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About Me

I'm a Brit, born in a remote village in Pakistan, in 1957, and spent my early years in Pakistan, India and (pre-war, beautiful) Afghanistan, where my father worked as a missionary eye surgeon. I have two sisters—one is five years older than the other, and I'm right in the middle.

We went to a wonderful (American) school in the Himalayan mountains in India for our early schooling years. At 13 I was transferred to boarding school in Bath, England... followed by Oxford University. Initially studied Physics, but switched to Philosophy and graduated in 1978.

I entered journalism training, worked in local newspapers and then spent two years producing a world news service on a radio station in the Seychelle Islands. Back in the UK in 1984 I got hooked on computing, and snagged a job as magazine editor of one of the early computer magazines. After a year, decided to try to launch my own.

I started Future Publishing in 1985 with a $25,000 bank loan and no outside equity investors. For seven years, revenue and profits pretty much doubled every year... Then I sold the business to Pearson and moved to the US in 1994 to try again in a bigger playing field. Imagine Media achieved significant success with Business 2.0 and other magazines. I eventually re-merged Imagine with Future and took the entity public in London in June 1999. We enjoyed a year of stock-market glory (2000 people, ridiculous market cap, 130 magazines, etc, etc.) but then... ...the popping of the technology bubble in 2000 meant that our advertisers and investors ran for the hills and Future had to be slashed to its core. Half the company lost their jobs. A tough two years followed, in which, like many other entrepreneurs of the time, I saw 95% of the value I thought I'd built evaporate. (And for a while it looked like it it would be 100%!)

Future finally regained financial stability, partly through the timely sale of Business 2.0. I felt re-energized and ready to move on. I left Future at the end of 2001 to focus on TED, which had been acquired by my foundation. Overseeing TED's continued growth, and movement into new areas (such as this website) has been a blast.

Location:
United States, New York, NY
Current organization:
TED
Past organizations:
Imagine Media, Future Publishing
Current role:
Curator
Gender:
Male
I am:
Change Agent, Connector, Event planner, Global soul, Idea generator, Journalist, Philanthropist, Potential employer, Producer, Social entrepreneur
My website links:
TED, um... TED.com
Universities:
Oxford
TED conferences attended:
TED2013, TEDGlobal 2012, TED2012, TEDGlobal 2011, TED2011, TEDWomen, TEDGlobal 2010, TED2010, TEDIndia 2009, TEDGlobal 2009, TED2009, TED2008
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More About Me

I'm passionate about

TED; the world of ideas, whether scientific or philosophical; some very special people who I wouldn't dream of embarrassing by naming them here. Oh, and tea. It's a Brit thing.

An idea worth spreading

Here's part of the justification for what we're doing at TED: http://tinyurl.com/a88teb

Talk to me about

Your TED story.
How to spread great ideas.
The most powerful speaker you ever heard.

People don't know that I'm good at

cooking chicken jalfrezi

My TED Story

One of the magazines I launched got its name at TED. It happened during a corridor conversation with Jeff Bezos in February 1999. He listened, scratched his head, and said: "Why don't you just call it Business 2.0?" That was before my foundation bought the conference. Since then, a new TED story every day, pretty much. For example, this one: http://blog.ted.com/2007/06/a_tedbagful_of.phphttp://www.ted.com/images/blank.gif

Comments

  • TEDCred score: +764 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

  • +8

    A reply on Talk: Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone

    Mar 28 2012: Skip, I'm glad you're on the site. Please stay, and continue to comment. TED strives hard to be non-partisan. We want the best of opinion from all parts of the political spectrum, and really hope for (and often get) a more thoughtful, respectful conversation than happens elsewhere. No agenda behind the questions other than curiosity.
  • +7

    A reply on Talk: Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone

    Mar 28 2012: Hi, Chaka. We do sometimes schedule speakers with directly differing views next to each other (eg Paul Gilding and Peter Diamandis). But I don't think you could build an entire program that way. In this instance, I didn't see myself as confronting Regina. Just genuinely trying to understand a few things better. I know many in the audience had similar questions. And her candid responses made me like her even more.
  • +13

    A reply on Talk: Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone

    Mar 27 2012: In fact at the live conference I ask questions of about half the speakers (time permitting). We don't always include the Q and A in the edits posted on line. But here Regina was impressively candid in her responses, I thought. I don't see my role as to "put a speaker on the spot" but just to ask some of the questions I suspect the audience are asking.

  • A reply on Talk: T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas

    Mar 22 2012: That was leading climate scientist James Hansen. Yup, it's up.
  • +1

    A reply on Talk: Taylor Wilson: Yup, I built a nuclear fusion reactor

    Mar 22 2012: Really was an awesome piece, Tom.
  • +15

    A comment on Talk: Taylor Wilson: Yup, I built a nuclear fusion reactor

    Mar 22 2012: Taylor shot to prominence thanks to a spectacular Popular Science feature about him. You can read it here. http://bit.ly/GMzo8I

    It includes the memorable quote from former Energy UnderSecretary Kristina Johnson: "Someone like him comes along maybe once in a generation."

    We invited him to come to the last TED at short notice -- the week before, in fact. And after chatting with him during the event, I decided he had to be given a moment on stage. He threw this talk together literally in 24 hours. Amazing. We look forward to keeping in touch with Taylor and hope he can give a longer TED Talk in the not too distant future.
  • +1

    A reply on Talk: Questions no one knows the answers to

    Mar 17 2012: Funnily enough, I used to puzzle about that same question (but not when I was six - that is one curious soul you have there.) Because orange is one of the main colors of the rainbow or any color wheel, it's natural to assume the color name must have come first. But it didn't. Like 'peach', the color is named after the fruit.

    This from wikipedia: "The colour is named after the orange fruit, introduced to Europe via the Sanskrit word nāranja. Before this was introduced to the English-speaking world, the colour was referred to (in Old English) as geoluhread, which translates into Modern English as yellow-red."
  • +4

    A reply on Talk: Questions no one knows the answers to

    Mar 17 2012: A STRING of errors, Paul?! Goshl! C'mon then. Let's hear them. The people want to know!

  • A reply on Talk: Questions no one knows the answers to

    Mar 16 2012: Thanks for the comments, Jon. I strongly agree with your last three paras. I'm curious though whether you watched either or both of the follow up videos linked at the end. This was just a light-weight intro!
  • +2

    A reply on Talk: Questions no one knows the answers to

    Mar 15 2012: We don't. Wetness is an emergent property of large numbers of water molecules.

    How is it you combine 200 letters which have no meaning, yet together they make a sentence?

    Check out Steve Johnson's talk on emergence. it's a delicious topic!
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