TEDx Auckland — 2013 remembered, bring on 2014!

While buying my ticket to TEDx Auckland 2014 remembered I’d never gotten around to writing a post about the 2013 event.

Earlier this year there was some flack about TED, prompted it seems by some ‘dubious’ TEDx events. From my experience at TEDx Auckland it certainly wasn’t one of those. The Aotea Centre was full, the speakers uniformly excellent and it covered a wide variety of topics.

In his intro MC @VaughnDavis (below right) made a comment which summed up my TEDx experience. He said with TED on-line you tend to self censor, focus on the familiar, topics of interest. With the live event you can’t and it is a good thing. It was, as he suggested, the unexpected which made a real impression.

For example I’m not a fan of poetry but one memorable session was Grace Taylor’s Rising Voices (Youth poetry movement) and the powerful performances by Marina Alefosio & Brian Gashema. They’d never been on stage before and got a thoroughly deserved standing ovation from the full house Aotea Centre audience.

I had heard of Dr Richard Nunns but never seen him lecture. His style was awesome, building from a slow, seemingly rambling, start to an amazing mash up of traditional Maori instrumentals, a string quartet and hip-hop (with King Kapisi). Pity there isn’t a video of that session

My notes

Rather than trying to review all the sessions in detail, it was a while ago!, here are the notes I made on the day with a few [added comments]. I’ve added links to the actual presentation page, most of which have videos, if you want to see what inspired them.

The photos are all mine (my TEDx 2013 Album on Flickr). It was nice to be at an event which encouraged photography, tweeting and recording!

• Jimmi Hunt – The worlds Biggest Waterslide - 
  • Love the suit
  • Built the giant slide, lilo’ed down the Waikato River
  • Depression 20% in NZ
  • Ask for help livemoreawesome.com
  
• Lillian Grace – Know your country: Wiki NZ
  • Presents data without analysis to remove bias [does that follow or does analysis sometimes reduce bias?]
  • Form your argument from solid data
  
• Dr Richard Nunns – rediscovering traditional Maori music 
  • 1950's only a few Maori instruments known
  • His work has rediscovered 46-47
  • [loved his opening remarks] “I can speak for hours on a marae and people love it, but TED organizers expect something profound in 15 minutes”. “Took me 7 minutes to turn off my cell phone in the green room”
  
• Mark Sagar – Baby X
  • Artificial behaviour and emotional modelling
  • Live neurobehavioral models [potential to use for brain disease modelling & study]
  • Brain + face + nervous system = behaviour
  • Face is muscles driven by nerves, by brain
  • Brain Lego :-)
  • See Laboratory for Animate Technologies
  
• David Truebridge  Our need to create 
  • Left right brain balance
  • Art'tivision activism [I didn’t make many notes but this was an interesting talk]
  
• Pete Russell – Oooobee Ooooby - Out of our own backyards
  • Hacking the supply chain www.ooooby.org
  • Imported frozen pastry [in previous business]
  • Went to world food forum, learnt mega food was killing small producers
  • New goal: Make local food available & economic
  • Grower to door
  • Food commons [like creative commons] model
  
• Grace Taylor - Rising Voices, the power of words
  • Powerful demonstration of spoken word as a cultural, social change enabler. [Amazing performance and I don’t (generally) like poetry!]
  • Her challenge to us: What story would you tell?
  
• Malcolm Rands – A new model for business
  • Solar panel project
  • Ethical business
  • Ecostore
  
• Joseph Michael – Dark Cloud/White Light
  • HD Time-lapse NZ landscape photography (amazing)
  • joemichael.net
  
• Helen Clark – (former) NZ Prime Minister – Yes She Can! 
  • Women can
  • When they do it has to count
  
• Robert Oliver – Pacific food – Recipe for development 
  • Little Pacific food seen in pacific resorts, same in Caribbean
  • Menus join tourism to agriculture
  • Pacific became dumping ground for high fat low quality meat
  • Wrote Me'a Kai book Random House
  • TV1 Sept
  
• Richard Faull – Rethinking the Brain (works with Jenny Morton) 
  • Brain stem cells in adult makes new
  • Neurogenasis Neurogenesis
  
• Ash Graham  (Music)

  

• Brian Sweeney – The NZ Story, Living on the Edge 
  • NZ Edge.com
  • Punk Eek - change happens on the edge
  • Diaspora >
  • Brain drain > Network
  • Consumers > Export
  • Ernest Godwin
  • Find your edge
  
• Sophie Tamati – Hika language App 
  • Hika language learning system for mobile web devices
  
• Welby Ings – Creativity in education 
  • Creativity is disobedient thought
  • Schools favour literacy and numeracy, if you don't have them ability is missed
  • If we pursue tick box completion education is dumbed down
  • Organizations are not human, creativity is.
  • Creativity is constrained by fear & power
  • Learning is not safe
  • Humboldt University; "Where they burn books they will eventually burn people" 1802
  
• Joseph & Maia (Music)
• Robyn Paterson – Finding Mercy 
  • Finding Mercy documentary
  • People are not born to hate, they must learn – Mandela
  • A very moving performance
  
• Dale Williams  - Small town turnaround
  • 2004 - high unemployment, crime, vandalism
    • Career advice tertiary education not employment focused
  • Local solutions for local problems
    • Employer focused
    • Pre-employment info
    • Established local careers expo
    • School leavers connection program. If no plans contacted every 14 days
    • Work readiness training - time management, drivers license, tools, skills - with mentoring
  • Result: Nobody under 25 unemployed since 2006, low crime, no graffiti
  • Why isn’t he Mayor of Auckland, a thousand times better than Len Brown [and this was written before the Bevan debacle]
  
• Wrap Up -  A chance to thank the TEDx Auckland team

Between sessions the foyer included exhibits from some speakers and even live art. Lovenotes, handmade stationery from waste paper, were being made and sold on site. There was also a chance for some to experience Baby X but the queues were too long for me.

If I’d written this soon after TEDx Auckland 2013 I would have said keep an eye on the site for 2014 news. However, the tickets for 2014 are on sale at http://tedxauckland.com with one already sold to me! See you there?