Christopher Herot's Weblog

TEDxBoston

One of the more remarkable aspects of the TED is its transformation from an obscure conference to a global exchange of ideas. The most recent manifestation of this phenomenon is TEDx, a program that licenses the TED name and content to independently produced events all over the world. The format includes a visit (in person or on pre-recorded video) by TED Curator Chris Anderson, some videos of talks from the annual TED Conference, and locally-produced talks that can be on any topic but are usually as thought-provoking as anything at TED.  The audience usually includes a handful of people who have participated in the annual conference, but the majority are people who form part of the larger community of people who have been watching the TED Talks on video and the Internet.

Boston had its first TEDx event this week and I will have to say it lived up to the high standards set by TED for content, logistics, and even refreshments.  TEDxBoston was organized by Sean Belka and Danielle Duplin of Fidelity and Matt Saiia of Collective Next, with Fidelity providing the venue. Belka is a veteran of many TEDs and Duplin organizes similar events for Fidelity's internal consumption. Within walking distance of the site of the Boston Tea Party, they put on a program of "Revolutionary Ideas" that included talks about putting together art and science in the service of innovation and bringing those benefits to parts of the planet as diverse as the developing world abroad and an aging population at home.

The talks were uniformly good and are described in detail on the TED Blog, but a few that were particularly memorable were:

• David Edwards of Le Laboratoire, describing experiments bringing together artists and scientists to catalyze innovation,
• George Whitesides showing very inexpensive medical diagnostics tools made out of paper, and
• Melissa Withers on rethinking how we take care of our oldest citizens.  

There was one place where TEDxBoston surpassed the annual TED Conference, which was Benjamin Zander conducting the Youth Orchestra of the Americas in a performance of selections from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. While the TED attendees saw orchestra playing on video, TEDxBoston set up the orchestra itself in the lobby of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology and played live to a standing ovation in a memorable closing to the event.

 

More photos here.

Live by Free, Die by Free?

There is a spirited debate going on over at Mark Cuban's blog about the risks of a "free" strategy, a topic that's been in the news lately thanks to Chris Anderson's new book (which you can read for free at Scribd.)

Cuban's argument is not really just about free. It's about the dangers of becoming so successful and bloated that a company becomes vulnerable to a competitor who offers an even better product for free.  Cuban points out that "free" is often about amassing a large audience, which leads to big egos and an (erroneous) feeling of invulnerability. The situation is even more perilous when such scale is financed by seemingly endless piles of capital - capital that can dry up when an even more exciting company shows up with an even larger budget.

There are a lot of interesting comments in the article, but the one I agreed with most pointed out that "free" is a tool, not a strategy.  It can be an excellent tool for disrupting the market and acquiring an audience, but if it can't be the sum total of your strategy. After all, a competitor can underprice "free" by paying people to use his product.