I did it! A whole week with no meat! It was tricky, I was tempted by chicken satay and crispy duck and all sorts of yummy goodness and good yummyness. However, my attitude remains unchanged and the fact is I LOVE meat, but I am just not prepared to endorse mass production, ill treatment and extensive processing of my food. Because of this I am now a pescetarian – an eater of fish and seafood but no meat, however, because I don’t object to eating meat, just it’s treatment and processing, I have included a get out clause for eating the tasty goodness of flesh. I will only eat meat that has come from a local source and is organically produced. As you can see, this is not a ‘meat is murder’ type of diet, but a ‘commercial production of animal flesh is environmentally damaging and degrades the respect that meat and its production chain deserve’ type thing.

So there! Health win, local farmer win, planet win…

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.

These videos are in no particular order, but they all strike a profound chord in my soul. If you don’t know TED.com , then you NEED to go there NOW. Right Now. Just go… really. Now….

Shea Hembrey: How I became 100 artists

Anthony Atala: Printing a human kidney

Roger Ebert: Remaking my voice

(warning: this can be a bit of a *sniff*, *wipes ‘dust’ from eyes* video)

Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter …

JR’s TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside out

RIP Steve Jobs

Rest In Peace, Steve Jobs, 1955-2011.

Its a sad day today as the man who changed the face of personal music players, mobile computing and application delivery passed away today. While it only took about an hour before the ‘iSad’ and ‘I thought an apple a day kept the doctor away’ jokes started flowing across the social media platforms, we should all remember the huge impact Steve Jobs has had on our current culture. This is the man who came up with a set of headphones so definitive that you could tell the branding from a block away. Just take a look next time you are on the bus at the number of people with those little white earbuds in. I’ll put money on the fact that it’s at least 50% of the people wearing headphones. The little spinny wheel on the first iPods broke the mold on user interfaces, while touch and multi-touch screens, even though they’ve existed before apple started using them, are almost excusively thought of as an Apple thing. Even if you hold a tablet in your hand, people automatically think it’s an iPad.

So, what will happen to Apple? The King of creative is dead. Who will take over and will we see the same level of innovation we have come to expect? I’m going to sign off now with a thank you. Thank you Mr Jobs for my iPhone. Thanks for my MacBook Pro on which I type this. Thanks for my iPods, my powerbooks and our iMac. Thanks for the tiny little battery state lights on the side of my laptop. Thanks for Maglock power connectors and thanks for making software downloadable, disposable and affordable. RIP Steve Jobs. *Sniff*

It also contains a link to this great Australian based planting calendar 

I also found this great little video about the re-localisation of food that says a lot without saying much….

http://www.milkwood.net

On my nightly dog walks I fire up my daily dose of inspiration and emotional indulgence with a Ted talk or two, and tonight’s was a bit of eye opener. Josette Sheeran, head of the UN World Food Program, questions why people go hungry, why a child dies every ten seconds from starvation and why there is more than enough food to go around but it just doesn’t make it to those who need it. If you have a spare 20 minutes I highly recommend you watch it.

Also, did I mention I’m off to TEDx Brisbane? Excited much?

Image and video courtesy of Ted.com

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