The FinanSer: Film

TED is a conference that takes place once a year in the USA and is like a Davos for business. If you don't know what TED is, then check it out here. The show is also where many of the future technologies are revealed, and videotaped, as can be seen on the websit. TED also talks about a lot of BIG IDEAS TO CHANGE THE WORLD. Visiting the TED website provides you with a mine of possibilities for future ideas.

The Show is attended on an invitation only basis, and this year takes place in Monterey, California, from 27th February to 1st March. Keynotes include Al Gore, Craig Venter, Amy Tan, Karen Armstrong, Yves Behar, Robert Ballard, Bob Geldof, Walter Isaacson, Isaac Mizrahi, Ben Zander and 40 more of the world's most insightful and inspiring speakers.

Tickets are like gold dust and you can never buy one ... until now.

TED are listing an eBay offer for 1 ticket. All proceeds go to the Open Architecture Network, an "online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design ... the goal of the network is to allow designers to work together in a whole new way, a way that enables 5 billion potential clients to access their skills and expertise. The network has a simple mission: to generate not one idea but the hundreds of thousands of design ideas needed to improve living conditions for all."

Bidding started at $10,000 and currently there are 30 bids valuing the ticket at $32,100. Strewth, £16,000 for a trade show ticket?

Mind you, they are offering a one-to-one lunch with Meg Ryan as part of the package. That's worth it on its own as she might do that scene from "When Harry met Sally" ... or could it be the Parky interview? You never know.

Other treats include a first-day cocktail with TED super-connector Sunny Bates and a coffee with the founder of ebay Pierre Omidyar. I wouldn't mind asking him why is the other Meg (Whitman) leaving then.

Have a nice time.

I know we aren't quite to 2008, but I wanted to get a jump on the FT's nominating committee with "Options, the secret life of Steve Jobs." Written by Fake Steve Jobs, who produces the wonderful Fake Steve blog and by day uses the name of Daniel Lyons and is allegedly a senior editor at Forbes. But you can't be sure.

He's hilarious with his depiction of the Steve Jobs ego, and his accounts of Steve sitting around gettting stoned with Oracle's Larry Ellison, and his accounts of venture capitalists ring true as well. At least they do to someone who has read about them.

A conversation with Virgin's Richard Branson:

Richard Branson

"We’re going to create a new section on Virgin Atlantic, right behind Upper Class, and call it iPod Class. The walls, the seat backs the seat cushions, the carpet, the bathrooms, everything in bloody shiny white, like you’re sitting smack inside an iPod. We throw in some fake Champagne and cheap sushi and bang up the fare prices by thirty percent…”

“Richard, I don’t get it. What’s the iPod connection?”

“Hrm, well, uh, yah, whatever, who knows, but it’s marketing, innit?”

On Bono

“He’s the only person I know who’s more self-absorbed than I am….But give Bono credit. He figured out something that I didn’t. One word: Africa. The place is like a miracle worker shrine, a whole continent filled with absolution. Touch it, and you’re healed.”

On Hollywood -- film and music.

“These aren’t engineers or inventors. They don’t create anything. They don’t build anything. All they do is make deal. They’re criminals, basically…These guys are like a cross between Tony Soprano, Bill Gates and the monster from Alien. Even when you catch them cheating they don’t apologize, they just move onto the next swindle. And they’re really good at it because they’ve bee doing it for so long. They’ve spent decades practicing on recording artists and actors and screenwriters…They’re like guys who steal purses from old ladies. It’s not that hard to do, but kind of person does it?”

It's a fun read, a pretty good plot, but it's the sections on a crusading prosecutor who wants to become governor, on Hilllary doing a fund-raising visit, on Al Gore trying to squirm his way off the board, that make the book so provocative and weirdly informative. Well, maybe just provocative.