Business 21C - Published by UTS Business

TEDxSydney 2010, an independently organised TED event, was held at CarriageWorks Eveleigh on May 22. A full day of talk and music, ideas worth spreading, networking, poetry and general neural stimulation, the event was carried off with aplomb by Remo Giuffré and his team drawn from the General Thinking network.

The talks from twenty notable Australians spanned the gamut of topics, from the city of the future, to digital freedom fighting, our relationship to land and country, individual freedom, collective consumption to work-life balance and much more. The event was streamed live on the internet, and to an audience in the foyer area of CarriageWorks, supplemented by the TEDxSydney Forum, hosted by The Chaser’s Craig Reucassel.

Below is Business21C’s take on the TEDxSydney proceedings, as well as links to available video and photographic media from the day.

William Barton, one of the country’s leading didjeridu players opened the day with a piece in turn haunting and hilarious. Moonwalking with his fingers and strumming his electric guitar, his didge rocked the joint first up, waking everyone and getting the audience keyed up for the rest of the proceedings.

The Welcome to Country spoken by Michael West of the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, reminded the audience where we were: on the fringes of a vast and ancient land, rich in heritage and history.

Michael Cathcart, writer, broadcaster and historian, outlined the broad sweep of modern Australians’ experience with their country. White Australia’s initial encounters with this ancient land, bush filled, dry and harsh, left them feeling alienated from it. Explorers experienced the centre as silent and unwelcoming: necronationalism, a nationalism based on death. Today, Cathcart says, the centre has shifted in Australia’s consciousness from the dustbowl of Lake Eyre to the beauty and grandeur of Ulura. ‘It’s a sign that we are hearing nature and life… a sign that at last, we are starting to belong.’

Sebastian Chan, Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, talked of the future of the museum: how they are becoming social entities, opening their archives for the exploration and use of all. What’s more, digital technologies turn the museum into a platform for ideas and communities, a place where stories are told by those who visit museums as well as by those who work in them.

Sebastian Chan: Museums of the Future

Watch the video

Mary Victor O’Reeri came all the way from the North West Kimberley of Western Australia to tell the story of Sister Bernadette O’Conor, who came from Ireland, 70 years ago as a missionary. At the age of 88, having dedicated her life to the spiritual well-being of remote communities, Sister O’Reilly took herself into the bush to die.

Mary Victor O'Reeri: Indigenous Australian Wisdom. A Story of Life, Discovery & Death.

Watch the video

Bobby Singh shared his Northern Indian classical music culture, explaining something of how the Master verbally teaches the tabla instrument. His virtuosity was extraordinary. He was accompanied by Damini Darbar.

Australia’s longest serving high court judge, now retired, Justice Michael Kirby spoke forcefully about the prevalence of homophobia in Australian society, and the fundamental injustice of laws that institutionalise inequality. ‘The God-botherers are at the door,’ he warned. ‘We in Australia must stand up for the secular state. My proposition is that this is a dangerous time… Secularism is a protection of spirituality, and only with secularism will we maintain respect for all beliefs.’

Michael Kirby: Asks Religious Leaders & God Botherers to Change their Messages

Watch the video

The FourPlay String Quartet played the title song from their third album Now to the Future. A mélange of chords and techniques, the band says the song represents a new stage in its creative process, inspirationally about creating a new world. FourPlay has tried to record, release and tour their album as sustainably as possible, using a minimum of energy and producing little waste.

Greig Pickhaver, aka broadcaster HG Nelson delivered a lightning speech in which he called for sporting spectators to add an extra dimension to their sporting experience: by connecting exercise bikes to the power grid and creating electricity generation league tables of rival clubs. Clubs should also grow food on their ovals during the week when they’re not being used.

Greig Pickhaver: Sport & Community. Making the Serious Trivial & the Trivial Serious

Watch the video

Brett Solomon, co-founder and Executive Director of international digital freedom group Accessnow.org, made a passionate plea for the protection of those who fight for freedom by expressing their opinions on the internet. Democracy activists in countries such as Iran, Syria and China are threatened by brutal regimes.

Brett Solomon: Citizen Journalism and the Democratisation of News Coverage

Watch the video

Nigel Marsh, chairman of Y&R Brands in Sydney told of his struggle with work-life balance. Having taken a year off work to rebalance his life, ‘I discovered I was good at balancing work with life when I didn’t have any work,’ he said. ‘I believe there are hundreds of thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, in order to earn money to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like. And my contention is that wearing jeans and a T-shirt to the office on a Friday is not getting to the hub of the problem.’ He called for people to take a longer view of work-life balance: ‘A single day isn’t long enough, when I retire, is too long. There must be something in between.’

Nigel Marsh: Work life Balance

Watch the video

Jonathan Marshall, anthropologist from UTS, revealed the psychological aspects of climate change. The discourse between climate change believers and skeptics is a discussion that happens surrounded by myth and metaphor.

Jonathan Marshall: Climate Change & The Power of Myth

Click to enlarge

Bobby Singh and Fourplay joined to provide a inspired, integrated musical set.

FourPlay with Bobby Singh: Combination of Tabla Playing with FourPlay Strings

Watch the video

Natalie Mann, a member of the TEDxSydney community, told of her experience working in an HIV clinic in Vietnam. Meeting Qua, an HIV/AIDS orphan aged four who was found on the street begging on behalf of her siblings, changed Natalie’s life.

Rachel Botsman, author and commentator, spoke about collaborative consumption – the idea that the twentieth century paradigm of hyper-consumption is giving way to technology-enabled sharing and swapping of stuff. Rachel wrote a story on crowd-sourcing of funding for Business21C magazine here.

Rachel Botsman: Collaborative Consumption Author Presents Compelling Case for 21C

Watch the video

Exceptional vocal artist Mr Percival woke the post-lunch crowd up with a hearty communal sing song: ‘I don’t have a problem with you; you don’t have a problem with me; if we get busy and love each other, some day we’ll all be free.’

Mr.Percival: Darren Percival's Vocal Artistry Has the Audience Enthralled

Watch the video

Aquabatic artist Sarah Jane Pell described her art at the ‘nexus of comtemporary performance and commercial diving. It is not like theatre, circus art or film. Not strictly entertainers, we are ourselves, raw and vulnerable before an audience.’ She believes the world needs to develop an aquatic consciousness as part of a longer term survival strategy for the species. Her latest project, dubbed Atlantica, is to create the world’s first undersea colony. A custom built submarine, the Leviathan will house three aquanauts in waters off the Florida Keys for 90 days, beginning 4th July, 2011. The aim is to investigate and knowledge build in order to develop a new generation of in-water custodians of our oceans and waterways.

Sarah Jane Pell: Aquabat Explores Extreme Environments. Global Hydrotherapy.

Watch the video

Child psychiatrist and philosopher, Jon Jureidini spoke of the corrupting influence of compromise. ‘When we are faced with divergent possibilities, we often seek the comfort of the middle ground.’ Bad compromise can infect everything from child rearing to geo-politics relationships, to our personal responses to climate change. ‘Hedging our bets is often analogous to not betting at all,’ he said. Often hard choices with complex and risky short-term ramifications are the only way through difficult situations.

Jon Juredini: Fallacy of the Middle Ground & Why We Should Risk Being Wrong

Watch the video

Andrew Kuper, founder of Leapfrog, the world’s first micro-insurance fund, shared his dream of reaching 25 million people across the developing world with affordable, literally life saving insurance coverage. Profit and purpose need not be mutually exclusive, says Kuper.

Missy Higgins, musical legend, shared some of her new songs.

Missy Higgins: Melbourne Singer Songwriter Charms with 3 Great Songs

Watch the video

Google engineer and inventor of Google Maps and Google Wave, Lars Rasmussen talked the audience through the Google Maps development process, and how engineers from across the globe have contributed to building the Google Maps database. He then spoke of his experience riding the hype cycle. Having introduced Google Wave to great acclaim, the application attracted massive brickbats as commentators turned on it. Rasmussen says that having opened Google Wave up to the general public, he looks forward to the hype cycle leveling off and the application finding its place in our everyday experience.

Lara Stein, the Licensing Director of TED, flew into Sydney for the day of TEDxSydney, and told the audience how amazed TED has been since launching the TEDx experiment. Five hundred TEDx events have taken place since February 2008, with 500 more planned for the coming year. She encouraged the crowd to get out there and start their own TEDx events.

The Bonettes, a beehive bonneted, bouncy band with removable skirts gave their rendition of 1950s cover songs Da doo ron ron and Nowhere to run to, Nowhere to hide.

Michael Wesley, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy talked passionately about the success of western democracy in taking passion out of politics and replacing it with process. Yet the advent of digital technology is bringing passion back into the political process, with blogging and tweeting and the ability of the mass of voices to be heard by the political players. ‘My hope is that we can bring about a positive synergy between the new and the old politics, we can clean up the old politics by using the new, and bring about a real improvement in the politics of the twenty-first century.’

Amanda Barnard, leader of the virtual nanoscience laboratory at the CSIRO, talked of the potential of nano-diamonds in targeting disease. Working in the tiniest dimensions, nano-diamonds are being explored to target and attack cancer cells with chemo-therapy drugs. They provide greater specificity, need around 20 times less drug, and release it much more slowly, and over a longer time frame.

Amanda Barnard: The New Diamond Age of Nanoscience

Watch the video

Rob Adams, Director of Design and Urban Environment for the City of Melbourne, says cities are one of the biggest issues for sustainability into the twenty-first century. He believes higher density living is the way forward, reducing travel and transport infrastructure issues. Melbourne is to expand by another million people and to do so, it will have to grow up, not out. He believes we can double the population of our cities by using just 7.5% extra land.

Gina Wilson, another member of the TEDxSydney audience invited to tell her story, is intersex. Intersex people are people who have external physical differences in the parts of their body that make one more or less male or female.

Gina Wilson: Discovering One's Intersex Self

Watch the video

Bernadette Tomes: Matrimony & Sexual Discovery

Watch the video

Glenn Albrecht, Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, thinks there’s a drama going on in your head. A drama between the forces that are attempting to create and those that are trying to destroy. Albrecht invented the term ‘solastalgia’: the desolation brought on by the destruction of a loved natural environment, and the term ‘soliphilia’: the creation of social action to protect and love our natural environment. He wants a panmemic of soliphilia rather than a pandemic of solastaliga.

Julian Morrow of The Chaser wrapped up proceedings with a characteristically irreverent revisit of each speaker. TED is an acronym, he said, of technology, entertainment and design. But its also an abbreviation of EDWARD: Elitist Discussions With Rich White Dudes. TEDx, of course, features the x because it’s an independently organised TED event. But an x implies a y, where y = because if its CRAP, it’s not our (TEDs) fault.

UTS Business partnered with UTS Design to fit out the breakout room behind stage as The Zone an exceedingly cool space draped with semi transparent panels onto which was projected a real time updated word cloud that used voice recognition software to animate the words that were spoken on stage. Furniture in the area were foam cubes, covered in white material onto which people could write and draw, inspired by the proceedings of the day. Here are some photos of those doodlings:

'The Zone' created by UTS Business and UTS Design

View the pictures

The ideas that were shown at TEDxSydney on May 22:

Business21C is proud to be associated with TEDxSydney through UTS Business major partnership. As part of this, we put out a call for ideas from the general public, with a promise to show a number of the ones that caught our eye on the day, and invite their makers to the event The videos below were shown on the day, and their makers were invited and attended the event:

Teach to the misconceptions

Watch the video

Enough!

Watch the video

You can also leave a response, or trackback from your own site.