The tradition of Barcamps is not very old. The idea of course, is. Some of you might remember the upcoming of TED in 1984. TEDTED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences curated by the American private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading". Since June 2006, the talks have been offered for free viewing online, under a Creative Commons license, through ... stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. „The power of the spreading of ideas“ led this initiative. The talks are inspired by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers and to my mind this is the nicest way to kind of relax during a Semantic-Web-Business-Day.

„Today, TED is therefore best thought of as a global community. It’s a community welcoming people from every discipline and culture who have just two things in common: they seek a deeper understanding of the world, and they hope to turn that understanding into a better future for us all.“ [Source]

Not only is it sine qua non to regularly get one’s inspiration from charismatic people or events in a creative environment like the web’s future – but it’s also very nice for networking. So – don’t forget to let some more entertainment into your everyday-lives instead of concentrating exclusively on the very crucial technological issues. And, certainly: Keep spreading your ideas.

Read (and write) more on TED Blog: mfb

Author: Marion Fugléwicz-Bren