I read David Progue’s article recounting his experience at this year’s TED conference. (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design) It’s a four-day conference featuring “the most compelling, passionate (and) informed speakers you’ve ever heard.”

“Only 1,000 people can attend TED live (it’s in Monterey, California). The auditorium holds only 500 people; the rest sit downstairs in a comfortable “simulcast lounge” and watch on flat-panel high-definition TV sets. (So why don’t they hold the thing in a bigger theater? They tried. Last year, they held one afternoon’s talks in a Broadway-style theater. It was a disaster. The enormous hall drained all sense of intimacy, humanity and urgency from the speakers.)”

One thousand people…intimate? Okay—when you’re talking about speakers like Malcom Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink), Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and Peter Gabriel… yeah, I can see 1,000 people being “intimate.”

But me? After almost twenty years of creating comics in the small press, with an average readership of maybe one (or two?) hundred people, the idea of having an audience of 1,000 people is a far cry from being intimate.

Maybe if I spent more time writing, drawing, printing, distributing & promoting my comics and less time being “lost,” I’d have that audience of 1,000 and could stop bitching.