Rick Segal has a great write-up on how TEDGlobal compares against other previous events like Reboot 7 and Gnomedex 5.0 - mainly because of how Chris Anderson decided to cut an interesting conversation between speaker and atendee due to time constraints.

It is this inability to understand the needs of the audience that surprises me. I believe people who attend TEDGlobal are there for the idea sharing and debate, not about the tight schedule and the up-to-the-minute agenda.

You see, the reason’s pretty simple: when presenting an idea, you are imposing your view of a given subject to your audience - still, you can never be 100% sure that you’re on the same wavelength everybody else is in, even if you are a great speaker. What makes the gap between presented idea and the captured idea tighten (or close) is discussion. It is discussion and debate that makes an idea evolve, and become something else - something valuable. That’s where the value of a conference comes from, no more, no less.

TEDGlobal is important. It gets the A-list folks together (even though I strongly believe that’s not where the new ideas come from, most of the times). But the conversation, the debate, the idea exchange - that is essential.