How TED Talks Work

The story of TED starts in 1984, five years before the birth of the World Wide Web. It began as a conference in Monterrey, California, organized by architect and iconoclast Richard Saul Wurman.

Wurman wanted TED to be the "ultimate dinner party" with himself as the host [source: Rose and Schuster]. Wurman chose the speakers from the best and brightest of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and academia.

Unlike today's TED conferences, in which talks are carefully scripted and rehearsed, there were no speeches. Wurman's original vision for TED was to create the "anti-conference" — no boring PowerPoint slides and one-hour lectures. At TED, groups of brilliant people took the stage and talked about the things that fascinated them. Wurman was right on stage with them, running the show. In fact, if he felt bored, Wurman had no problem sending the speaker off the stage [source: Rose and Schuster].

The very first TED conference in 1984 featured a demonstration of the compact disc, an e-book reader and a presentation by fractal mathematician Benoit Mandlebrot [source: TED]. Despite the acclaimed speakers, the inaugural conference was a financial flop.

Six years later, Wurman and his business partner tried again, and the TED Conference took off. TED talks eventually took on their 18-minute format — the limit of the human attention span, supposedly — and the invitation-only pow-wow for innovators and power players quickly became one of the most sought-after intellectual tickets of the year [source: Gallo].

Never a fan of stability, Wurman tired of running the conference and sold the rights to TED in 2001. The buyer was a nonprofit called the Sapling Foundation, run by Chris Anderson [source: TED].

Anderson brought a nonprofit sensibility to TED, while maintaining the vision of a conference that brought together world-changing ideas delivered in 18-minute chunks.

Under Anderson's stewardship, the TED audience expanded to include TEDGlobal, a series of worldwide conferences. The organization created the annual TED Prize, a $1 million grant to support the efforts of one particularly inspiring TED speaker each year. And in 2006, a year after YouTube went live, TED made the inspired decision to begin posting videos of select conference talks online [source: TED].

The rest is viral video history. TED superstar Sir Ken Robinson has racked up more than 34 million views for his 2006 talk, Do schools kill creativity? And he's only one of many TED speakers to enter the million-views club. All told, TED videos have attracted more than a billion views [source: Anderson].

Brilliant minds are not always the best public speakers. But in the TED universe, even the world's biggest nerds are able to strut on stage and tell fiercely compelling stories about incredibly complex subjects. Where does TED find these innovative thinkers, researchers and activists who are also inspiring motivational speakers?

The short answer: It doesn't. TED curator Chris Anderson hand-picks every featured speaker at the twice-yearly TED conferences in Long Beach, California. Some of these individuals are seasoned performers, presenters and storytellers, but most of them are more comfortable in a secluded research lab or behind their laptops.

So, the polished TED talks that we watch online are the result of a months-long process of writing, editing, re-writing and rehearsing under the guidance of TED producers and coaches.

In a 2013 article for the Harvard Business Review, Anderson outlined the process for creating an unforgettable TED talk. It begins six to nine months before the conference with what Anderson calls "framing the story," which means finding a clear starting and ending point for the talk.

It can be tremendously difficult for an expert in a niche field like robotics or prison reform to give a talk that's accessible and engaging to 1,400 conference attendees, let alone a worldwide audience online. But the basics of giving a good TED talk apply to any speech you might have to give. Here are some of them [source: Anderson]:

TED speakers are encouraged to rehearse for the conference by delivering their talks at smaller gatherings before the big day arrives. With lots of preparation and help from TED staffers, even the most nervous speakers can give professional performances. One of the most popular TED talks ever was delivered live in 2012 by Susan Cain, perhaps the world's most famous introvert.

With great popularity comes great blowback, and TED is not immune from its critics. One of the loudest cries is that TED is elitist. Not only does TED curate every speaker at its annual conferences, but it curates the audience members as well. Attendance to the two main TED conferences in Long Beach is still invitation-only. TED defends the practice as a way of diversifying the pool of attendees, including those who can't otherwise afford to attend. Plus, most of the talks eventually are made available for free to anyone with Internet access.

Another criticism of TED is that its self-congratulatory conferences and viral online videos promoting "world-changing ideas" have no real impact at all. Instead of fast-tracking truly game-changing reforms or inspiring people to go out and make a difference, the 18-minute videos provide nothing more than "megachurch infotainment" for the middlebrow masses [source: Rose and Schuster]. Anderson's response? "We're not trying to be the be-all and end-all of knowledge. What we're trying to do is make difficult knowledge accessible," he said to "60 Minutes."

While it's hard to measure the global impact of a single TED talk, there are some clear benefits for the roughly 60 people who deliver talks during each weeklong conference. TED conference presenters are not paid for their talks, and you're not allowed to use the TED platform to sell a specific product or book. But that doesn't mean that money isn't a lure for TED speakers. Twice a year, the TED conference hall in Long Beach is filled with deep-pocketed investors, philanthropists and entrepreneurs looking to fund inspiring ideas.

Bryan Stevenson, a prison reform activist, had never heard of TED before he was convinced to give a talk in 2012. After his 18 minutes on stage, which included a touching personal anecdote of an interaction with Civil Rights heroine Rosa Parks, Stevenson was approached by people who ended up donating $1 million to his cause [source: Rose and Schuster]. That's one instance where a TED talk was truly life-changing.