working on the development of futuristic architectural solutions involving “metabolic materials” and “living technology”. Some of her work reads like excerpts from one of her sci-fi novels.
She wants to use her presentation to spread the idea of “growing a limestone reef under Venice, using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that has been 'fixed' into a solid form using 'metabolic materials'.”
These materials could become available in just a few years, she says.
“London is one of those cities, like New York, that is such a hub of innovation so Londoners have something special to contribute to the conference.”
London-based advertising guru Rory Sutherland, plans to keep his speech simple:
“I want to make one very simple point - one in favour of advertising over compulsion.”
He also thinks TEDGlobal will have a positive influence on London.
“My hope for the next decade is that we shall see a recovery in London's intellectual life,” he says.
“My complaint about London until recently was that it was becoming boring because there was an assumption that its only destiny was to become a vast financial centre and nothing else - a kind of Frankfurt on steroids.”
The conference’s cross-disciplinary and informal approach makes thinking about the world’s biggest problems seem like fun – not to mention a great source of business ideas and contacts.
“TED is an ideal environment for the entrepreneur who would be encouraged to tell others their ideas as opposed to keeping them close to their chests as everyone at TED will have a 'great' idea,” says Dr Armstrong.
At £2,771 , the ticket price will stop most of London from hopping on the train to see presentations on potential solutions to the world’s biggest problems.
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