I’ve become so used to being able to read about conferences and events online via the flying fingers of bloggers, that it’s a mild shock not to be able to find anything from TED Global in Oxford.

There have been a few reports by actual reporters, especially on the talks by big hitters like Dawkins, but little of the warp and weft of the threads of an event which the unstructured event notes of bloggers excel at capturing.

By coincidence I ran into Jyri, who had been in the UK attending TED Global, while waiting for my my flight back to Helsinki.

We spent the flight back chatting – and he told me that people with laptops had been asked to leave the front rows of the TED audience, as their LCD-bathed faces were disturbing the illustrious speakers.

How quaint!

In fact, all of TED seems like a quaint throwback to the mid-1990’s – from the lack of blogging/online participation to the wildly hubristic theme (‘Ideas big enough to change the world’) to the $4k price-tag.

Of course, all these factors are connected – the lack of online participation, the high-concept theme and price tag adding to the allure of the conference equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

And, all this of course, is just sourgrapery from someone incredibly envious of those who could attend – and someone who rather enjoyed the mid-1990’s…