TEDX 2012 Sydney
Having seen many TED talks at www.ted.com I was excited to attend my first TED conference. The format is that each presenter gets between 3-20 minutes to showcase an idea worth sharing. To help us think creatively, artists, comedian and musicians entertain and inspire. Many of the videos of the talks can soon be found at www.tedxsydney.com. TED is a non profit run by volunteers. At the end of the day we were asked if we would do something new as a result of the day. 95% of the audience raised their hands. I loved the attention to detail from the design of the name tags to the huge bunches of celery sticks available in the breaks. It was a show, with no space to ask questions, but somehow that format works. Why attend this event if you could watch it live on Youtube? Well for me it is the side conversations and random meetings. I ended the evening chatting with Steven Morrow from Vodafone. His name had been mentioned the previous night in a completely different conversation and suddenly we were having a beer together, having never met. I wonder how many other conversations like that occured and what they will spawn.
The day started with an acknowledgment by Michael West of the Gadigal people, the traditional owners of the land, and a reminder that today is National Sorry Day. We then heard from the Stiff Gins www.stiffgins.net one of Australia’s best loved indigenous music acts. A curtain pulled back and the beautiful voices of Nardi Simpon and Kaleena Briggs were joined on stage by the Sydney Children’s Choir. No ordinary choir, the voices have been heard on the soundtracks of Moulin Rouge and Happy Feet and have toured internationally. The rest of the day was hosted by Julian Morrow who kept everyone moving forward at a great pace and introduced each speaker with wit and humour.
Tom Griffiths then took us for a brief canter through the past 1000 years. Anyone who can watch Tom and still thinks that climate change is a beatup is either smoking something or deluded. His website is at ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org.
Jeremy Heimans then spoke on how we will create a new way of acting. While governments are incapable of taking leadership and business has limited ability, he believes that consumers can transform. To do so we have to kill off green. Everyone is now green including groups strongly opposed. Scientists are toning down their predictions for fear of being treated as political. He argues that consumers often take action for reasons other than price. As Jeremy is the founder of www.getup.org and a number of other initiatives it is worth listening to him talk about disequilibrium. www.purpose.org
Michelle Simmons science.unsw.edu.au took us on a tour of Moores Law, the principal that computer power doubles every 18 months. We are now at the end of the classical growth having reached the limits of squeezing more onto less. But the journey does not stop. We now move into the world of quantum computing. Traditional computers solve problems sequentially. The more complex a problem, the longer it takes. Figuring out the best way for a salesman to visit 14 different cities in the shortest route takes about 90 seconds. Increase the number to 28 stops and it can take thousands of years. Quantum computers will solve this problem in seconds. They open up new opportunities to model climate, financial markets and a host of other applications where masses of data need to be crunched. The race is on to build the first Qbit computer and Michelle’s team could win that race.
Evan Kidd researchers.anu.edu.au is a psychologist. It is appropriate with his surname that he has researched children’s imaginary friends and found them good. Kids with imaginary friends understand earlier that other people behave and act according to their own unique metaphors of the world. While you can’t buy an imaginary friend on eBay yet, teenagers and adults who participate in theatre can strengthen this ability and thus have a greater understanding and empathy for others.
Brian Schmidt is a noble prize winning astronomer mwowww.anu.edu.au who explained how the physical world that we know and love represents only around 70% of the universe. Dark matter and dark energy make up the rest. The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate and eventually parts will be so far away from us that we will never see them again. The night sky will become blacker and blacker. In the meanwhile Brian sensibly runs a small vineyard outside Canberra.
Mandyam Srinivisam qbi.uq.edu.au showed us the results of his research into bees. They can be trained to fly through a maze and can learn by themselves. Like us, smells can evoke memories of where past food sources can be found. While the brain of a bee is a million times smaller than ours, it has all the same functionality. That makes this engaging engineer and neuroscientist wonder if bees also feel pain and emotion.
Kate Burridge is a linguist arts.monash.edu.au who spoke wittily on the importance of euphemism. She explained how, as they age, they change meaning. For example we know that our sense of smell has gradually been pushed out over the ages starting with the printing press. So one of the oldest words for smell, stench, now has the most putrid overtones. Odour used to be pleasant but now it has the whiff of something rotten. The visual sense dominates. Euphemisms are a special form of metaphors that are the building blocks of a polite society. They are the linguistic equivalents of curtains. We know when someone is sleeping with another person or an American goes to the rest room what is actually meant but we do not need to know the detail.
Gerard Reinmuth managed to sneak his work partner Anthony Burke utsarchitecture.net onto stage to speak about their love of architecture www.terroir.com and how the city of the future might look like. Later Tarsha Finney the architectural urbanist uts.edu.au argued that we need to create new ways to live and use the city.
Angela Moles, ecologist bigecology.net.au explained what needs to happen for a new plant or animal species to be confirmed. First it must be separated from the original species, then diversify in response to the new environment and finally be shown not to be interested or able to reproduce with the original species. Guess what? That’s what is happening with plants introduced into Australia that we think of as weeds. Many can be shown to have changed shape and size and research is now underway to confirm that they are no longer identical to their original forms. So instead of wanting to exterminate them, we may need to start protecting them as we do with other introduced species such as second generation Australians or dingoes.
The quality of the music and art was outstanding, Grigoryan brothers, Tim Freedman, Circle of Rhythm, Four Play and the Satsuki Odamura with the Sydney Koto Ensemble as well Sam Simmons. But my two favourites were Katie Noonan www.katienoonan.com and Greg Sheehan myspace.com/gregsheehan. Katie sang like an angel reminding me of a young Joni Mitchell and Greg is the best drummer I have ever heard. I’m not a big fan of drumming so that is the highest praise I can offer. He played a tambourine and produced sounds as big and as rich as a full drum kit. I particularly liked that he appeared to be as surprised as everyone in the audience by the magic that he was creating.
Lynette Wallworth is an artist who has drawn together Venus, 18th century scientists, Art, Coral Reefs and Planetariums. You can get a sense of it at coralrekindlingvenus.com and if you are fortunate enough to be close to one of the 25 Planetariums putting on her work you will be thrilled and entranced by the visual feast she has created.
Hugh Durrant-Whyte is a robotics engineer who explained that we have finally learned how robots learn. Now that computer memory is both cheap and enormous, it is no longer necessary for them to learn using rules. Explaining what a tree is hard with so many shapes and varieties. Instead they can search their vast memory banks and make decisions based on experience. Australia is a great place for robotic work. I did not know that Brisbane port is completely run by robots and that the control room is in Sydney. Mining often is in remote areas and dangerous so it is no wonder that more and more functions are being done by robots. www.nicta.com.au
Geoffrey Garrett finished the day with an eloquent explanation of what is behind the news in the growth of China compared to the US.Within a decade it will be the largest economy. Rather than being fearful that will lead to a new cold war, the scale of the trade between the two countries means that they are co-dependent and will find ways to work through their differences. Australia is perfectly geographically positioned to work with both. Ussc.edu.au
During the day several audience members had an opportunity to speak for 3 minutes on their favourite idea. Luca Belgiorno-Nettis invited the audience to work with him to create a new kind of political system. He said that in so many areas we collaborate; so why have we created an adversarial system?
Chris Anderson, the curator of TED since 2002, made an important announcement. He sees that teachers must be both coach and instructor and that these tasks are contradictory. Coaching requires intimacy. Instruction cries out for scale. Why teach 30 students a great lesson when you can teach 30,000. The response is flip teaching where the school and the home gets flipped. Let students learn at home in their own time using resources that are world class. In school time train the teachers to become brilliant coaches who can support their student and facilitate through intimate discussions. He is creating a platform for teachers to share their best work and then have any teacher take that resource and personalise it for their own class. Behind that a whole army of volunteers will animate and support teachers to present their lessons in the best possible light. In experiments so far even students are starting to use the platform to teach other kids. I was inspired to create a TED conference for Tasmanian students in Hobart 2013 and will start meeting with teachers to socialise the idea. See www.ed.ted.com for more.
Bill.Aronson@AltusQ.com.au
Having seen many TED talks at www.ted.com I was excited to attend my first TED conference. The format is that each presenter gets between 3-20 minutes to showcase an idea worth sharing. To help us think creatively, artists, comedian and musicians entertain and inspire. Many of the videos of the talks can soon be found at www.tedxsydney.com. TED is a non profit run by volunteers. At the end of the day we were asked if we would do something new as a result of the day. 95% of the audience raised their hands. I loved the attention to detail from the design of the name tags to the huge bunches of celery sticks available in the breaks. It was a show, with no space to ask questions, but somehow that format works. Why attend this event if you could watch it live on Youtube? Well for me it is the side conversations and random meetings. I ended the evening chatting with Steven Morrow from Vodafone. His name had been mentioned the previous night in a completely different conversation and suddenly we were having a beer together, having never met. I wonder how many other conversations like that occured and what they will spawn.
The day started with an acknowledgment by Michael West of the Gadigal people, the traditional owners of the land, and a reminder that today is National Sorry Day. We then heard from the Stiff Gins www.stiffgins.net one of Australia’s best loved indigenous music acts. A curtain pulled back and the beautiful voices of Nardi Simpon and Kaleena Briggs were joined on stage by the Sydney Children’s Choir. No ordinary choir, the voices have been heard on the soundtracks of Moulin Rouge and Happy Feet and have toured internationally. The rest of the day was hosted by Julian Morrow who kept everyone moving forward at a great pace and introduced each speaker with wit and humour.
Tom Griffiths then took us for a brief canter through the past 1000 years. Anyone who can watch Tom and still thinks that climate change is a beatup is either smoking something or deluded. His website is at ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org.
Jeremy Heimans then spoke on how we will create a new way of acting. While governments are incapable of taking leadership and business has limited ability, he believes that consumers can transform. To do so we have to kill off green. Everyone is now green including groups strongly opposed. Scientists are toning down their predictions for fear of being treated as political. He argues that consumers often take action for reasons other than price. As Jeremy is the founder of www.getup.org and a number of other initiatives it is worth listening to him talk about disequilibrium. www.purpose.org
Michelle Simmons science.unsw.edu.au took us on a tour of Moores Law, the principal that computer power doubles every 18 months. We are now at the end of the classical growth having reached the limits of squeezing more onto less. But the journey does not stop. We now move into the world of quantum computing. Traditional computers solve problems sequentially. The more complex a problem, the longer it takes. Figuring out the best way for a salesman to visit 14 different cities in the shortest route takes about 90 seconds. Increase the number to 28 stops and it can take thousands of years. Quantum computers will solve this problem in seconds. They open up new opportunities to model climate, financial markets and a host of other applications where masses of data need to be crunched. The race is on to build the first Qbit computer and Michelle’s team could win that race.
Evan Kidd researchers.anu.edu.au is a psychologist. It is appropriate with his surname that he has researched children’s imaginary friends and found them good. Kids with imaginary friends understand earlier that other people behave and act according to their own unique metaphors of the world. While you can’t buy an imaginary friend on eBay yet, teenagers and adults who participate in theatre can strengthen this ability and thus have a greater understanding and empathy for others.
Brian Schmidt is a noble prize winning astronomer mwowww.anu.edu.au who explained how the physical world that we know and love represents only around 70% of the universe. Dark matter and dark energy make up the rest. The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate and eventually parts will be so far away from us that we will never see them again. The night sky will become blacker and blacker. In the meanwhile Brian sensibly runs a small vineyard outside Canberra.
Mandyam Srinivisam qbi.uq.edu.au showed us the results of his research into bees. They can be trained to fly through a maze and can learn by themselves. Like us, smells can evoke memories of where past food sources can be found. While the brain of a bee is a million times smaller than ours, it has all the same functionality. That makes this engaging engineer and neuroscientist wonder if bees also feel pain and emotion.
Kate Burridge is a linguist arts.monash.edu.au who spoke wittily on the importance of euphemism. She explained how, as they age, they change meaning. For example we know that our sense of smell has gradually been pushed out over the ages starting with the printing press. So one of the oldest words for smell, stench, now has the most putrid overtones. Odour used to be pleasant but now it has the whiff of something rotten. The visual sense dominates. Euphemisms are a special form of metaphors that are the building blocks of a polite society. They are the linguistic equivalents of curtains. We know when someone is sleeping with another person or an American goes to the rest room what is actually meant but we do not need to know the detail.
Gerard Reinmuth managed to sneak his work partner Anthony Burke utsarchitecture.net onto stage to speak about their love of architecture www.terroir.com and how the city of the future might look like. Later Tarsha Finney the architectural urbanist uts.edu.au argued that we need to create new ways to live and use the city.
Angela Moles, ecologist bigecology.net.au explained what needs to happen for a new plant or animal species to be confirmed. First it must be separated from the original species, then diversify in response to the new environment and finally be shown not to be interested or able to reproduce with the original species. Guess what? That’s what is happening with plants introduced into Australia that we think of as weeds. Many can be shown to have changed shape and size and research is now underway to confirm that they are no longer identical to their original forms. So instead of wanting to exterminate them, we may need to start protecting them as we do with other introduced species such as second generation Australians or dingoes.
The quality of the music and art was outstanding, Grigoryan brothers, Tim Freedman, Circle of Rhythm, Four Play and the Satsuki Odamura with the Sydney Koto Ensemble as well Sam Simmons. But my two favourites were Katie Noonan www.katienoonan.com and Greg Sheehan myspace.com/gregsheehan. Katie sang like an angel reminding me of a young Joni Mitchell and Greg is the best drummer I have ever heard. I’m not a big fan of drumming so that is the highest praise I can offer. He played a tambourine and produced sounds as big and as rich as a full drum kit. I particularly liked that he appeared to be as surprised as everyone in the audience by the magic that he was creating.
Lynette Wallworth is an artist who has drawn together Venus, 18th century scientists, Art, Coral Reefs and Planetariums. You can get a sense of it at coralrekindlingvenus.com and if you are fortunate enough to be close to one of the 25 Planetariums putting on her work you will be thrilled and entranced by the visual feast she has created.
Hugh Durrant-Whyte is a robotics engineer who explained that we have finally learned how robots learn. Now that computer memory is both cheap and enormous, it is no longer necessary for them to learn using rules. Explaining what a tree is hard with so many shapes and varieties. Instead they can search their vast memory banks and make decisions based on experience. Australia is a great place for robotic work. I did not know that Brisbane port is completely run by robots and that the control room is in Sydney. Mining often is in remote areas and dangerous so it is no wonder that more and more functions are being done by robots. www.nicta.com.au
Geoffrey Garrett finished the day with an eloquent explanation of what is behind the news in the growth of China compared to the US.Within a decade it will be the largest economy. Rather than being fearful that will lead to a new cold war, the scale of the trade between the two countries means that they are co-dependent and will find ways to work through their differences. Australia is perfectly geographically positioned to work with both. Ussc.edu.au
During the day several audience members had an opportunity to speak for 3 minutes on their favourite idea. Luca Belgiorno-Nettis invited the audience to work with him to create a new kind of political system. He said that in so many areas we collaborate; so why have we created an adversarial system?
Chris Anderson, the curator of TED since 2002, made an important announcement. He sees that teachers must be both coach and instructor and that these tasks are contradictory. Coaching requires intimacy. Instruction cries out for scale. Why teach 30 students a great lesson when you can teach 30,000. The response is flip teaching where the school and the home gets flipped. Let students learn at home in their own time using resources that are world class. In school time train the teachers to become brilliant coaches who can support their student and facilitate through intimate discussions. He is creating a platform for teachers to share their best work and then have any teacher take that resource and personalise it for their own class. Behind that a whole army of volunteers will animate and support teachers to present their lessons in the best possible light. In experiments so far even students are starting to use the platform to teach other kids. I was inspired to create a TED conference for Tasmanian students in Hobart 2013 and will start meeting with teachers to socialise the idea. See www.ed.ted.com for more.
Bill.Aronson@AltusQ.com.au
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