::Updated at 4:25, with embedded video below of Clay Shirky giving a TED talk on how "social media can make history."

::@TEDxMidAtlantic news breaking on Twitter now....

The TED conference has been licensed to some independent organizers who want to bring a version of it to the Mid-Atlantic in November 2009. And by "Mid-Atlantic," they mean Baltimore, hon.

Here's the Website: http://tedxmidatlantic.com/

Admission will be free but limited to about 250 people. No word on location yet. The theme of the conference, according to @TEDxMidAtlantic's Twitter feed: "The Power of Stories" - Humans organize the world in stories; it's how we perceive design and art. Every design tells a story.

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

The event is being pulled together by Dave Troy, a Baltimore-based entrepreneur who helped organize the recent Barcamp Baltimore event. Troy has also started the Beehive Baltimore, a coworking space, and the Baltimore Angels, an investor group focused on funding promising Baltimore-area startups.

It's the latest event we've seen in the Baltimore area that's targeting the region's creative and entrepreneurial classes, to pull them together to bounce big ideas off each other. (We've had SocDevCampEast, Ignite Baltimore, Barcamp Baltimore, WordCamp Mid-Atlantic -- all in the span of about 18 months.)

How badly does Baltimore need stuff like this? What do you think?

Meantime, you can watch Clay Shirky talk about how social media is transforming our society.