February 28, 2008 :TED Conference

You know your conference has hit the big time when Robin Williams
steps up from the audience to fill the dead air during an
embarrassing, show-stopping technical glitch.

The actor-comedian was in the audience at the TED (Technology,
Entertainment and Design) conference in Monterey, Calif. last night
when a technical glitch halted a panel discussion that was being
recorded by the BBC. (Apologies for the blurry image at right; it was
snapped quickly by my seatmate, Paul Holland, who graciously e-mailed
me the pic).

Williams was sitting in the row behind me at the panel discussion on
new media. Before the host, BBC World presenter Matt Frei, could
finish his introduction of panelist Sergey Brin from Google, he
announced there was a technical issue. Frei didn't quite know what to
do with the empty air while waiting for a fix and joked that the
voice in his earphone (the producer) was telling him a long,
elaborate political joke about Poland.

That's when a voice behind me spoke up, presumably a heckler, and
began speaking loudly as if he were conducting a live news feed,
joking that he was reporting live from TED but "couldn't understand a
fucking word" and was "wondering why at a technology conference
everything is running so shittily" (at least that's the word I think
he used; it was hard to hear the last word through the audience's
laughter).

The crowd by then had realized it was Williams. Encouraged by their
reaction, he continued reporting to some unseen BBC anchorman from
his seat: "Well, they said they found the wire, but it's not plugged
in."

Williams was then invited to take the stage and the crowd roared. He
spent the next ten minutes or so riffing on Stephen Hawking (who
spoke at TED earlier in the day from Cambridge, England) and the end
of the universe -- which will take place "exactly in one hour," he
said, looking at his watch.

He joked again about the technical glitch, indicating that although
the BBC wasn't working, audience members "with their phones are
going, 'I'm getting all of this!'" And it was true. Dozens of people
were capturing the stand-up act on their phones.

He riffed about a new Apple product called the "iWhy?" and a few
seconds later said he had just one question about the British royal
family: "All that money and no dental plan," he deadpanned, which got
a lot of laughs and a few sympathetic nods toward the BBC presenter
sitting behind him (who appeared to have perfectly fine dental
hygiene).

He didn't spare panelist Brin and Google, noting that if you walk
into Google you see everyone in front of their computer sitting on
exercise balls, "which I think is how they're hatching new employees."

And Israel got a mention as well, since it was launching a new
internet service called "Net-an-yahoo" (riffing on Bibi Netanyahu's
name).

The glitch was finally fixed but not before TED curator Chris
Anderson asked Williams to come back the next day and lend the
proceedings some more of his good cheer.

The panel discussion that ensued was interesting and included, in
addition to Brin, Queen Noor of Jordan, Watergate-buster Carl
Bernstein, Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert and Ugandan journalist
Andrew Mwenda. The BBC will broadcast the panel discussion sometime
in March.

I'll report back with more from TED later.