Can your cellphone check your blood sugar? What does a wireless BandAid do? Is my pill networked? Can a videogame cure cancer? Will a robot care for my mom? Can an iPhone save my life?

And, of course, does synthetic skin feel gross?

The answer to the last question is yes, but it is also pretty astonishing to touch, as noted in one of the many tech-heavy talks at TEDMED, the medical and health-care conference, which has returned after a five-year hiatus, to Hotel Coronado near San Diego.

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Last week, BoomTown traveled to Long Beach, Calif., to attend the TED conference, a longtime gathering of digerati and others who have come to love its eclectic and outward-looking program.

The four-day TED2009, titled “The Great Unveiling,” included Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates unleashing a small swarm of mosquitoes in the hall, a long list of varied speakers and a whole lot of schmoozing.

Here is my belated video of the event, including my kids trying to steal a futuristic car.

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The well-known Technology, Entertainment, Design conference–better known to its techie fans as TED–will make its move from Monterey to Long Beach starting tomorrow night and will be celebrating its 25th anniversary.

TED2009 is called “The Great Unveiling,” with its eclectic speaker roster including: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, neurological anthropologist Oliver Sacks, writer Elizabeth Gilbert, tree researcher Nalani Nadkarni and Web political phenom Nate Silver.

But I am perhaps even more intrigued by the introduction this year of the TED Fellows program, whose participants have been picked because of the “world-changing potential of their work.”

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Here’s a video I made, which is a pastiche of scenes from a very interesting conference I attended last week in Los Angeles at the Getty Center called EG or Entertainment Gathering.

Originally created by legendary conference impresario Richard Saul Wurman (who named our D conference, in fact), the first EG took place two years ago [...]

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With the continued convergence of media and tech, I would be remiss if I did not mention the return of the very fine EG (The Entertainment Gathering) conference Dec. 2-4 at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Launched two years ago by impresario Richard Saul Wurman (who, by the way, named our own D conference), [...]

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