TED Opens TED2013: The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.

LONG BEACH, Calif., Feb. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, kicks off its annual conference today in Long Beach, California.  This year's program brings a record number of storytellers, technologists, activists, educators, photographers, scientific pioneers, visionaries, artists and provocateurs from all parts of the globe to the TED stage. Themed "The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.," the TED2013 program features 70+ speakers, 33 of whom were discovered during a six-continent global talent search held last summer that spanned 14 cities: Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, London, Nairobi, New York, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Tunis and Vancouver. TED2013 takes place starting today through March 1.

"The TED2013 program was anchored in an experiment," said Chris Anderson, TED's curator. "We wanted to open up to fresh voices, and traveled the world in search of them. I'm happy to say the experiment worked spectacularly well. We couldn't be more excited about the group we're bringing to Long Beach. They include brilliant creatives, dynamic performers and mesmerizing story-tellers. Collectively, they will also illuminate some of today's most important questions, like: what is the future of work? How do we nurture human creativity?  And how do we reform global education? I cannot wait for this week!"

This year, TED will also take a different approach to its annual TED Prize, announcing both the winner and his or her wish live from the main stage. The formerly $100,000 prize is now valued at $1,000,000, going to one individual with a world-changing wish. This session will be broadcast globally for free on February 26 from 5:00 pm - 6:45 pm PST on http://tedlive.ted.com/webcasts/2013.

Speakers at the TED2013 conference include:

• A young physicist who's forswearing college to build nuclear reactors
• A 15 year-old with a startling medical invention
• A woman who overcame her misdiagnosis of Schizophrenia to harness the voices in her head
• A Ghanaian undercover journalist who holds perpetrators accountable
• A 13-year old Masai boy who figured out an amazing way to scare away lions
• A fashion designer and self-described renegade gardener
• A biologist with a unique vision for restoring the world's grasslands

This is not to mention many of the speakers you've already heard of - including Bono, Vint Cerf, Elon Musk, Robert Gordon, Jared Diamond, Meg Jay, Rod Brooks, Peter Singer, Sebastiao Salgado, Larry Lessig, Peter Gabriel, Eric Whitacre, and Amanda Palmer!

Find the full speaker list here: http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/program/guide.php.

46 TED Fellows – including artists, designers and inventors – will also gather for their pre-conference, and later present 24 fascinating talks on Monday afternoon. Expect everything from the world premiere of a tool that will democratize medical testing to a device that makes things truly invisible.

The TED2013 conference will gather more than 1,400 attendees from over 50 countries at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center to watch more than 70 main stage talks and performances – the most in TED's history. Almost half of the program comes from TED's first-ever global talent search. Many of the talks this year are shorter, clocking in at 12 minutes or fewer, instead of 18. After five years of hosting its annual conference in Long Beach, TED will move the event to Vancouver in 2014.

Live blog coverage of the conference will be updated throughout each day at blog.ted.com.

The conference will be streamed live to several thousand people around the globe, including to events affiliated with independently organized TEDx events and to subscribing members of TED Live. At the same time, a group of TK people will gather at the TEDActive Conference in Palm Springs, California, to exchange ideas, inspire one another, participate in an engaging onsite program, and experience a live simulcast of TED2013.

Back in Long Beach, TED's award-winning video team will be editing talks directly from the stage to share with the world through its TED Talks video series, which sees up to one million page views a day around the world. Talks from the 2013 conference will appear on TED.com beginning this week and continue throughout the coming year.

A number of innovative brands and companies have partnered with TED to share ideas and foster an atmosphere of collaboration and conversation. This year's partners include AT&T, Autodesk, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Bing, Citi, The Coca Cola Company, Delta, Flor, GE, Getty Images, Genentech, Google, Gucci, HP, IBM, InterContinental Hotels Group, Jawbone, Intel, The Kauffman Foundation, Knight Foundation, The Lincoln Motor Company, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Kohl's Cares, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Microsoft, PR Newswire, ProFlowers, Polycom, Rackspace, Robin Hood Foundation, State Street, SyFy, Shell Global, Steelcase, Sony, S'well, Target, The Tiffany & Co. Foundation, The Weather Company, Walt Disney Imagineering, Walmart, Workspring, and The V Foundation Wine Celebration.

About TED
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California almost 30 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The two annual TED Conferences invite the world's leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Many of these talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates , Jane Goodall , Elizabeth Gilbert , Sir Richard Branson , Nandan Nilekani , Philippe Starck , Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sal Khan and Daniel Kahneman . The annual TED Conference takes place each spring, along with the TEDActive simulcast. The annual TEDGlobal conference is held each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

TED's media initiatives include TED.com, where new TED Talks are posted daily; the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as translations from volunteers worldwide; the educational initiative TED-Ed, and TEDBooks, short e-books on powerful ideas. TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world get help translating their wishes into action; TEDx, which supports individuals or groups in hosting local, self-organized TED-style events around the world, and the TED Fellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Follow TED on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TEDNews, or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED.

Contact: Erin Allweiss, ted@groupsjr.com, +1 (917) 512-2118

SOURCE TED Conferences