Jack Blog
March 5th, 2012 By Jack Morton
Fun article in NY Mag last week about the rise of “ideas conferences” like TED and Davos, and how attendance at these conferences has become the Holy Grail of status amongst the intellectual set.
My favorite line? “These are ‘thought-leader gatherings’ where ‘rock stars’ emerge from their ‘silos” to learn about ‘disruptive’ ideas that have been carefully ‘curated’.”
With all the copycat conferences out there – including one for every niche, subset and target demographic – is there any whitespace left in ideas conferences? And is there inherently something magical about getting the best and the brightest from convergent fields together to share ideas and stimulate thinking, or are we just taking ourselves too seriously?
BTW, In true NY Mag style, the thumbnail photo for the article is inexplicably one entitled “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Orgasms”, so feel free to either read of skip that one, too.