Many years ago I was driven to acknowledge the amazing travel guides put out by uber, meta thinker Richard Saul Wurman. These travel guides are called “Access” and were an inseparable part of all my travels in the past. The “Access” line of travel guides did almost exactly what I thought I would do if I were creating a travel guide, and far out did any offerings from by Lonely Planet, Let’s Go or Rough Guides. The design, content and layout were by far the most accessible and easily understandable way to find out “stuff” while traveling in foreign places I had ever seen. I still have all my Access travel guides, each one highly annotated with special moments and additional spots from around the world as I have seen it.
Then I started trying to find out who this Richard Saul Wurman guy was. Architect?, graphic designer, free thinker, all of the above?? But most mysteriously, creator of the then incipient TED conferences. The TED conferences were these think tank events where for $7000 you could rub noses with the likes of Steve Jobs and Steven Hawking, get an ipod a gift basket before anyone in the world even knew what an ipod was and listen to lectures about the future of technology from a vast array of forward thinkers.

I almost signed up in those e early days of hearing about the TED conferences, but 7K was a lot of dough back then, so I waited. I waited and wondered what the heck they were all talking about?

The TED website now has many, many of these unbelievably brilliant presentations available to view, and all for FREE. Every time I take an opportunity to watch one I am blown away, from marine biology to a hyper linked meta universe of photographs called Photosynth, which believe it or not is brought to us from Microsfot. (the presenter even makes a back sided apology on that matter).

I may never have the chance to go to TED, but now I can bring TED to me.

PhotoSynth Presentation: