I found out yesterday (Friday 4th) that there was a TEDx event in Wellington today (Saturday 5th) -- because of a flyer in the public library, that was hosting a "livestream" viewing of it for free. Apparently most of their marketing effort was on Facebook -- which seems to have worked, as they sold out of all their tickets (180 total) in 2 minutes at 9am on Friday 2016-02-05. So hosting a bunch of community livestreams, and livestreaming the event on the Internet was an inspired idea. (It probably helped this was the second TEDx Wellington; there was a previous one in 2014 also produced by DK: Playlist on YouTube. As well as a TEDx WellingtonWomen, (videos) which was mentored by DK, and run by Natalia Albert who also ran an earlier TEDx HomeBushRdWomen, for which there seems to be only one video online.)
The theme was "Trust" -- and they kept pretty much everything about the event secret, including the location and speakers. Apparently those with tickets were taken then in a (rather hot) blacked out buses, to avoid even spoiling the surprise for them. The venue was revealed to be Park Road Post, which is a lovely facility... but pretty tiny for a live event! One of the venue rules was "no photos", but from the beginning delegates were encouraged to post random photos onto their social media accounts with a TEDx Wellington tag -- which resulted in #TEDxWelly becoming noticable on Twitter for part of the day. (Particularly by the time others chipped in with commentary on the event -- with the livestream it probably had a much larger live audience than many TED/TEDx events.)
I spent the day watching the livestream from home -- which took several attempts to get the streaming established, but then worked flawlessly all day -- in amongst other tasks. There were some interesting talks (which perhaps might turn up as videos at some point?), although it seemed like relatively few of them referenced "trust" explicitly. (There was a short "lightning talk" round of 5 delegates in the last session talking about what trust meant to them, which was a nice touch.)
For future reference, some notes on the talks (with missing details due to there being no complete speaker list online at this point, and my handwritten notes being incomplete -- supplemented a bit by things tweeted by @tedxwellington during the event):
Glenis Hiria Philip-Barbara, "A Million Conversations in Te Reo Maori" talking about her dream of Maori being spoken all around her in every day life. Including describing her process of raising her children to speak Maori -- by the third child they had the process down (speak Maori to them from when they're a baby: babies don't care if you're not pronoucing it right or using the right grammar!).
It's a particularly timely call, as it's only in the most recent generation (growing up now) that teaching Maori to children, and speaking Maori as a primary language, has become a thing again. That's what's essential to keep any language as a living language.
She taught everyone the phrase "Tō Pai Hoki" ("You are awesome") as a place to start :-) (Thanks to Dan Short's HTML entities for the Macron.)
Pamella Bell spoke about the benefits of modern prefabricated housing -- it does not have to be the poor quality of prefab school rooms of the 1970s/1980s. New Zealand seems to be pretty well placed to be at the forefront of this, as we already export a lot of building material -- the form of logs. And we have the technology to make advanced plywood and other more sophisticated building materials, including wood/insulation/wood sandwhiches.
Sacha Copland of Java Dance Company talking about the power of dance to cause us to "look up" from the electronic world that keeps us "looking down" and engage with the present, and the real world around us. (They have a Boosted Crowdfunding Campaign closing around the 10th of March, which still needs more funds to let them perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival: they need lots of props they cannot take through customs!)
David Andrew Eccles, now at the Malaghan Institute, spoke about the recent revolution in DNA sequencing that allows analysis to be done in the field -- in a matter of 20 minutes or so -- using hardware produced by Oxford Nanopore. Together with the MinKNOW instrument software, and "cloud computing" the heavy lifting of sequencing reassembly can be done "in the cloud", getting results back in about 20 minutes. (He used a example of extracting tomato DNA at home and sequencing that -- and demonstrated the machine functioning, but not through a complete sequence due to time.) His plea for trust was that the public trust the possibilities of such new technology -- it could, for example, enable doctors to have precise information about what infection a patient has, by the time they see the patient.
Charles Babb (of Charles vs Everything spoke of growing up with video games, while black. And "the possibilities of uncommonalities". If all your game developers are young, single, white, middle class, men, then your games will tend to only represent young, single, white, middle class men. And be very same-same. A more diverse team leads to something more unique -- a unique Gumbo.
Fiona King of Broadbent and May spoke about natural funerals -- by the family, for the family. And the inclusion of children in funerals. There is apparently a Natural Burial Cemetery in Wellington, located within the Makara Cemetry. There is also a non-profit Natural Burials encouraging councils and others to provide for natural burials.
Laurinda Thomas debunking "The Dangerous Myth About Libraries" -- that they are just about books, and that is being replaced by the Internet, right? But actually libraries are also social hubs, that encourage participation in the community. And they still have a valuable role to play in putlic society. (Both Wellington Central, and Hutt Libraries were hosting TEDx Wellington Livestream Community Events.)
Michael Armstrong, who traded torts for tricks becoming a circus performer rather than a laywer. He spoke, and demonstrated on the live audience, how he gained the trust of strangers quickly -- by getting the audience to be his percussion section, and then to engage in community laughing. All the while playing the audience, literally, like a conductor. His tricks to get particpation include:
Authority: look like you are supposed to be obeyed (in this case he dressed like a conductor; but dressing in a suit or a uniform would also help)
Committment and Consistency: if you can get someone to make a small committment (even just "stop and watch for a second"), then their desire to act consistently with their own behaviour might cause them to stay longer and become more committed.
Social Proof: in an unknown situation people will tend to do what those around them are doing. (Whch as he notes also helps explain the Bystander Effect -- everyone is waiting for someone else to act, and no one else is acting... therefore they do not act.)
Dr Shaun Holt spoke about the power of honey -- particularly kanuka honey -- to treat skin diseases. Apparently medical research suggests it is very effective, and the three way action of honey (sugar sucking moisture out; acidic; other benefits from honey source like kanuka) means it is unlikely infections will develop resistance (unlike current antibiotics, which are becoming increasingly ineffective -- in the space of about 3-4 human generations). It also has the possibilty of becoming another "value add" export for New Zealand -- rather than just table honey, it could be medicinal honey (ie, filtered, and pasturised for use treating skin diseases).
Asher (performing as Skymning (on Bandcamp) demonstrated creating music from older drum machines and synthesiser -- as that was all he could afford. Amongst other things he had on stage:
Roland MC303 Groovebox from 1997
A Walkman-style Cassette Player, from 1988, fitted with a 20 second tape loop
a Korg Kaoss Pad from 2012, as his older one had become unreliable
His point was that "obsolete" equipment still can drive a lot of creativity. The first piece he played live was not really my favourite, but the second -- with the guitar as well -- was pretty cool.
Deborah Morris-Travers, a former Minister for Youth Affairs when she was 26, spoke about "Hearing the Voices of our Children". In particular about the 148,000 children missing out on complete access to good food, good housing, etc in New Zealand -- in many cases due to living closer to the poverty line. (She appears to be at Unicef New Zealand now, and that showed in the talk, including the website she chose to promote
fairfuture.nz-- no link due to audience hostile auto-playing audio, and "enter the site" splash screen; I closed the window instead.)Nic and Marie of Good Bitches Baking, who accidentally ended up founding a nation-wide non-profit that encourages people to bake in their homes and donate it for deliver to those in need (hospices, women's refuges, night shelters, etc). Their aim is to provide "a moment of sweetness in an otherwise shitty day".
They apparently cringe a bit at the headline of their first publicity -- "We decided to save the world by baking". But giving people mission to do something kind for strangers definitely works; and they got a partial standing ovation (the only talk of the day where anyone stood).
In between these talks they also showed some TED (parent event) videos of talks, including:
Terry Moore on "How to tie your shoes" (video on YouTube)
Shonda Rhimes on "My year of saying yes to everything", about learning to play again. (Video copies on YouTube seem to be uploaded by other people, with extras/advertising, so no links for them.)
Christine Sun Kim on "The enchanting music of sign language" about similarities between music and American Sign Language, including both being impossible to describe precisely.
mostly I think to fill time to help with the logistics of rearranging things on the stage (at least that's my best guess from the livestream).
So many thanks to the TEDx Wellington team for organinsing the event -- and especially the livestream. Without the livestream it just would have been an elitest "180 people with the fastest ticket purchasing skills" event, but with the livestream and communit events it was truely a Wellington event.
ETA, 2016-03-06: Additional links, typos fixed.
ETA, 2016-03-14: Official TEDx Wellington 2016 Review Blog Post including speaker bios, and a link to a short documentary video about "The Story of Trust"; there seem to be some "livestream" location videos up, but the talks are apparently still being edited (and so not up yet).
ETA, 2016-04-07: Official TEDx Wellington blog announces videos are online.