Today I’m off to the TED conference in Long Beach. If past years are any indication, it’ll be five straight days of ideas, short and intense conversations, seeing old friends and meeting some amazing people. (It should be a pretty busy week as well, with my new book hitting stores this week and lots of media and promotions to be done while I’m there!) I feel privileged and grateful that Chris Anderson has made it possible for me to attend TED on scholarship.

It also gives me the chance to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: answer the question, What would TED be like if I organized one? What would my TED be?

Luckily, with video of online talks so widely available now (in some real measure because of TED’s decision to make its own talks freely available on line), I can do more than list speaker’s names: I can show you their talks. (You can play this game, too: in fact, I think it would be really fun to see what line-ups you come up with for your own TEDs!)

So, here it is. TEDAlex2011. My theme would be “A Machine for Making Futures” and it would be all about cities and how they’re changing us, and changing the future. Enjoy!

Hans Rosling on peak population and the rise of the global middle class

Stockholm Environment Institute’s Johan Rockström on planetary boundaries

Photographer Ed Burtynsky on our manufactured landscapes

Alex Steffen on Carbon-Neutral Cities

Rob Adams remakes Melbourne’s suburbs into dense walkable corridors

Jaime Lerner: The city is not a problem, it’s a solution

Al Gore updates an Inconvenient Truth

Designer Natalie Jerimajenko on urban environments

Architect Bjarke Ingels, Copenhagen’s futures designer

Architect Bill Dunster, zero-energy building pioneer (whom someone ought to shoot a better video of…)

Futureproofing the City: ZEDfactory; Foster + Partners; R/E/D from The Architecture Foundation on Vimeo.

Bruce Sterling on mobile technologies and the future of the urban poor

Bruce Sterling "Mobiles and the urban poor" (Lift08 Asia EN)
Uploaded by liftconference. – Videos of the latest science discoveries and tech.

Designer Christien Meindertsma, author of “Pig 05049″

Rachel Botsman on sharing systems

Denise Caruso wants you to think smarter about risk

Thinking About Risk – Denise Caruso – PICNIC ’10 from PICNIC Festival on Vimeo.

Jared Diamond on how societies fail

Bill Gates on innovating to zero-carbon energy

Cary Fowler on saving the world’s seeds

Adam Greenfield on the long here, the big now

Adam Greenfield at PICNIC08: The Long Here, the Big Now, and other tales of the networked city from PICNIC Festival on Vimeo.

Dan Hill on making visible the invisible

Dan Hill-Keynote: New Soft City from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Kevin Slavin on the algorithms that run our lives

Janine Benyus on Biomimicry

Robert Neuwirth on shadow cities

Magnus Larsen builds the great wall of sand