Chris Anderson: We are 10 days away or so from the 40-year anniversary of TED's founding. 40 years! Unbelievable. And today we get to listen to the man who really has been the driver of TED for the whole first part of that voyage, an amazing man. Please welcome the incomparable Richard Saul Wurman.
Richard Saul Wurman: Thank you, Chris. That's the first time I ever heard you say that.
CA: (Laughs) Ricky, it's great to have you here. Thank you so much, for so much. Gosh, where to start? I think I would love to hear a bit about your story before TED was even a glimmer in your mind. Who are you? How did you become this information architect that conceived of this conference?
RSW: I had the realization that there was two kinds of people, vertical and horizontal people. And success, in terms of money, power, fame, getting better at a certain task -- painting, sculpture, playing the cello, being a magician -- comes from doing that one thing better and better and better through your life. And you are, if you have the right PR or you just stand out yourself, you gain success in that profession and in society. And my attention span points to horizontality. I'm just as interested when I walk down the street in what's left and what's right, and the sign over there. And that horizontality is a life devoted to seeing patterns. And every meeting that I went, every gathering I went to, if it was eye, ear, nose and throat specialists, it was on the road to becoming a nose specialist and then one nostril. The whole society was being focused and still is, in many ways, most gatherings are about one thing, and people talk to each other about the one thing they can talk to each other about. And part of it is getting a job or selling a paper or getting a grant within that one specialty. And that's good. This is not a pejorative. This is an observation of one of the ways, the major way the world turns.
But when I went to the University of Pennsylvania in architecture, I got a special deal with the dean that I could take as many courses as I wanted as long as I kept a very high average. And so I was in class, every day, every night, taking very odd courses, inside painting and snuff bottles and Japanese swords and integration technology and ethnology and things on illuminated manuscripts and painting and history of astronomy. And I realized that I didn't take notes because I had no time to study, that I engineered reverse-engineering, that you take notes, not to take notes, you take notes so you can study them. To pass the test. That all the educational system was about taking a test. And my learning was about my memory. So I learned to listen. And I see and visualize patterns between things.
CA: And so although Ricky, you qualified as an architect and worked as an architect, but how long was it before you really thought of yourself and described yourself as an “information architect?”
RSW: I graduated in 1958/9 with a master's degree. And I was an assistant professor of architecture. And the first book I did was when I was 26 years old, and it was a book of comparative maps of 50 cities in the world. And that was my first book, was information architecture. Because the comparative analysis of things was the systemic way of showing maps to the same scale, which people basically don't ever do now. If you look at the road atlases, every map on every page is a different scale. So I would say when I was 26.
CA: And even from those early days, it feels like you had this obsession with just what it is to explain something. You know, how you make information interesting and useful. And it sounds like that came precisely because you were willing to go broad. You were willing not just to look at a thing in itself but how it connected, how the dots connected.
RSW: Well, I don't like to fail, but I was willing to fail, and I embrace it so I see what doesn’t work and what I can't understand. So yes, explaining is a key word, but we've never explained how do you explain things. And we don't understand how we understand things. They're very simple. And when we ask a question, most of the word is “quest.” There’s no “quest” in the question. We ask lousy questions. And information, most of the word is “inform,” and most information is data, doesn't inform. I'm talking dumb words now, Chris. These are simple words: memory, memorize, understand, understand, explain, explain. They're all simple: quest -- question inform -- information.
CA: Well I'm going to come back to some of those questions at the end because I would love to know what you would say now about understanding understanding. But before then, talk about, like, you started to get very involved in conferences. There was a big conference that you were involved with before TED. Talk about that.
RSW: Yes, I was a little schlepper in Philadelphia, and I'd done, with my partner, Al Levy, I'd done a book called “Our Man-made Environment” for kids. And had a nonprofit called GEE, Group for Environmental Education, GEE! And TIME Magazine, which was important then, TIME Magazine was the record of the week in the world that you believed, if it got into TIME Magazine. They did a big story on this book. I mean, we were just schleppers, a little teeny office in Philadelphia, architectural practice, Murphy, Levi, Wurman, MLW. And it was picked up and the people from Aspen from the International Design Conference in Aspen, asked my partner and myself, Al and myself, to come out and speak. He got ill. And this was one of the big moments in my life. I went out and I worked my -- I just, I gave a speech. I think it's the last speech I worked out and wrote before I gave it. In fact, it's the one and only, but I had it down and I gave it. I don't know if the audience liked it so much, but some of the board liked it because it was complex. It was very dense because I was trying to -- I was ambitious, I really was ambitious. And the board was the stars of the design world, the stars. And at the end of the speech, somebody came up to me from the board and said, "That was a very good speech," and very soon, I was in my 30s, I was the youngest person, they put me on the board before the conference was over. And before the year was out, and this was in June, before the year was out, I was asked to do the conference after the next one.
So in '70 I was put on the board. ’72 -- they already had the person chosen for ’71 -- '72, I did a conference there for 1,200 people called the Invisible City, and when you did a conference there, it was not funded, hardly funded at all. And you were God, you're, you know, it's nice to be king. I was in charge of the whole thing. And at that conference, Lou Kahn came and talked, incredible people came, and I learned how to fail and how to have things work. And I learned that you can't go to school for this, but that I felt really comfortable being on stage. In fact, I was more comfortable being on stage than in the audience. Because I was seeing things were going wrong when I was in the audience and onstage, it was my mistake, and I enjoyed that. I knew I could do it better. So that was it and it was the best conference in the world, not mine. The National Design Conference, which was in Aspen, and the whole town was, the Aspen Institute was connected to it, and it was, 1,200 people came from around the world.
My partner in my guidebook company, I had a guidebook company called Access Press, and it was on the process of doing guides to 22 cities around the world. So I had that. And around the corner from me was a gentleman by the name of Harry Marks. The CEO of CBS was Frank Stanton. So Harry had never met Frank, and his eyes were wide open because he was such a big deal. But we were in California, and Harry and I were talking, and Harry wanted to do something because he was tired of what he was doing in television, which was doing ads for television programs on television networks. He invented this idea. And he said he knew I did the Aspen conference. Why don’t I invent a conference, and we’ll go into business together. So I got Frank to give me 10,000 dollars, Harry to give me 10,000 dollars, they both had money. I put in 10,000 dollars, I didn't have any money. And we were going to do this conference. But we signed a paper, and this is how close TED came to not happening, we signed a paper, quite clear, because Frank did not want to be attached to any failure. He was failure adverse, as sometimes top executives are. And Harry was just a little nervous of that. And I was a loose cannon, as you know. And we signed a paper that if we didn't have X number of people signed up by December, we’d give the money back, and we wouldn’t do it. And so I was unethical. I was a liar. I broke that commitment. Neither one of them ever forgave me. And they have a right not to forgive me because I was not -- I broke my word.
But by that time, my assistant Janet Smith and I went down all the numbers and it showed that with the number of people who were signed up, and if we sell the rest of the tickets at 100 dollars each -- was 395 -- we sold them for 100 bucks, we could not break even, but we would lose less than if we canceled it now. And we'd even have to shell out more money because we had rented the room and rented the hotels and committed to things. So I went ahead and basically, the two of them never talked to me again. Frank broke off his relationship as partner of my guidebook company, more or less. And Harry didn't talk except six years later. The first one was so good. Because we did it '84, this is now 1989, Harry comes and says so many people have told him to do it again.
CA: Alright, so he was ready to talk to you then. But before we go there, I want to go back to this first one and where the insight came from that there might be synergy between technology, entertainment and design?
I mean, look, this was the year -- RSW: You’re going to make me say it: the conference is not about the audience. I don't care about synergy or about transforming the audience. I don't care about getting letters in, I don't care about rah rah rah. What I cared about was pleasing myself. I invited the people I wanted to hear from. It worked. The whole measure is me. These were interesting people to me, that most of them I hadn’t met, but calling them on the phone and appealing to their ego and the fact that some of them I knew, and if they were coming, other people would come.
CA: Right. Before you could invite them, you had to invite them to something. And what you invited them to was this weird conference that was these three industries coming together. Did that just emerge from the discussions between the three of you that you were all kind of, from those three industries in some way? And so you thought, you know what? We could pull these things together. Who thought TED, T-E-D? How did that happen?
RSW: I did that. I think up names for things. The logo that you now have, I hand drew. That's not a typeface. I drew that logo.
CA: Well, thank you.
RSW: You're welcome.
CA: But why, who thought that technology, entertainment and design, as opposed to, say, software, architecture, there are many other ways that you could have combined. Why these three industries as the heart of something special?
RSW: Chris, you tell me a better three things, and I will do it next time. That turned out to be OK. That's all.
CA: I mean, it turned out to be amazing. 1984 was the year that the Apple Mac was created. It was the year you had --
RSW: The Mac was shown there for the first time. You could touch it. It was announced a month before, but the real ones, the people in the audience could touch. Mickey Schulhof could give away shiny little mirrors, and nobody had a CD player. I just happened to --
CA: Right. But so like, right at that time, so a CD, you know, it’s technology, it’s entertainment and design, that it must have felt like an aha moment to a bunch of people then that, gosh, there really is this connectivity. And I just think it's beautiful how that happened. And tell me this, Richard, even from the start --
RSW: The name, the E is the one that many people, you know, to you, say, "Oh, it's technology, education, design." And it's my way of being for entertainment, being understandable, ways of pulling you into understanding as opposed to the educational system. Design is what I was, and technology was out there. It’s a pretty dumb thing: technology, entertainment, design.
CA: Sir Ken Robinson himself said that when you reveal that you're in education, everyone runs away from you at parties. It's OK.
But I mean, it worked out incredibly well. And I'm curious about like, did it happen that from the first conference that because people weren't just talking to their own industry, that they made an extra effort to have their words accessible to a general audience? Was that something you insisted on? Did it just happen? How did that happen? How did that turn out?
RSW: Build the ball field, they'll come. You set up a situation where you gave people permission to talk to other people, and they get in touch with their curiosity. The people I invited, they had a filter of people I knew who were curious. They were open. The people in the audience who came were curious because they heard about it, and they wanted to know what the hell I was doing. So I mean, I wasn't invisible at that point, and Frank Stanton was not invisible at that point. So they had a little trust, that was all. It wasn't so planned. It was just trying to do good work. That's all, it was not, I don't -- I can't write a doctoral dissertation on the planning of what I did. I just did something that felt good. And it was good.
CA: If people do want to get a flavor of that first conference, there's actually a talk online by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Lab.
RSW: He announced it at that conference. He got up and he said, "I'm closing the architecture machine and opening, you know, the MIT Media Lab. And he was codirector with the president of MIT.
CA: He gave quite a long talk, longer than most TED Talks would be now, and made some predictions that have actually held up pretty well.
RSW: If somebody kept on talking, it was good, I let them. But basically, it was supposed to be under 20 minutes.
CA: So that first one, only a few hundred people showed up, less than you hoped for. And you lost money. You each lost 7,000 dollars, I think you told me, of your 10. Each. And so TED didn't then happen for another five or six years until --
RSW: I wasn't going to do it again. I didn't want to do it, that was it. I tried that and it was good, but I was on to other things, and I was trying to make a living because I was not in good shape, you know, financially.
CA: So Harry Marks came to you in '89 and said, "Actually, it was a commercial failure, but people loved it. How about it? Maybe the time is better now." How did he persuade you?
RSW: This time, I wrote a letter you couldn’t get out of, that said if we don’t have enough money by a certain date, I can't afford to lose any money. So I did something which was radically different than the lie, breaking a contract the first time. But then it filled up, and it filled up from then on in. But Harry didn't like working with me, and after that conference, he says, "I just want out. I can't, I don't want to do this." And we didn't argue, we just didn't get along. We just didn't get along.
CA: You bought him out for a dollar, right?
RSW: He wanted a dollar so it was legal. So he wrote the contract, and he asked for a dollar, and I kept it. And there was never any problems about that afterwards.
CA: And so you then held TED every year in Monterey, California. And there was this just growing buzz. I mean, that was the '90s when there was just this growing sense of optimism and excitement about technology and everything it was connected to. I mean, talk about some of those early years, Richard, was there a moment when you just, "Oh my goodness, this thing is going to be amazing. This is more amazing than I know." What really got you excited in some of those early years?
RSW: It just changed my life. It just absolutely changed my life. And it changed the life of many people who were there, and it created circles in their lives. And there was not one person but even today, people said that the friends they have now are dominated by the friends they met at TED. It changed people’s acceptance of things outside of their circle and changed their businesses and expanded their feelings that they touched other things. And I wasn't trying to do that. It just did that. It just did that.
CA: There's a lot of people listening here who are interested in events, and I think would love to tap into your wisdom about what it was that made it special. You were a very unusual and remarkable host. You sat on the stage while the speaker was speaking. You were unafraid to cut them off if they were getting boring. Like your client, as it were, was the audience, not the speaker. Or maybe the client was just your own interest and that that was a proxy for audience interest. What was it that made this thing become so special?
RSW: It was human, that's all. There was no lectern. So you couldn't read a speech. I curated it by asking -- not always done, not every speech was wonderful, but the best were wonderful -- and I asked people to say something they hadn't said before. And ... I wasn't interested in good speakers, I was interested in good conversations. I was interested in seeing things before other people saw them. I would interrupt some speakers if I didn't understand something. So I was, in that sense, I curated for the audience, I was their conscience. And I think it was joyful, between the animal acts. I had animal acts because I always wanted to have animal acts. I mean in that sense, I was a pig in shit, I loved being there.
CA: You were the ringmaster.
RSW: Well, I enjoyed it as much as I hope when you were there, and you said you started coming in '98. Did you know I was having a good time there? It was not painful. I mean, there was attention to detail. I tried to make the details of how -- you had your program in your badge. You just held up your badge, and it was the program. You didn't have to carry anything. And then I gave away all those free things until it got -- Wired Magazine did a story and said I invented the idea of swag at that time. And I didn't even know I invented it. But we gave away, you know, huge amounts of stuff that people sent in. And nobody would sell anything from the stage. So it wasn't commercial. I didn't have a political point of view, and I didn't have a financial point of view. I had just -- wasn't it fun to learn these things? And, you know, some of them, they were up there were maybe slightly boring, but something I was interested in. And then sometimes people other people were interested in. You were there, you could tell me what it was like being there. What was it like being there, Chris?
CA: Well, it was overwhelming for the first day, and I didn't get it actually, for the first day. Like, I was intrigued, but I didn't understand why. Like most people, I was in my groove, focused on, you know, trying to make magazines and trying to figure out why exactly am I listening to a designer talk about a chair or an architect or this? You know, it wasn't until day three that you started to realize that something that someone said is connected in a really surprising way with something someone else had said.
RSW: Absolutely.
CA: And you realize, you know, that all of the best ideas happen through a weird kind of serendipity of things bumping together from outside your normal frame of reference. That's how innovation happens.
And Ricky, the human element like -- Aimee Mullins, you brought her onstage and you did something that few people would dare to do today, I think. Like, she had lost her legs. She had artificial legs that she had used as an athlete to win. And you invited her to take them off.
RSW: But nobody knew that she had artificial legs. They were so good.
CA: Right! So this is the showman --
RSW: And then I said, "Today, Aimee, take off your legs."
CA: The showman in you, there is a big showman in you, and it was like, you know, how could we really surprise people? I know, let's ask someone, let’s ask a speaker to take off her legs. That doesn't happen every day at a conference. And the thing is, she was completely cool with it and so human and told her story of her own empowerment, of how, you know, this technology and help for other people and so forth, that she just felt strong and full of possibility. And I was, by that stage, in the back row of the auditorium, you know, weeping, like, tears rolling down my cheeks. So that was when, I think, I really knew that this was not just interesting but truly special, like, it was moving. And I spoke with other people there, and they said things like, "This is the first week I carve out of my calendar every year." Well, that gets your attention. That's pretty special.
Tell me about -- You had courage on stage to do things that, again, most people wouldn't do, and you insisted on a certain kind of vibe from speakers and audience. So there was the time, famously, when Nicholas Negroponte came back, like in his first talk, he was wearing a sort of jacket and tie. And you weren't happy about that. What happened next?
RSW: Well, I mean ... I'd said that the dress is casual and no ties, suits, please. Because that has an effect, it's different. So I just got scissors and cut off his tie. And the audience gasped. And then it became a joke.
(Laughter)
But people remember that because it was something. I'll tell you a speech that -- the audience came up with names. These are not mine, I didn't create these. The audience did somehow. If somebody was there for the first time and they came out in conversation, people in the audience would say to them, "Oh, you're a TED Virgin." They came up with those things. They came up with things, a “TED moment” when something happened, like cutting off a tie. Or if you remember, Sherwin Nuland, I don’t know if you were there.
CA: I was there, that was an astonishing talk.
RSW: That was one of the most moving things for me. I'll tell you a story of what curation is. Sherwin called me on the phone. I did not know him well. He had been to a conference, and he trusted me for some reason. I think because I don't lie. And he said he's always wanted to tell a story, and he thought he would do it at TED, would it be OK with me? I said, I don't even want to know what the story is. If you want to tell a story, that's for you to do. He says, well, it's, OK. And he got up -- and he was well-known then as a doctor and I mean, quite well. I always felt very humbled by getting him to come because he was quite famous in his field. And he came on stage, and he started a talk regularly. And then I looked at him, with the thing of, well, what’s the story you’re going to tell? And he nodded, and I nodded. And then he told the story, which I then cried, of course I cry a lot, but I cried heavily for his talk. And he talked about being clinically depressed. And committed to treatment in a hospital and committed you know, maybe for the rest of his life. I mean, he was really bad. And he asked for electroshock therapy because he could, as a doctor, which you're supposed to get maximum three times, but it was not thought of well at that time. And by the conference, he gave this talk, it was a horror to think of that, but he asked for it to be given to him ten times. More than three times what the limit was, and it basically cured him. And he told a story which was a shock. His wife didn't know that story, his second wife didn't know it. He had never told the story before.
CA: Whoa. She found out when he was onstage?
RSW: She heard it for the first time then. It was just astonishing.
CA: He must have worried that she would have not let him tell it. You can watch that talk online now. There's this incredible moment when he says, he tells the history of electroshock therapy and then says --
RSW: Did I get it right because I haven't seen it?
CA: You've said it exactly right. He says, "And then you may ask, why am I telling you this? Well, it's for a specific reason." And when he revealed that he himself had been, this was his treatment, yeah, the shock in the room was unbelievable. And it's just a brilliant talk. Wow. So, look, I'm going to, in about less than ten minutes, I'm going to bring in --
RSW: I want to give a compliment to you. Because I've been working on this. And you see, you've just interviewed me. You've messed me up here. I've been thinking about what you've done. And, you know, when I did the last one, I was petulant, and I missed it. And then over the years, I saw you, and I wouldn't do this, I would do this. And then I’ve been thinking lately what you have done. And in a different style, but amazing what you have been able to do. And I looked online, and I researched you, you have 25 programs that go on. 25 programs. In a recent correspondence with you, I talked about an orchard and apple trees, and I don't think you knew what I was getting at, and I didn't quite either. But I read a book on Johnny Appleseed, and it was somewhat nonsense because he did -- It was a person, and he did carry seeds with him all the time that he got from cider factories. They gave him the free seeds, and he did take them around and he planted them. But you really can't get good apples from a seed. You can't plant a tree.
So what's the relationship between you and I, Chris? I think I gave you a tree. But you, as you do to grow American Delicious, all the apples you can grow, you grafted them, and you have grafted a tree with 25 different apples. 25 branches. And that's where the apples have come from, from these. Because apple seeds don't grow apple trees, apples on apple trees. Little apples, but not big apples. And you have done -- It was amazing. For a thing that almost didn't happen because of the fear of failure to something that then filled up a year in advance, to something that was the first person who signed up came each time, to selling it, to my petulance, to you doing things that, I think you didn't want to do TEDx in the beginning. And then you were convinced to do it. Lara Stein, you had some great people. June Cohen with TED Talks and Lara. And they convinced you to do it. I would have said no because that would have been TED Light. I would have thought, oh, you don't want to do that. And it's been wonderful. I’ve spoken at a few TEDxs, and they have been really interesting. And you did 13,000 of them! 13,000 TEDxs! So my hat's off to you at this time.
CA: Maybe even more now. Well, you're a kind man. Thank you. That's very kind.
We should probably tell people just a bit about how the transition happened, because it was a very intense time, you know, like, it was the year 2000. So I'd be coming to TED for two years when, I think, word got out that you were thinking that it was maybe time to sell, you'd reached the grand old age of 65 or something like that. And of course, companies like Ziff Davis and Time Warner and so forth were in the hunt for this amazing media property. I had a small media company and had become convinced that this thing was so special. And there was almost like a two-part thing to this, like I came and saw you and your wife Gloria, and we spoke about dreams and values. And, you know, I think you had, your fear was this thing you'd created would get eaten by some corporation and turned into a, you know, a money-making thing or whatever. It would lose its magic. You probably feared that a bit with me as well. But the one thing I held on to was that, you know, I'm not a big company, you know, we’re an entrepreneurial-driven company. At the time, I was still working for the company I'd founded, Future, and we had this magazine, Business 2.0, and that seemed like there were connections with a lot of the internet people at TED in that magazine. Somehow you agreed to sell it to me. I suspect you may have got more money elsewhere. I don't know, but you sold it to me for, I think it's public record, it was six million dollars of cash and six million dollars of stock, I think, there or thereabouts. And the six million dollars of stock disappeared basically, basically because my company blew up soon after that. I don't know whether you were able to exit any of that in time. I hope you were.
RSW: I have to correct you because we have to get the story straight online. It was 14 million dollars, 12 million in cash and two million in stock. And the stock bankrupted. The stock disappeared.
CA: OK, there you go. See, I put my rose-tinted glasses on there, hoping that we hadn’t spent that much on it initially because I then bought it back from that same company. When the company was blowing up, and it was time for me to leave and I had no money, I had a foundation with a bit of money in it. And so that foundation bought TED off the company for six million dollars in cash. And like, I now, with the benefit of hindsight, that seems like one of the best philanthropic investments ever made. From your point of view, you must have, during that period, I think you felt angered about aspects of the sale, like, you almost had some form of seller's remorse or felt misled or whatever, and we definitely went through a couple of years where things were hard between us.
RSW: We had difficult years. And I will take half of the blame for that. And I was petulant because all of a sudden I wasn't doing this every year, and it was my life, and I missed it. So three years passed for a non-compete, and I invented a new conference called EG.
CA: Back in Monterey.
(Laughs)
RSW: And it was ... It was not in Monterey, we did it in LA.
CA: It moved to Monterey later, right, I think. Maybe.
RSW: It went back to Monterey, but the first one was not in Monterey. Because I was going to show everybody and myself I could do it not in Monterey and do it. And it was petulance. It turned out well and then I gave it away, because I realized what a baby I was.
And then, you know, it was difficult. It was difficult for you, difficult for me. And then, I would say in the last, you've been doing it for about 20 years, I did it for about 20 years in the 40 years, give or take a few years. You put together something remarkable. I think each of us put together something remarkable, different, and yet really kissing cousins. It's the tree and the branches of what you've done that I think is terrific, just terrific. And I got to do the animal acts. You haven't had any animal acts.
CA: (Laughs) You know, we ought to do something about that. Just, you know, 40th anniversary coming up, if only for that. We've definitely had a lot of animals on screen, spectacular animals. And those are some of the best talks, honestly.
RSW: I don't know if you were there for when the bear came on stage?
CA: I wasn't there for the bear.
RSW: They had a black bear.
CA: Amazing.
RSW: They had a bear that they walked down the aisle. Two people with chains walked down this big black bear down the aisle on the stage. And I was told by the animal trainer, you know, "Go up and kiss it," it turns out he thought I would be scared and not do it. And I went up and kissed him, and he turned white and said, "Very quietly, back up very slowly, you could be dead." And I wasn't supposed to do that. And he could have just taken my belly out with a hand. And that happened.
CA: So you told me that story on stage in Monterey when we had you back, and you actually gave me my best -- when things were still a bit awkward with us -- and you gave me my best-ever line on stage, because I asked you, "Well, did anyone warn the bear?" And people liked that. I mean, in context, it went down.
You have this amazing courage and this amazing sense of showmanship that I think has helped. You know, the whole problem with interesting information is that it gets lost in the sea of just noise out there, and it needs all the help it can get in terms of drama, theatricality and so forth. And I think it is one of the pieces of your genius, Ricky, which we've tried to carry forward, probably have not done in the way that you could. And we miss that.
One thing that did happen, though, which and I'm, you know, this is just serendipity. I mean, technology came along that allowed TED to be shared with the world. And that, of course, is what what changed everything. We possibly, like, if I'd owned it privately, might never have done it. I might have been too frightened to do it. But because it was owned by a nonprofit, we decided we had to do it. Thank you, June Cohen, thank you, Kelly Stoetzel. And, you know, there was an amazing team around at that time who were brave. Jason Wishnow, the video editor, played a role. But we went for it and everything changed, you know, TED went viral and demand for the conference, to our surprise, went up, not down. And most people in the community said, "This is really cool, I can share it now with my family. Thank you." And you know, it took us on our journey.
But I think one of the areas that was uncomfortable for some people in the community and for you, was this feeling that what had been a dinner party, it had been created for the interests of everyone there, had to some extent become an annoying sort of place of “do-goodery” and “let’s make the world a better place” and all the rest of it. I mean, how much do you think there is a fundamental conflict there between what is interesting and what is useful for the public good? This is the question I find myself asking.
RSW: It's a fine line between, I think it's particularly difficult right now where the “do-goodery” thing and the "watching what you say" thing and all those things, I would have been tarred and feathered for what I said and what I did when I ran TED, because it's not acceptable. I think it is difficult. Your job has become much more difficult in curating now.
CA: Possibly. Ricky, I've got a question from someone in the audience who sat there in the front row for many years of your curation and for many of mine, the wonderful Jim Young.
RSW: Oh!
CA: He wants to know what was the most memorable moment of your TED experience. Give us one more.
RSW: Well, Jim, since you sat in the front row, it was probably two or three times your neck was almost broken when I threw out hats into the audience, and Jeff Bezos leapt from the fourth row across your head and almost broke the necks of everybody in the front row. And then we saw how ambitious he was, was to get a hat, and then he turned out OK.
CA: We have to assume he wasn't quite as financially successful then, you know, a hat was meaningful.
RSW: You remember those times when people used to jump for the hats?
CA: Yeah, no. Absolutely.
RSW: But it was nice having you in the front row. It was unlike any other conference where the front row was the place you really wanted to be. Those were the prized seats, not the back row, where a lot of people sit when they go to a conference. CA: So people got married at TED. Engaged or married. Do you remember?
RSW: Yes, Chris Fralic. Fralic got engaged on stage, yes?
CA: Yeah. Yep yep yep. Chris Fralic is actually in the audience, and so it's very cool that you remember that.
RSW: Hi, Chris, yes, yes, I remember that. So my memory hasn’t gone anyway, and I'm going to be 89 next month.
CA: I mean, that's amazing. There's a question here from Todd. "How do you inspire lifelong learning and innovating in people who don't care to learn nor understand, nor change anything?"
RSW: I don't think ... I think all you can do is give people permission, and if they want to take it, they should be exposed to things that are interesting and available. But no, everybody doesn't have to be like me or you, Chris, or anybody else. One doesn't have to learn. One doesn't have to do things. But it should be available in a form that's honest and understandable. And data by itself is not information, and it’s not accessible, and it doesn’t inform. So I believe that I have a responsibility, and others do, to make things available. And that’s why I invented the term “information architects,” to see the systemic way, not just making things look good. There's a lot of charts, graphs and information that looks good. A lot of people who speak well and pretty and give good presentations, but you can't understand it. So understanding, the thing you said you were going to get into later on in this, and explaining, first you have to explain something so you can understand something so you can take action. But that action goes back to having it clearly explained in the beginning.
CA: Yeah. So Manoush Zomorodi, who's the host of TED Radio Hour now, has a question that, you know, "Information has become much more nicheified. People want to know exactly what they're getting before they watch/listen. How can we get people to be more general and curious?"
RSW: That's why we have the word E for entertaining. You have to make it so -- Not entertaining like some song.
CA: Song and dance.
RSW: Not that. Entertaining in that it feels warm and interesting. You have a warm place. And when something is explained to you that you didn't understand, it feels warm. And you feel warm when you're entertained well. You have to make that available, and then it’s up to the person. It's not something that you need to be tested on.
CA: Right.
RSW: It's not a homogenous audience out there. It's not our duty to make a homogenous audience.
CA: So the question in the audience from Dave, “One of your iconic books is ‘Information Anxiety.’ What do you see humans are anxious about? What should we be anxious or concerned about?"
RSW: Well, I've done two books called “Information Anxiety” and “Information Anxiety 2,” and might do a book called “3,” and they have a place. The first was just to show the difference between data and things that inform you. And there's a duty, if you're going to have data, to make it understandable to a 12-year-old. To make things you do understandable. And it's your duty that if you don't understand and you're interested, to ask a good question. A question that has a quest. And a good question is better than a brilliant answer. That changed, "Information Anxiety 2" changed because the internet changed our ability and the masses of available data. And so it became more of a crisis of how -- and cartography comes in here -- how you find your way, how you map your way through information. And that's why the underpinning of all of our data is cartography, not necessarily a map of a city, but the map of understanding. And that's why Esri and people who make cartographic things are so important, because they show the pattern of understanding, and it makes things available and reduces your anxiety because everything takes place someplace.
CA: Adrian Neubauer would like to know, "How do you think TED has changed our conceptual understanding of the lecture and lecturing?" So can you talk about the convergence of storytelling and lecturing?
RSW: Well, I've seen the conference world change after TED. Now, I can't say it changed because of TED, but I have a belief that it did. It was bumped along the way. Maybe somebody else would have done a TED-like thing and bumped it away a year later. I don't know, but I believe that TED existed and had no right to exist, not supported by an institution or a university or a company or anything else, it was an independent thing, not based on our society and our businesses in society. That it has changed how companies put on gatherings, how other people put on gatherings, certainly changed Davos, which had no entertainment or anything. But I mean, Davos is a conference made up of back rooms. I mean it's a whole city. They've turned all the hotels into back rooms. So everything is a closet in there. But they put a patina of entertainment. But there's some genuine understanding and genuine mixed conferences that a lot of people put on today, and some very good ones besides TED. There's The Nantucket Project is one. There's one that used to be put on from with a TEDster Tony Chan up in Boston. There's a number of conferences that I think were directly affected and given permission to happen because a schlepper from Philadelphia could put on a thing, and it became OK that they can do it, too. So I think it's had an effect.
CA: I completely agree. I think one of the things we've really tried to hold on to is when talks become boring, is when it's clear the speaker has an agenda to promote or it's about, here's a company, here is an organization, here is something that I need to promote as opposed to: “I’m here with other human beings. There is something really interesting to me in my mind, something that has really lit me up, and I want to share it.” And the fact that people can share it and others can feel that same thing and learn from it, and that it can change their life ten years later, that is what is so beautiful, Richard.
And you know, when I came, the first job title I took at TED was TED Custodian. Now this was before I understood properly that sometimes in America that means, you know, bathroom cleaner. But I still like the name. And because what I was promising to do there was ... The values that started with what matters, what is interesting, what lights people up, what is inspiring, what is human, what is important and what can cross boundaries out of one sphere into another, that seemed to me so special, and I was determined not to let that go for anything. And so, despite the fact that we've occasionally disagreed, I have tried to stay true to that. And I think overall, TED has still stayed true to that. And one of the reasons it's special is because it is still a place where no matter what your start point is, so long as you come in with curiosity and an open heart, you will learn something that matters. And that all came from you, my friend. That all came from you. And you know, thank you so much for that.
I’m going to ask this question from Katherine McCartney.
RSW: I'm going to interrupt for one second. You said something earlier, that I sat on stage the whole time. Let me give you a hint, there's two reasons why I did that. I was the only person that saw the audience, remember, I kept the house lights up so I could see the audience. I watched the audience. That was very important to me, to sense the audience. And two, getting up and down off the stage is about four minutes, two minutes up and two minutes down. So I gave people four times 50. I gave 200 minutes back to the audience for somebody just getting up and down off the stage to introduce the next person. So it was a way to give the audience more for their money, and I didn't have to get up and down because I was really fat then.
CA: (Laughs) That's beautiful. I like that explanation. I've got good news that through technological advances, we have figured out how to get up on stage again and back off in less than four minutes.
RSW: OK. But you know what I'm saying.
CA: I know exactly what you're saying. Katherine McCartney, who was with me during the transition here, from your TED to ours.
RSW: I know who she is, yes.
CA: Dear colleague. So she wants to know what moment in your history would you wish you could repeat, either to change the outcome or just to enjoy the moment again?
RSW: I can't say the things that come instantly in my head right now, because it wouldn't be good online.
CA: Or you could just say it, and we could love you for it.
RSW: Oh yeah, edit it out. I will tell you in the after speak, after we speak afterwards. But I think that's a very good question. And I think that question should be mulled around. And anybody who's listening, I hope there's a few people listening, mull around in your heads. How would you answer that question? What, if anything, would you want to redo or repeat or change or do again? And it's not singular things that come up because your mind, at least my mind, goes to different subjects, different moments.
CA: I'll ask this question, then, a more specific version of that. I don’t know that this is what Katherine was aiming at, but do you ... With all that you now know, do you regret the decision to sell TED to me?
RSW: Huh. I think, if I look back on it, I probably should have waited three years or so to get some of the ideas out of my system that made me petulant after I sold it. But selling it and doing other things also, because when I was doing TED I was also doing guidebooks. For eight years, I was doing TEDMED. So I got into medicine. And maybe a couple of years, but not selling it. No, I think when you learn how to do something fairly well, you shouldn't do it anymore. For me, I'm speaking for myself. And I've done that with different things in my life, painting, sculpture, different things. I did some of them OK. And then it's time to do something else. So I knew there was a time to do something else. But when it came up, the reality of it caught me off guard. But I think absolutely, If I can take the longer view of an old fart, I gave it to the right person. I sold it to the right person, no doubt, because I can't imagine another person doing anything near what you were doing or squeezing the life out of it. So I think I sold it to, what turns out to be, the best person.
CA: Well, those are moving words, obviously, to me. And I will say from my part that I can't imagine a different version of my life. I mean, I loved being an entrepreneur. It was fun building a company. I didn't find out who I wanted to be, Ricky, until I had a chance to pick up this amazing thing that you created. And especially when we had a chance to start sharing it with the world, it suddenly felt, gosh, you know, the fact that we're in a time when ideas can spread beyond a theater to millions of people was such an extraordinary thing. And, you know, just learning to this day of people who gave a talk in that theater that you identified, and by the way, what a special magical theater, that theater in Monterey was.
RSW: It turned out to be perfect. Well, see, let me tell you, that wasn't by chance, I had done three conferences in that theater before I did TED. And I learned the town and the theater. So I didn't go there as an amateur, just choosing that place. That's why that place was important. And when I did it in New York or did it in Toronto, it wasn't as good.
CA: It was magic. So I can't imagine a different version of it. And I think there are probably many, many millions of people around the world who, if they only knew this story, your story, would want to right now take off the hat and nod at you and say, thank you, Richard Saul Wurman, you've made a difference to my life.
RSW: Chris, that's lovely.
CA: On behalf of so many people, thank you.
RSW: Thank you, Chris, for having me.
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