This year's TEDxShanghai, an independently organized offspring of the annual TED showcase of creative ideas, concluded its seventh edition with a record high crowd of 2,400 people.

TEDx talks are an initiative by the US-based organization called TED which works under the slogan "ideas worth sharing". TED was first established in 1984 as a one-off conference that touched on the topics of Technology, Entertainment and Design. It was only in 1990 that the conference was revived and it today spans a slew of topics from social issues to business and science.

This year's TEDxShanghai, which was held at the conference room of the soon-to-be-opened Shanghai Tower, ran for nearly 11 hours and featured 24 speakers from both home and abroad. The event was also streamed live to internet users around the world and received a viewership of more than 10,000 on the same day.

Speakers this year included Wang Shu, the 2012 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Tan Yuanyuan, China's most accomplished ballerina and the youngest principal dancer of the San Francisco Ballet, as well as Patricia Field, the New York costume designer who has worked as the stylist for television series like Sex and the City.

The theme for this year's talk was "balance", an element that is "very much missed in the great time of dualities", according to Richard Hsu, the co-founder of TEDxShanghai. Hsu was among the first in China to obtain a free license from TED in 2009 and has been promoting the event ever since.

"The talk is as much about discussing the achievement of balance as it is about showing the balanced work-life style of the speakers," said Hsu, a native of Shanghai who used to work in the advertising industry.

During the afternoon session, Wang raised the question about how skyscrapers and urbanization have "de-characterized" and unified most of the cities in China. Gu Jianping, the chief planner of Shanghai Tower, followed up on the topic by sharing the significance of building a "vertical Bund" (the height of the building is same as the width of Shanghai's most historical landmark, the Bund) in China's financial capital today.

Hsu noted that what has characterized TEDxShanghai from many of its sister events in China and around the world is its well-balanced combination of East and West, a tradition Hsu and his team have been trying to maintain since seven years ago.

While tickets to the TED annual global event in Vancouver, Canada cost a whopping $7,500 dollars each, 75 percent of the audience at the Shanghai event had received free passes from the organizers. The remaining 25 percent were attendees who had registered the earliest for tickets online.

It is estimated that there are around 120 TEDx events held in China every year and the locations they are held in can range from a street to a campus.

"There is a surging interest in the event. When I first brought it to China, nobody knew what TED was about," said Hsu. Now there are crowds of die-hard fans waiting outside the event hall every year hoping to gain admission without a ticket.

"Sometimes I feel more like a big brother. And it's good to see all the TEDx organizers in China doing it right. Essentially, it's not about the professional lighting or photography, but spreading the ideas."

xujunqian@chinadaily.com.cn