Oh very very cool… and if you are lucky enough to be able to source an Android 2.0 based phone (like the Motorola Droid) it’s also very very free.
Couple this with the just announced Google Music service and Google Voice and you have a take everywhere, contact, entertain and communicate solution – Not much else to add apart from, what will this do to the dedicated GPS device market?!
Second to the stage was a ‘Reluctant Futurist’ namely Wendy McGuinness from Sustainable Future, an “independent think tank specialising in research and policy analysis.”
Wendy spoke on “The Danger of Now” which, in summary, was about ensuring you take into account whereabouts you (or your project/strategy) fits in the grander scheme of things. Some takeouts from the talk were as follows:
There are three types of futures:
When testing a scenario or future one should:
I found the talk to be somewhat disjointed, yet filled with amazingly wordy slides with paragraphs of text which may have reinforced a point if they had have been on screen long enough to read. It was always going to be tough to follow the first (very engaging) speaker – however, with some practice, feedback and basic presentation learning under the belt, this could have been a lot better received – so I hope I am not seen as being too harsh in my summary.
As I alluded in my initial TEDx Redux, the inaugural Auckland event was awesome. In the next three posts I will briefly cover my perspectives on the presentations delivered at this, the first TEDx event in Auckland, New Zealand.
The first speaker was a fascinating guy called Michael Henderson [UPDATE: Looks like something 'weird' is happening with his domain,try here for his cached page in the interim] , a Corporate Anthropologist. As well as being unemployable (who want’s an Anthropologist anyway?), he is never bored – because people are so interesting to study. Some observations:
“Why is no one teaching GenY to respect those who came before them as sources of learning?”
Executives go on a ‘retreat’ (never an advance?) then return to proclaim new company values to their employees.
“Integrity, really?? Aren’t you the CxO trying to set up XYZ to fail so you can get more headcount/budget?”
“Language is the bloodline of a tribe”
His parting observation was on the two dynamic forces of organisations: Relationship versus Results
“Measure yourself on Relationship versus Result – is the win [on this point] worth more than the long term relationship?”
The interesting observation I made about his talk was that, not only was I noting the same points as one of my colleagues, these same points were also being noted by a number of other ‘corporate types’ around where we were seated.
Update: Domain seems to be back – have adjusted links & text
TED. Three letters, a veritable treasure trove of new ideas, challenging thinking and incredible people with finely honed presentation skills.
I first stumbled across the TED initiative in 2006 when I was shown a presentation by Hans Rosling using Gapminder to do some incredible data visualisations. From that day onward, they have been a regular both in my RSS feed readers and in my browser as I immersed myself in the site from which I have gained so much.
It was with huge excitement then that I saw that TED was not only allowing independently organised events (under it’s banner of TEDx), but one of these events was going to be in Auckland, New Zealand – my home town.
I must admit I was initially reluctant to fill out the registration form, as chest puffery and self promotion doesn’t sit well with New Zealanders. Encouraged by some colleagues, and with the knowledge that the official event attendee spots are so coveted I did sit myself down and force my fingers to the keyboard to tap out an introspective view of what I have achieved to date, and why I should be amongst those fortunate enough to sit in attendance. The exercise in itself was worthwhile as it gave me an opportunity to cast back over many years in the technology industry, and to re-celebrate a number of the awesome innovations that I had been involved in over that time. The submit button was clicked, the “Thank you for registering” page loaded – and then all there was to do was wait.
In the fullness of time, I received an acceptance email and, excitedly, I checked in with my other colleagues to find they too had secured their place – timing-wise, the TEDx Auckland event was scheduled for the day before a weekend away at TelecomONE, a FOO style “Innovation Unconference”, so I knew that we would be in for one heck of a lot of brain stretching. We made our plans to meet up and attend together, and then again we waited for the beginning of the first ever TEDx Auckland, October 01, 2009.
What. an. event.
There is simply too much to type to do justice to what I got out of last nights event, so I’ll post this entry as it is, unfinished, but linking to some of the cool stuff which was discussed…
Keep up with the tweets surrounding the event here – and I’ll be summarising my notes over the weekend.
For now, check out this vid which was shown as a segway between speakers…
Awesome
As I gear up for this weekends unconference, I’ve been looking through my Delicious bookmarks, specifically on things around Education, which is one of the sessions I’d like to run, if nothing else – to get a different perspective from that discussed at this years BaaCamp where I was part of a similar session.
I came across this video, speaking to the one way approach many educators are taking to using the Internet as a resource. The presenter has written a supporting article (PDF) where he explains the different roles students can take to build engagement, and to collaborate with their global peers
Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.
Food for thought – and a definite starter for our discussions at TelecomONE this weekend – how can we as an industry help support our educators and their students to become part of the global voice of learning?
Below is the Tag cloud for the start of October 2009, based on the keywords in the biographies of the people I follow on Twitter. I created an earlier snapshot of this in February – it’s quite interesting to compare the two.
| October 2009: | February 2009: |
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