If you are from Chennai, you'll know what the situation is like in there. At any point, in any such conference, people are constantly trying to brand themselves under the guise of 'contribution to the community'. They are always looking to market themselves at any cost, even though they know it is unethical.

I have visited a dozen such conferences and I can tell this without hesitation, even on a public stage. There is a huge difference in the mindset of the organizers over here (SF) and in Chennai.

Kiruba Shankar is also a clever marketer. I still remember the days when he used to flaunt about his TED talks on Facebook. In all honesty, people like him are the ones who degrade the value of TED.

Here's a still that crops of the 'X' in the TED X event. This was uploaded by Kiruba Shankar himself:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=194646852844

(or)

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/16461...

Anyone active within the Chennai community will tell you how this man is just a marketer and has no credentials or no 'achievements' good enough to give a speech at TED. And he is just one example.

It is important because, without having significant achievements up your sleeve, you are assuming

1) The audience are dumb enough. 2) You can talk what you want and get away with it.

Here is another example of a 'self-proclaimed' entrepreneur who runs just an SEO business (Ashwin Ramesh)

This guy was DRUNK when he gave this talk. I'm not joking, it's the truth. HE got drunk again with the organizer that night, anyone close to him and his organizer will confirm this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq768Cyeiew

All in all, though this is bad news, I think it's a very good move for the TED community on the whole.