TED is a global and growing community. The staff is headquartered in New York and Vancouver, but the collaborative nature of our work means we have advisors and contributors worldwide, who work with us to shape the TED Conference, the TED Prize and the TED website.

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 demos of the newly released Macintosh computer and 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.   More detail...