Because I arrived early I subscribed for one of the pre-conference safari rides (great opportunity to meet new people. If you ever go to TED, be sure to be a day early and catch one of those trips. Don’t fall for the “you should not wear flip flops because of the scorpions”, we did not see any scorpions, snakes or any other animal that tried to attack us). The next day the conference started and it was great. During one of our many “pool party’s” which are excellent events to meet new people and share ideas, people started asking me what the difference was between the ‘main thing’ at Long Beach and the experience at Palm Springs. So for people that want to attend TED but are unable to decide to which location to apply for I’ve created a summary of the differences that came across. Please note that this is the way I’ve experienced it, and that I might differ a lot from other experiences.

Ted@Longbeach is the main thing therefore most of the ‘big’ speakers are in that location and when they are speaking you’re actually there to experience it. No matter how much effort goes into the experience being shared with Palm Springs (and the TED crew do put in a lot of effort, more on that later) nothing beats being in the same room as the speaker / performer. But.. imagine 10 different kind of couches, seats and ‘beds’, high quality screens and a HD satellite uplink from Long Beach. Meanwhile a continuous supply of food and beverages (we should have one of those Google Café’s in our office) keeps you from getting hungry or thirsty. I’m not sure about the actual location (since I’ve not been at Long Beach) but the Riviera at Palm Springs is very nice. Though some of the other TEDsters and myself were thinking of joining the pool pleasure while attending the conference; what about screens at the pool?

The biggest difference between PS and LB are the TEDsters themselves (assuming the people at LB are similar as in Monterey). Among the LBTedsters are speakers, philanthropist and famous actors / artist. People that are well accomplished in life and (generally speaking) very set on their goals and purposes. Events and chats amongst attendees are somewhat more formal. Ideas need to be well considered and talked about but as soon as people are motivated they’re willing to put in a lot of energy. At PS the ambiance is much less formal. Many people show up after the conference at the local pool parties, discussions are very energetic and everybody gets involved. Friendships are being formed easily and just after a day most people know each other (this is of course also because PS only has 400 people while LB has over 1200).

To summarize, I think idea creativity (thinking of new ideas and have your ideas tested) is something that happens a little more with the people at PS while the folks at LB (again all in general) are more about the actual implementation and possibilities. If you ever get the chance of visiting TED, apply to Palm Springs the first year. Gather ideas and meet (new) people to test and elaborate on them. Then apply for Long Beach to get your idea going. Either way, it’s not an experience you’d want to miss!

Below is the footage i’ve shot from that day. It’s a bit crappy, i’ve got Final Cut Express on my laptop, and my laptop has only 120gig of diskspace. Since the content is in 1080i HD format, this is both nearly enough on the cpu/memory and diskspace side. I’ve shot all of it on my Sony TG3E. Have Fun!

Update: It seems Vimeo won’t allow embedded HD. So you should see the video here (which is the HD version).

Anyways, we’re doing some monitoring of our own using the Sony TG3E (for high definition imaging) and the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA65 for outdoor imaging (SD). Below is our first clip @ 18:05 Florida time. Stay with us as this story develops further.

FYI: Since i get airsick easily eating on a plane is not my favorite thing to do. So that’s why i do not like those specially created Chef’s dinners with all the fancy cooking stuff. I love this in a restaurant but that’s because in a restaurant it is served fresh. At a plane, it needs to be conserved which kills the taste and makes everything smell like catfood (sometimes it tastes like that too). Pizza was invented for this reason, that’s why Delta is my friend. You might wonder how Singapore Airline fixed this for me? Well, i told them i didn’t wanted the food and after telling the reason why they made me a fresh salmon sandwhich (they had a chef cooking for the people in first class). This is how you make friends

So, back to Florida. We’re in a wonderful house, so wonderful in fact that i didn’t want to keep it from the world so below is a video of the whole place (the video is in Dutch).

Update: I’m putting on a new version of the video, this one doesn’t look to good and has trouble running smoothly. Probably because of the high resolution original. I’m putting up a downscaled one right now.

One thing is very important to mention, since i don’t want other people to have this same problem. THE HILTON HOTEL IN BRIGHTON IS THE WORST HOTEL IN THE WORLD. Everything is dirty, rooms are extremely small. I’m not kidding, i’ve been to a lot of hotels and hostels and even the worst hostels in the smallest an dirtiest villages in Australia didn’t even come close to this hotel. The even worst part is still to come, we had to pay 130 pounds per night per room!! Don’t EVER go there, not only will you be very dissapointed, you’ll also be ripped of. To make my point I included some pictures of my room below.

So, we got there. There was a very fishy smell and the whale looked kind of real. Since we didn’t have anything to compare to (it was our first dead whale on the beach moment) we figured it was probably real.

Back at the office, Marloes started searching online and as it turned out, the whale was an art project from some Belgium guy who wanted to see how many people would think it would be real. A little to morbid for my taste.

You can check out some more pictures at my flickr account.

Update: Arghhh.. why did they pick this frame as startframe?!!!