At mHealth, Ted Turner in full bloom

WASHINGTON — Frequent conference goers appreciate the rare keynote session that delivers a dose of comic relief. Conventions are, at their core, drab affairs with long, snaking lines queued up behind the coffee urns, corporate totebag giveaways and thick programs describing sessions with titles that read like a catalog of senior thesis submissions. It’s a sad sameness.

So imagine the delight of the crowd assembled in the cavernous ballroom at the Washington Convention Center when Ted Turner, the outspoken billionaire media pioneer, free-associated his way through an on-stage interview, inveighing with gruff levity on topics ranging from his crusade for a nuclear-free world to his efforts to show up the U.S. government for not paying its dues to the United Nations.

Turner was speaking at the [mHealth Summit](http://www.mhealthsummit.org/), a serious conference on the [important subject of applying mobile technology to improve health care](http://www.enterprisemobiletoday.com/news/article.php/3911971/Feds-Describe-Major-Push-for-Mobile-Health-Apps.htm) in the United States and around the world. As a committed philanthropist — including his role as founder, benefactor and current chairman of the United Nations Foundation — Turner has been active in working to improve global health care.

But when on the public stage, he isn’t one to stay in his lane.