One year after TEDWomen made Atlanta and the Woodruff Arts Center its home, the conference is changing its name, focus and location.
TED, which stands for technology, entertainment and design, is a global family of conferences and educational content. TEDWomen was one of its flagship conferences and started in 2010, at a time when most of the speakers at the TED conferences were men, in order to give a platform to women.
Unlike the main TED conference, which has been held in Vancouver, Canada, since 2014, TEDWomen has rotated around the country. To deepen its impact, TEDWomen chose Atlanta as its first multi-year host city and planned to hold the conference at Woodruff through at least 2025.
Credit: Mirtha Donastorg
Credit: Mirtha Donastorg
But plans have changed. TEDWomen is now TEDNext and will be focused beyond gender on “how to become the builder of your own future,” Monique Ruff-Bell, TED’s chief program and strategy officer, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Talks will include what divorce teaches us, how to become a better leader, reimagining activism and more. Author Malcolm Gladwell and actress Natasha Rothwell are among the speakers announced so far. There will also be a TEDWomen track within TEDNext, Ruff-Bell said.
The not-for-profit decided to change the conference’s name after 14 years because organizers wanted to attract more people.
“No matter how much we said, you know, TEDWomen was open to all, that wasn’t always the case as more people from different backgrounds, different communities would still be apprehensive about coming to something called TEDWomen,” Ruff-Bell said.
It is also moving from Woodruff to Pullman Yards in Kirkwood because the Midtown arts complex has construction scheduled during the dates of the conference, Ruff-Bell said.
Just this year, Pullman has hosted the hugely popular Balloon Museum, a campaign rally for President Joe Biden in March and the filming of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” at the 27-acre campus.
Adam Rosenfelt, owner of Pullman, said TEDNext solidifies his warehouse-turned-event space as a “culturally significant destination, both for the city, regionally and quite frankly, nationally.”
Ruff-Bell said this year they are expecting about 1,200 attendees, similar to last year’s crowd.
But unlike last year, Pullman is in a much more residential area. Neighbors have complained about the traffic and parking challenges that have come with the space’s popular events.
Rosenfelt said those challenges have come from events that bring 10,000 or more people to the complex, so he doesn’t anticipate TEDNext being a problem.
TED sees Pullman as a “blank slate” that the group gets to play with, Ruff-Bell said, which means this year’s event will have not only a new name and new location, but potentially a new feel.
“We’re used to going to theaters, convention centers, where you have to just deal with certain structures and work around it. We’re calling this now the TED playground. We get to try things and do things that we rarely get to do from a creativity perspective,” she said.
Tickets for the October 22-24 conference are $2,800.
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