Life After TED
Richard Saul Wurman lounges by the hotel pool, sweat collecting under the crease of his pectoral muscles as the heat of a southern California afternoon rises in step with the anticipation surrounding the build-up to his latest conference, WWW.
It is only a few hours before the $16,000-a-ticket, three-day experimental event begins, and Wurman, a master at creating conferences - including the now legendary TED or Technology Entertainment and Design events - is on edge. Around 40 high-profile speakers, including David Blaine, Frank Gehry and Quincy Jones, are already arriving at the hotel. Over the next two days, at a nearby auditorium, they will engage in one-on-one conversations in “an energetic exploration of the lost art of conversing”.
Wurman, 77, puts on a shirt in between last-minute phone calls and finds some shade under an umbrella. A waiter comes by the pool to pick up the plate with remnants of the cheeseburger, no bun, that Wurman ate for lunch, and asks, with rehearsed professionalism, “How did everything come out?”
Wurman bristles. “Everything,” he says through a clenched jaw, “was fine.” The waiter has broken one of Wurman’s rules of conversation: “Never ask anyone, ‘How is everything?’: it’s not a question that can be answered,” he says. In fact, he continues, he has a list of other taboo phrases, among them “How are you?” and “what’s the best … ?”
The worst is “uh-huh”, which, according to the former architect, cartographer and urban designer, is not a harmless social cue but a meaningless tic used by bad listeners pretending to understand someone when they don’t.