Having just finished hosting TEDxDarwin, it was great to be a member of the audience of TEDxCanberra on 24 September 2011. To just be able to sit in a room with 300 other people and listen to a group of inspired and inspiring people share their ideas and then meet so many interesting people during the breaks.
To Stephen Collins (TEDxCanberra Licensee) and his team, Clare, Ruth, Lauren, Jo, Hannah, Vic, Dale, Sharen, Gavin and Jooann (the Core Team) and Jason, Tim, Allison, Hannah, Marie, Breanna, Paul, Meredith, Finn, Leigh, Richard and Tom (the On the Day Volunteers), outstanding job.
Now a bit about the speakers, their ideas and some words that grabbed my attention.
- Pierre Johannessen (Big Bang Ballers) told us about the importance of human interaction and connection. Pierre works through basketball, but his experience has shown that all the money and infrastructure in the world is not enough, we need to show people they are valued;
- Thomas Pogge in his reorganisation of the pharmaceutical industry reinforced the need to set the right incentives, in this case, funding for health impact;
- Annette Zhou and Richard Dear introduced the value of cross-disciplinary groups and the need for curiosity. As Sarah Jewell tweeted, “curiosity” was the word of the day;
- Emma Magenta talked about the importance of forgiveness, compassion and unconditional love;
- Rebecca Scott (Streat), a social entrepreneur, made us think about the power of our money by asking us to understand the stories behind what we spend our money on. Rebecca talked about the simple cup of coffee, but her idea applies to everything we spend our money on. We shouldn’t under estimate the power of our spending;
- Nick Ritar thinks that problems of society are problems on the human mind, the problems of ignorance and fear. “Permaculture = humans working with, not against, nature” by Bill Mollison. There are two small things everyone can do every day to make a difference to the environment: your No1s and No2s, yep that’s right, save your poo!;
- Sam Prince shared his journey and his amazing focus (www.1disease.org). Some key quotes: “Expand your life to the limits of your mind”, “Business is a race between time and your will”. You need to understand what you think is a basic human right and what is a basic human responsibility. Trust and relationships matter. If you have a dream or vision, people who can help are all around you;
- Matt Noffs made an interesting comment about whether there is a time for ideas [I think there is: to turn an idea into action takes the right combination of people, resources and will]. In addition to encouraging us to steal the idea of a Street University, Matt also suggested we wear cane toad shoes!
In addition to new ideas and new friends, I have taken away many ideas to feed into the planning for TEDxDarwin 2012.
best regards, Jason
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You inspire me.thank you!
Hey there Jason, thanks for coming along to TEDxCanberra and for your post. It was lovely to meet you! I’ll have to see if some of us can make it up north for TEDxDarwin!
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