There is a simple lesson that all conferences should learn from TED. It’s not to charge thousands of dollars. It’s not to bring celebrities to your conference. And it’s not to only have one speaker at a time. Those may or may not be good things to emulate, but they’re not the most important lesson to learn from TED.

I’m at SXSW Interactive in Austin this week. Here’s a badge from the conference:

Picture from this page.

Now here’s the badge from TED:

Picture from this page.

At TED, you can walk past anyone and see their name from 10 feet away. At SXSW (and just about every other conference I’ve ever ben to) if you get close enough to read someone’s badge, there’s a good chance they’re going to feel “violated”.

Isn’t the point of these conferences to network with others? Making someone’s name visible goes a long way to creating new opportunities for introduction. You typically don’t introduce yourself to someone when you have no idea who they are.