As will Kara Swisher, who’s been going to TED since the dawn of time — check out her February 2000 coverage of “The Billionaires’ Dinner” — though she assures me that the yearly dose of techno-optimism is enough to drive her to drink bottled water and drive an SUV.

Meanwhile, I expect to report back to you on some of the most interesting sessions before they are released online and shoot to viral video fame.

TED curates a potpourri of talks and performances on technology, entertainment and design (which is where its name comes from). In recent years, the conference has gotten larger and gained fame through the release of talks online, and the facilitation of independently organized “TEDx” events around the world.

This year’s TED theme is “Full Spectrum,” which is pretty vague, but it looks like there will be some trends around urban planning, robots and climate change.

At the risk of extracting one part from the greater whole, I delved into the program and pulled up some of the talks that look to be more techie, at least on the surface. Here they are:

Sarah Parcak is a “space archeologist” who uses satellite images to find archeological sites.

Peter Diamandis is chairman of the X Prize and Singularity University, and just wrote the book “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.”

Henrik Scharfe studies people’s interactions with robots, with the help of one that looks just like him.

You may remember DARPA Director Regina Dugan as the surprise hit of our D9 conference last year.

Jack Choi is CEO of Anatomage, which makes 3-D anatomy-imaging software.

Donald Sadoway is an MIT professor who has made a battery using “liquid metal.”

Vijay Kumar is a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies multi-robot formations.

T. Boone Pickens is the oil baron who now supports alternative sources of energy.

Reid Hoffman is perhaps the TED speaker best-known to ATD readers, for his work founding and running LinkedIn, and now as an investor at Greylock Partners and co-author of “The Start-up of You.”

Former Microsoft marketer Lior Zoref is delivering “the first-ever crowdsourced TED talk.”

Jen Pahlka is founder of Code for America. She’ll also be keynoting SXSW in a couple weeks.

Frank Warren created the community confession blog PostSecret.

MIT professor Sherry Turkle wrote “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.”

David Kelley founded IDEO and Stanford’s D School.

John Hodgman is a PC. His latest book is “That Is All.”

Jared Ficklin works at frog design and visualizes music.

Bill Nye is the Science Guy.

Cesar Kuriyama edits together one second of video from every day of his life.

Whew, that’s already a lot — and I’m sure there will be offstage demos and shenanigans to write about, too. Let me know what you want to hear about most.

RELATED POSTS:

• Put Down the Phone and Learn to Be Alone (And to Listen), Says Sherry Turkle at TED
• A TED View of the Future: Hypersonic Gliders, Liquid Batteries and Flying Robots
• At TED, Susan Cain Tells Business Leaders: Honor Thy Introverts
• TED Tech Preview: Robots, Crowdsourcing and Bill Nye

Oh dear, oilman T. Boone Pickens has apparently been Yanged.

That sounds like something that would happen out on the back 40 of a Texas ranch that no one in the clan ever discusses in polite company.

Actually, losing about $50 million is also something moneymen like Pickens don’t like to talk about either, even if he is as rich as can be.

Of course, in dumping his 10 million shares so precipitously, Pickens’s parting shot showed exactly what Yahoo’s big weakness is as the company heads into its annual meeting this Friday: an increasingly depressed stock.

Indeed, because of Pickens’s departure as an investor, Yahoo (YHOO) shares dropped just below the dangerous $20 a share level yesterday to $19.71, not far off the $19.18 price that prompted Microsoft (MSFT) to attack in February.

Yahoo shares are now just holding onto the edge at $20.05 this morning.

This is perhaps Yahoo’s biggest external problem. While the stock has shown resilience of really dipping to the mid-teens, if the shares drop that far, Pickens will look attractive compared with the kind of vulture investors who will show up to pick at Yahoo.

While Yahoo’s assets add up to $20 or more per share on a cash basis, staying above this threshold has largely been predicated on the fact that investors imagine some deal, any deal, between Yahoo and Microsoft in the future.

Such a deal might be the right move, but investors should probably accept the fact that it might never happen and that Yahoo and Microsoft will keep their digital efforts solo.

That’s the trap Pickens wandered right into like a particularly clueless bear.

And while Pickens took aim at Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang at an editorial board meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, noting, “I think that Yahoo management was pathetic,” the fault is entirely Pickens’s own in greedily following along with activist investor and longtime crony Carl Icahn.

Pickens had bought a pile of shares in May, after Icahn announced his intention to wage a proxy fight against Yahoo and force it into a sale of some sort to Microsoft.

One problem: Yahoo and Microsoft execs did not go along with the grand idea of enriching either Pickens or Icahn, who aren’t exactly digitally inclined.

That’s no negative really, except to say that the Internet space is not quite the same as oil or, really, most other industries yet.

Despite the struggles of Yahoo and Microsoft against the more powerful Google (GOOG), the Internet remains a fast-growing industry with many options.

In other words, not quite ripe enough for takeover artists’, well, pickin’.

Today Pickens is wishing he’d known a bit more. Outraged over the company’s bungling of the Microsoft (MSFT) bid, the investor has sold his entire stake in Yahoo. At a loss. Said Pickens, “I think that Yahoo management was pathetic.”

Harsh words, and ones that will no doubt still be ringing in investors’ ears at Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting for Friday.

Is it just me or did anyone else find the T. Boone Pickens (pictured here) quote about why he bought 10 million shares in Yahoo a little scary and a lot appalling?

“The only thing I know about Yahoo is what [CNBC Host] David [Faber] just told me, and that Carl Icahn is a big shareholder,” said the folksy chairman of BP Capital yesterday.

Yes, Icahn, the well-known Internet expert!

Actually, all the Luddite-leaning Icahn knows is how to squeeze money out of desperate and troubled companies (most of whom, to be fair, deserve the squeeze).

Which is why the entry into the game of all the corporate raider’s vulture-ish pals should be very, very disturbing to Yahoo CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang.

Because, whether or not Yahoo (YHOO) liked the unsolicited takeover incursion of Microsoft (MSFT), at least it is a technology company that valued and appreciated and understood the intricacies of Yahoo’s business.

Icahn, with all the delicacy of a meat grinder, would just as soon dismember Yahoo, if he got control and could not easily turn around and sell it off to Microsoft.

And, although there are a lot of lousy ways this situation could eventually turn out, that is perhaps the lousiest.

This morning Pickens, a legendary Texas oil and gas entrepreneur, said he’s bought up 10 million shares of Yahoo–a little less than 1% of the company. Why? Because Icahn invested in Yahoo first. “Carl Icahn is a smart guy,” Pickens said today in an interview with CBNC. “He does great things for shareholders and now I’m a shareholder. When I saw what he did, I jumped in behind him. … The only thing I know about Yahoo is what [CNBC Host] David [Faber] just told me, and that Carl Icahn is a big shareholder.”