TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is small nonprofit academic organization owned by The Sapling Foundation. TED is well-known for its annual, invitation-only conference devoted to "ideas worth spreading". TED is famous for its lectures, known as TED Talks, which originally focused on technology, entertainment and design, but have now expanded in scope to a broad set of topics including science, arts, politics, education, culture, business, global issues, technology and development. Speakers have included such people as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, molecular biologist James D. Watson, physicist Murray Gell-Mann, former Vice President of the United States Al Gore, political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Zoologist Jane Goodall, and Evangelist Billy Graham. The TED staff is headquartered in New York City and Vancouver. More than 500 TED talks are provided for free viewing online. As of April 2009, talks had been viewed over 100 million times by more than 15 million people.
