TED2005 is my first TED experience. Overall impressions ... the conference is very white and very male. Which I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by. But I am. My assumption is that the people that come to TED are some of the smartest, innovative, progressive people around. That doesn't mean, however, that they (necessarily) desire cultural diversity. Also, I think that coming from Canada, I have a higher expectation and baseline norm for cultural diversity. Out of the twenty speakers I have seen so far, only 5 have been women. These women are also doing double-duty as the non-white contingent. All the male speakers have been white. Three of the five women are non-white.
The audience seems to be a similar split, though quite possibly a larger ratio. The pre-TED session I was in, for each row of 12 to 16 attendees, on average one was a woman.
This is also a very heterosexual conference (full of "het drama" as I like to say). Day 1 the sessions were titled "Foreplay" and "Intimacy". Between speakers, video montages were shown, either a collection of film clips, commercials or a scene from Saturday Night Live. All of them depicted heterosexual (and white) "ideals" or "norms" of sexuality. Granted, they were meant to be humourous; however, I believe that it is quite telling when the only context for what is humourous is cast as sexual relations between a white man and a white woman.
As the TED guide says, knowing the context of the speakers (and presumably the audience) is important for understanding where they are coming from. And so the context for TED has been set for me. Individual speakers had incredible things to say, and it is important to focus on those things ... but still, I don't believe that TED will get the best of what the world has to offer until its own context is expanded.