TEDx Melbourne
Apr. 5th, 2010 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maxcelcatA few weekend's back I went to something called TEDx Melbourne. TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design", an organisation by that name runs multi-disciplinary conferences in the US and Europe every year, with the tag line "Ideas worth sharing".
And the "x" in the name stands for "independently organised".
The premise is simple. People with interesting ideas are asked to come along and give an 18 minute (no more, no matter how important you are) about some big ideas they have. The participants then talk about it with each other.
Here's one of the chaps who spoke in Melbourne:
I got invited along because I know some of the organisers through Twitter.
The whole event was chock full of ideas, so much so that I can only record a few of them. They had an interesting video from Temple Grandin, well known Autism activist amongst other things. Her presentation was a bit all over the place but interesting anyway. She talked about teaching autistic kids and as she put it "making use of them", since they're so bright and focused they can be directed to interesting taskts.
There was also a presentation about the future of medicine. It sounds like they'll be growing body parts in just a few years time.
The other speaker who was there in person was a chap called Pat Naughtin, who runs a company called Metrication Matters. He gave a surprisingly interesting presentation about... Metrication, the process of converting to the Metric system. Made some interesting points, for instance the amount of time students, particularly in the US, waste learning how to convert from one measurement system to another.
In between presentations we got into small groups and talked. It was really very interesting and quite lively. I also ended up following a whole swath of people who were twittering about the event with the same #TEDxMelbourne hash tag.
And the "x" in the name stands for "independently organised".
The premise is simple. People with interesting ideas are asked to come along and give an 18 minute (no more, no matter how important you are) about some big ideas they have. The participants then talk about it with each other.
Here's one of the chaps who spoke in Melbourne:
I got invited along because I know some of the organisers through Twitter.
The whole event was chock full of ideas, so much so that I can only record a few of them. They had an interesting video from Temple Grandin, well known Autism activist amongst other things. Her presentation was a bit all over the place but interesting anyway. She talked about teaching autistic kids and as she put it "making use of them", since they're so bright and focused they can be directed to interesting taskts.
There was also a presentation about the future of medicine. It sounds like they'll be growing body parts in just a few years time.
The other speaker who was there in person was a chap called Pat Naughtin, who runs a company called Metrication Matters. He gave a surprisingly interesting presentation about... Metrication, the process of converting to the Metric system. Made some interesting points, for instance the amount of time students, particularly in the US, waste learning how to convert from one measurement system to another.
In between presentations we got into small groups and talked. It was really very interesting and quite lively. I also ended up following a whole swath of people who were twittering about the event with the same #TEDxMelbourne hash tag.