Until last week I’d only ever watched it online, mostly by myself late at night (or – if I felt like a bit of a pick-me-up – during the day), and mostly at weekends. A small group of friends would sometimes refer a good clip, but I would usually hunt for the posts that piqued my interest and then carefully select what I was in the mood for. Every now and then I would invite my partner to watch with me.
Then I was asked to participate in the process. I was even invited to watch a live session on a Thursday afternoon. This was a whole new level. I was in the moment, sharing the excitement with a room full of strangers, all of whom were there for the same reasons I was – to listen to a line-up of interesting people talking about interesting stuff on the TEDx Johannesburg stage.
TEDx is part of the greater TED movement, which aims to spread ideas in order to change attitudes, lives and the world.
The first TED Conference was held in 1984, initially focusing on the fields of technology, entertainment and design, which is where the T, the E and the D come from. Since then TED has expanded beyond its initial content scope and become a global phenomenon. The annual TED Conference is a four-day event that attracts more than 50 speakers; the video site has had millions upon millions of views; there are global events, events that focus on women and the youth, innovation, translation … it’s a massive franchise.
TEDx is a programme that operates at a local level in cities and towns around the world. South Africa has run TEDx events in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Soweto, and TEDx Pretoria is set to take place soon.
I became marginally aware of TEDx in 2011, when a group of Flowstars attended TEDx Cape Town. Then some of our friends from Etana Insurance went to (and spoke at!) the TEDActive event in Palm Springs, USA and came back raving about it. These same friends recommended us to the TEDx Joburg organisers as good communication trainers, and Kate Turkington and I spent some time with a group of the speakers ahead of the event, which was how I ended up scoring a ticket.
What I loved about #TEDxJoburg was the variety of ideas that were shared, and that each talk was only 12 minutes long. I sat mesmerised for eight hours, waiting to get bored, but that never happened. Poetry, scuba diving, gingers, education, lipstick art, civic activism, rhinos, cyber-spying, climate change, African cryptography, stokvels, the Square Kilometre Array … these were just some of the topics that were brought to life by the speakers. We were also treated to some great Zimbabwean Chimurenga music, which had the audience engaged in much rhythmic head-nodding and foot-tapping.
One of the most fascinating speakers for me was Tony Lopes, who has built a bunch of low-tech gadgets out of paint tins, Coke bottles and bits of plastic, that allow him to run his house on no more than R100 worth of electricity every month. He’s also converted an old diesel engine to propel his car on used vegetable oil, which he gets donated to him by restaurants (who would otherwise pour it down the drain). These are cheap and sustainable energy initiatives that he’s introduced to communities in many parts of South Africa, making a difference in hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.
I also loved being able to tweet all day without being judged. Apparently, at the bigger TED events, audiences are asked not to – but everybody does, anyway.
OK, there was one person who judged me just a little bit: an old friend who believes there’s no such thing as multi-tasking. “You can’t listen and write at the same time,” she told me, in her very gentle way, from the seat next to mine. “It’s neurologically impossible.”
She will be joining us for social networking lessons sometime in the near future, so that we can give her some insight into the concept and get her excited about tweeting.
But I digress. This is a blog about TEDx and how awesome it was.
It’s difficult to capture the essence of the event in one statement. Thati Mokgoro, curator of the Joburg event, summed it up rather nicely when I asked him how they go about selecting speakers: “We don’t want people who call themselves motivational speakers,” he said. “We look for speakers who are able to inspire naturally through their stories and their ideas.”
I certainly came away inspired. We have so much good stuff going on right here on our doorstep. As Yene Assegid reminded us in her talk: “We just need to dare to take one step. Extraordinary change doesn’t have to be at a global level. It can be very small.”
Visit TED.com for more info on upcoming TEDx events and to watch some of the previous TEDTalks. But be warned, it’s addictive.
Some of my favourites, to get you started:
- Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions
- Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity
- Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
- JJ Abrams: The mystery box
- Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong