Speaker 1: What I want to talk to you about is the role of partnerships within the TEDx events and in the world of TED as well. What I thought I'd do is just start off with a short video of how we talk about partnerships at TED. The TED conference presents an opportunity to bring together such an amazing group of collaborative people to see how to spread ideas.

Speaker 2: In a traditional sponsorship, typically what happens is, let's give you some money and then you can have your logo up here. In TED, it's what can we do that's really interesting? What can we do that moves the bar forward? What can we do that no one has ever done before? Let's have the lights down. Are we ready? It's time for TED.

Speaker 3: We're here, day two at TED. I'm sitting in front of the GE conversation board that we're taking on this year as part of a sponsorship program that we're doing with TED. It's been fun to see the ideas and conversation that we're having about our energy future, tough subjects like smart grid. We decided to come to TED because this is where the conversations happen, where you get a great intersection of smart people who have passion, who have resources, who have capabilities to make things happen.

Speaker 4: For the last five years, I've been the bag sponsor for the TED conference. I've kind of evolved the bag into a platform for partnering with other TED community members. This year, this is a collaboration with Coca-Cola and Steelcase Design Techs. We did 10 colors of this fabric, and so there are actually 2,200 bags, 1,100 unique colorways. And then we have a little contest, find your twin and win.

Speaker 5: So at the breaks, we're doing all these interesting chocolate pairings and tastings. And so the one this morning is all about bacon and chocolate.

Speaker 6: In the bookstore alone, that was hard because I'm glad Wired is shipping books home because I bought two bags already. So under Explore, there are lots of things you can explore. You can explore constellations. You can explore the solar system. So many people come up to me at TED saying, this is so wonderful. I've wanted to do this my whole life to be able to really feel like I can explore the universe, and you made it. And I said, that's what I've always wanted to.

Speaker 7: We have a message that we think is important about energy, about technology, about the future of energy, and I think also about the place of a company like Shell. And this is the sort of public to engage with that kind of message. They appreciate it. They understand it. Some of them are out there creating that future. And it gives us a chance to have a very different kind of dialogue. It's an incredible opportunity to reach a lot of people who are industry influencers,

Speaker 8: potential customers, potential suppliers, great sources of creative inspiration for what you're doing. The first TED I came to, the product that they used to support the speakers on stage

Speaker 9: was somebody else's furniture. I thought, wow, that's a great idea. The first product that they used to support the speakers on stage was somebody else's furniture. I thought we could do a better job of actually enabling the setting to be cooler, to have a different kind of vibe. Because I can connect my learning and the products to the site, I then get interaction and feedback from lots of people that use it, and it helps stimulate the next generations of what we might create.

Speaker 2: As a sponsor of TED, it's been a sheer delight working with the TED organization. It's been smooth. It's been easy. We're working towards realizing a common objective, and it just doesn't get any better than that.

Speaker 1: So let me just quickly talk about some of the ways that TED events, again, you know, we talk a lot about the power of the audience that's in there, that these are people who are coming, who are in search of an idea, that they're a powerful group of people to engage with, and you don't want to miss the opportunity to be able to do that. There's lots of different ways that we talk to partners about engaging at TED, and here are some examples. Conference infrastructure is the most obvious, of course, and what we find, I'll talk about this in a minute, is that that tends to be a lot of in-kind partners. Projects and collaborations. How can those who are partners come together and learn from those people who are coming to TED, and how can we facilitate those kinds of conversations? To showcase innovation, you saw Microsoft did it and others. What's the next thing that we need to learn, and how can we be a part of that? Show it to us before it's come out in the market so that we have a sense of new ideas. Networking, obviously, the moment to which people who have ideas come together, it's a powerful opportunity. What can you do with that? And then entertainment. One of the things that I always talk about at TED is that we are not party planners, and we're not selling parties. Within partnerships at TED, we're not interested in Winnebago marketing and just putting logos everywhere. We want to push partners to think beyond that and to really think about the opportunity, again, that they can present themselves in a different way. I've just pulled some things here just in terms of conference infrastructure. I heard someone talking as I was walking around with lunch, and they said, boy, it is amazing when you mention TED, how people come to the party because of the brand name in terms of wanting to be a part of giving and being a part of this as a community project. And so infrastructure is obviously the most is the obvious way to be able to do that in terms of in-kind partners. It is just a listing of things that I've seen in terms of in-kind, and these are quite obvious in terms of those ways in which partners can participate. And then also, how can you create experiences that are interesting and unique, fun, playful, and, again, thinking about whether it is test driving a new product or doing something in an interesting, unique way? You saw that whole thing about chocolates and tasting and bacon. There's a whole thing about food that takes place that is a huge opportunity to be able to do something interesting and unique with partners around the idea of food and integration there that I think is really exciting. And then I think it is very exciting to really focus on local partners when you can. You know, the idea that today a TEDx can be a modern chamber of commerce, and before people came together around building a community, and now today ideas are at the center of that community. So how can you localize that in terms of giving those local partners an opportunity to be able to be a part of the conversation? So this is a typical email that I get all the time. Can I talk to Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Vodafone? And I probably get about 50 of these emails a day. And so I just wanted to spend one minute talking about that because I think that there's this misperception that we don't want you to talk to those people. We actually are okay with you talking to those people. It's just a matter of who is the right person to have that conversation with and what is the context of that conversation. So these are partners that we're talking to about bigger initiatives, and often what comes back is the person that I'm working with at a corporation will say they're getting tons of different phone calls. So one of the things that we're working on is working with corporations about how to make that process a little bit easier, find out what regions they're interested in focusing on, and then being able to give you a chance to continue to talk to them. Someone said to me earlier, Nokia was going to do an event in my market anyway, and if it can be a TEDx and they were going to spend the money anyway, why can't they do it in the market? And these are the situations where we're learning so much from you as a community in terms of interacting with corporations, and it feels like we just have to work that through in terms of getting to a comfortable place. So I want to communicate a complete openness to that, but just know that we're students here along with you as we move through this process. So, you know, lastly, you know, what we're working on, just to give you an idea in terms of where I'm thinking and the team is thinking going forward, we're looking at a more expanded sponsorship guidelines that will allow this measure of flexibility in terms of reaching out. We want to really look at TEDx organizers to expand partnership relationships with a menu of TED projects. So if you're talking to a partner and they want to understand how to engage with bigger TED, we are happy to talk to you about some of the projects we're doing and to get you involved not only as a community, a TEDx community, but in association with your partnership, and again, you know, creating this very open environment where we can share best practices. I'm happy to answer questions after or during the conference as well. Thanks. Bye.