TEDx Debrief
What a day it was! TEDx Brisbane was AWESOME! Great people, great speakers, free coffee and even a free lunch! Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?
The theme of the day was ‘All you need is…’ and each speaker began their talk with their answer. These ranged from hope to courage, from adversity to imagination, and every guest at the TEDx event had their own on their badget which proved to be an excellent icebreaker. Mine was, of course, Gaffa tape.
At the start of the day was a traditional welcome to the land followed by Frank Ansell who’s an aboriginal healer and lawman. Frank proceeded to really set the mood of the day with his holistic view of healing and water. Moving through the speakers we went from the slight insanity of Edward Harran being, well, a little insane, but amusingly interesting to the fantastic Hazel Dooney, who, as a highly sort after Australian artist said a big fuck you to the established art dealer/gallery world and went solo leveraging the internet to deliver her work directly into the hands of fans.
Paul Osuch gave a fascinating talk about the Anywhere Theatre Festival which puts money directly into the actors hands and does away with the huge production support staff. Being in this industry and being part of the production support staff I was surprised to find myself completely agreeing that the bulbous networks running theatres are over sized and actually restrict the artists earning potential. This concept of leveraging the long tail of theatre to produce multiple bespoke plays is a brilliant one and I can firmly say that next year I shall be putting my money where my mouth is and visiting a number of these micro-plays.
Mara Bun, Wilf and Cathy Henkel gave rousing calls to action for the environment – so rousing in fact that I have decided to actually act for a change and have given up meat, except for local organically produced meat. Cathy Henkel’s amazing 3D documentary project in Borneo -100 days in the jungle- anactionmovie.com looks to be stunning and her plans to start up a satellite based ‘adopt a jungle’ monitoring system are brilliant.
Nearing the end of the day, Eva Cox gave a rousing sykpe talk that got a standing ovation with calls to put people before money and society before economy. Her talk resonated through the room and reverberated and swelled into a vast round of applause. This is one talk I must revisit. As soon as it goes live on TED.com I’ll post it.
The very last two talks were Lyndsey Pollock and Jeff Waldman. Lyndsey made instruments out of hoses and rubber gloves, culminating in a set of bagpipes and a carrot clarinet demonstrating that all you need is a little imagination. Jeff Waldmen then took us through his amazing ‘swings’ project. Basically he puts up swings, lots of swings. A piece of rope and a bit of wood brings out the forgotten childhood in adults and the never-discovered child in those children in Bolivia who never got to have a childhood because they were working.
All in all a fascinating day and a number of great connections were made. I even made some new friends who are as passionate about the environment and change as I am. If you have never been to TED.com, go now and find a talk. Get inspired.