No, not TED the airline. TED, the Technology, Entertainment & Design conference … an annual talkfest in Monterey. A little bit of history, from the TED site:

TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first TED included the public unveiling of the Macintosh computer and the Sony compact disc, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractals and AI guru Marvin Minsky outlined his powerful new model of the mind. Several influential members of the burgeoning ‘digerati’ community were also there, including Nicholas Negroponte and Stewart Brand.

But despite the stellar line-up, the event lost money, and it was six years before Wurman and his partner Harry Marks tried again. This time the numbers worked. TED has been held regularly in Monterey, California, ever since, attracting a growing and influential audience from many different disciplines united by their curiosity, open-mindedness, a desire to think outside the box… and by the sense of community arising from their shared discovery of an exciting secret. (TED has never had an advertising budget or a PR campaign.)

Streaming video of the TED 2006 talks is now on line. Two that I’ve watched, and enjoyed greatly:

• David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for the New York Times. It has some wonderful satirical songs, as well as some great computer interface design insights.
• Sir Ken Robinson, the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning To Be Creative. He talks about the complex (and often frustrating) relationship between creativity and education.  A quotation: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

Watch ‘em, if you have some web time to burn. Or even if you don’t.