Bermuda’s offshoot of the global idea-sharing conference TED is becoming a tourism attraction for the Island, organisers say — and creating a host of local partnerships.

The annual gathering, which aims to stimulate new conversations through a diverse panel of innovative speakers, drew close to 1,000 attendees on Saturday.

Organiser John Narraway told The Royal Gazette TEDx Bermuda brought “knowledge tourism” to the Island — in part because the speakers invited were generally people who hadn’t spoken at other conferences.

“The speakers also generate their own people who come down,” he said. “Jinichi Kawakami, the ninja from Japan, had three disciples travelling with him, plus another three in his group.”

Mr Narraway added: “Every speaker, while they’re here, we do our best to match up with interested people. We know a lot of important relationships are created as a result.”

He gave the example of “sea farmer” Bret Smith, whose modestly-priced platform anchored to a patch of the Long Island Sound produces a rich variety of fish and seaweed.

Besieged after this weekend’s conference by interested locals, Mr Smith eventually ran out of business cards — and is reported to have discussed vertical sea farming with Bermuda’s own Tom Wadson — while chronic disease specialist Robert Lustig took his anti-sugar message to an insurance forum on Monday.

Mr Narraway pointed out that the 2011 TEDx forged a lasting friendship between local historical builder Larry Mills with fellow speaker Larry Sass, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Architecture Department.

“Building these kinds of relationships is what we’re all about,” Mr Narraway said.

Fellow TEDx organiser Kim Carter said a fruitful meeting at the 2011 conference with filmmaker Mike Ramsdell had resulted in the guest speaker securing major Bermuda investment for his film “When Elephants Fight” — which is set to premiere next year.

“TEDx strikes a chord with the Bermuda public,” Mr Carter said. “There’s a lot of appetite here for this type of international conference.”

TEDx committee member Niklas Traub said the latest conference had attracted a healthy complement of visitors from the US East Coast.

“There was a lot of interest from overseas in the Google Glasses speaker, Rafael Grossman, and Dr Lustig as well,” Mr Traub noted. “A few doctors came in for that part.”

A strong proponent of growing TEDx further, Mr Traub said he’d urged US contacts of his own to attend the event.

“That’s one side of it we’d really like to grow,” he said. “A lot of people don’t want to just go on holiday and sit on the beach. They want to meet interesting people, and have an experience.”

Noting the intense buzz generated by Mr Smith’s sea farming lecture, Mr Traub said the topic had been chosen in large part because it would “plant a seed of ideas” in Bermuda.

He said the impact of guest Natalie Kuldell, who spoke on synthetic biology at the conference, could help pave the way for biotech companies looking for offshore sites to settle in Bermuda.

“I don’t think people realise there’s a lot of knowledge-based industries in the world that don’t have to be anywhere per se, that could be very interested in locating here,” he said.

Added Mr Traub: “We hope in the future to get speakers staying here longer, getting more engagement going.”

Graham Pewter, CEO of corporate sponsor Catlin, pointed to the recent success story of the “Kids on the Reef” initiative which Catlin has assisted — a programme that brought former TEDx speaker Hanli Prinsloo, a champion free diver from South Africa, back to Bermuda to introduce local children to the experience of the deep ocean.

“We’re hoping to expand that in 2014,” Mr Pewter said. “And we can do more to develop that side of what happens outside the room. One thing about TEDx that’s not intentional is each year themes have tended to emerge. Speakers find a common message across three or four talks. It’s not by design, just from the alchemy that results.”

He added: “As a small island, a dot in the North Atlantic, it’s easy to dismiss Bermuda as being irrelevant when it comes to the discourse about issues that really matter.

“The fact is, Bermuda is home to an extraordinary collection of individuals who either live here or who are passing through. When you bring TEDx here and get more than 900 people into a room together, and all of them have their own network of contacts, it starts ideas moving. It’s those networks that allow this place to be an important location for thought leadership.”