Beyond the eclectic nature of its speakers, the conference is unusual in many ways and has become something of a cult for its followers - appropriately known as TEDsters. There is both a big and little TED. Delegates love the coolness of the event; to borrow from a well-known beer commercial - if Apple did conferences it would probably be something very like TED. Those three subjects make up the acronym TED but these days the talks are much wider. Nadia Al-Sakkaf, editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times, gave a moving speech about her desire for a democratic Yemen. Philip Blond, architect of the Big Society idea talked about how society was broken, although there was little insight into how his big idea was going to fix it.



Meanwhile philosopher Alain de Botton talked about the need for religion 2.0 - with one particularly enthusiastic Tedster suggesting later that TED itself could be the new church. This mix of intellect and emotion seems to be a defining feature of TED, which also offers its high-powered, wealthy audience a range of social and cultural distractions, including this year a launch party at Edinburgh Castle. Where other conferences offer Delegates a feedback form, TED invites the audience to select a badge that most reflects their mood. The badges are housed in plastic tubes and at the end of the week TED will assess which was the most popular. TED began life as an elitist club for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs until it was bought by British publisher Chris Anderson in 2001 and turned into a nonprofit organisation dedicated to ideas worth spreading.

He angered some TED purists by agreeing to post videos of all the speakers online for free after the conference. It has opened the event out to a much wider audience and has spawned TEDx, localised independent conferences set up by volunteers around the world. This summer TED is also pondering how it can spread its ideas in schools and an announcement on TED ED is due in the autumn. Cutting-edge tech remains at the heart of TED. Rezero, as it is known, is part of a family of ballbot robots whose design offers a range of real world applications, from guides around museums to intelligent trolleys in hospitals.

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