Friday, June 13, 2008

Subset of famous TED event may settle in Newport

By Ryan McBride

Local entrepreneur Marc Hodosh says he plans to relaunch what had been a high-profile conference focused on the confluence of health care, communication, medical technology and business.

It’s been almost four years since the conference known as TEDMED brought together hundreds of leaders from medicine, technology and other disciplines to TEDMED 2004 in Charleston, S.C. Now Hodosh has taken over the three-day conference with the event’s founder and best-selling author Richard Saul Wurman as a partner, and they plan to host the event in fall 2009, potentially in Newport, R.I., Hodosh said.

“I think (Wurman) realized that this is something that he didn’t want to go away, and it’s a big opportunity,” said Hodosh, a Brookline resident.

The TEDMED gathering is part of a lineage of the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conferences, which have attracted such speakers as Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, former President Bill Clinton and U2 front man Bono. Wurman launched the conferences in 1984 and sold rights to the TED business, except for TEDMED, to publishing entrepreneur Chris Anderson in 2001. Anderson continues to spearhead the other TED events.

Enter Hodosh, who formed a Brookline company, TED MED Inc., on May 9 as the new operating entity behind the planned conference, according to state records. He said he plans to continue his work as senior director of the Archon X-Prize for Genomics, which is awarding $10 million for a group that reduces the cost and time of sequencing human genomes, and as chairman of the Boston FIRST robotics competition, to spur students interest in science and technology.

Saul Kaplan, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp., said he attended the last TEDMED in 2004 and has spoken to Wurman and Hodosh about their plans to relaunch the event, potentially in the Ocean State.

“(Wurman) created one of the world’s greatest innovation conferences when he launched TED,” said Kaplan.

Wurman is a Rhode Island resident and has served as an adviser, host and co-chairman of an annual conference in Providence, R.I., called the BIF Collaborative Innovation Summit, of which Kaplan is a founder.