When Is Video Face-to-Face?

Adrian Segar has written a very thoughtful post about the story about crowdsourcing I wrote for our September issue, and on a story on the same topic by Michelle Bruno.

Adrian’s post also tipped me off to a newly posted TEDTalk by TED founder Chris Anderson. In it, Anderson talks about the significance of the growth of online video and its revolutionary potential for "crowd accelerated innovation."

It's good stuff. Anderson includes some wonderful stories about how video is fueling innovation in fields as diverse as dance and community development.

But Anderson’s points about video also got me thinking about the definition of "face-to-face" communication. People watch TEDTalks as much for the non-verbal information they contain as for the ideas, Anderson said. Most of the speakers' ideas have already been expressed elsewhere, he said, but it is in the nonverbal portion of TEDTalks that there is “serious magic.” That magic occurs, it seems to me, between the speaker and his immediate audience. Would TEDTalks be as popular as they are without TED conferences?