Two days of ideas / insights into inspiring and managing the creative process / people which leads to innovation.
SOLD OUT
On 27th-28th November, will be heading back to The Roxy Cinema (as they hosted us so well at the beginning of the year for Speaking With Purpose).
The pedigree of the speaker / facilitator line-up is brain-tingling impressive:
Gus Balbontin
Investor – Founder – Advisor
Former Executive Director at Lonely Planet, Co-founder of SneakySurf, Director at Roshambo, Entrepreneur in Residence at Vic Uni.
Bop Murdoch / Sarah Tuck / Jody Burrell
CoLiberate
Creators of Wellington’s first Gym for mental wellbeing, the CoLiberate team are leaders in personal and professional mindhealth.
Victoria Spackman
Director Te Auaha
Making safe spaces for creative types to flourish at Te Auaha – New Zealand Institute of Creativity.
Pavani Rao Boddapati
CG Supervisor at Weta Digital
Pavani has over 12 years of experience in visual effects for film and has worked on numerous projects including Avatar, Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit trilogy.
Emilie Fetscher
MC / Design Strategist
Collaborator in residence for design-focused leaders and currently consumed as an accidental entrepreneur at StrataMap.
Aithan Shapira, MFA PhD
Founder + Leadership Strategist
Founder @ Making to Think. Lecturer @ MIT Sloan. Aithan builds leaders’ creative instincts using time- and science-tested techniques from the arts to expand perceptions and accelerate solutions.
Design, customer insight, and strategy, also interested in collaborating, teaching design and innovation.
Gareth Parry
Designer
Gareth Parry is a partner in PwC’s Experience Centre. Gareth has experience in architecture, learning design, digital advertising, infography, human centered design, and event creation.
Ruth Keiry
Designer
Ruth Keiry runs PwC’s Wellington Sandbox. She’s framed, designed, and facilitated dozens of collaborative spaces.
Mark Bradford
BeWeDō® practitioner
Founder of BeWeDō® + Senior Lecturer at Massey University, School of Design. #BeWeDō is a unique motion-led creative leadership experience.
The one thing you can’t do with Eventbrite is subscribe in any way to an event organisers profile so you’re kept up to date with their listings. There’s an option to “save events you’re interested in” which is not the same, although the issue with that is folks still have to log in to see that one event and it’s only in one place.
During my recent LIANZA social media tour where I was introducing folks to the magnificent wonders of RSS, I jumped into Eventbrite to subscribe to listings. Alas, couldn’t be done.
Now this functionality could be folded in across organisers profiles with a little coding / development time, along with an addition of a little RSS icon (next to the current social icons), then a blog post and email announcement to guarantee awareness. I’d wager doing this would see an increase in click throughs to the site as clever folks would start to utilise this new (old) functionality.
So, what do you say Eventbrite, want to improve your platform for us souls who still want to use a foundational core of the social web? People who could then use these feeds with other platforms like IFTTT or Flipboard etc. as well…?
What would it take for Wellington, the city and region, to be the best in the world?
I gave a talk at the Rotary Forum 2017 this week. Unfortunately, due to technical issues my presentation video / audio wasn’t captured, *so recorded the above version.
As you’ll hear / see, my response was to challenge us to think about Wellington becoming:
The most creative little capital in the world.
A lofty goal.
Raising the creative literacies of a city / region to ask better questions sounds impossible although wonderfully audacious.
Something I’m working towards with (the two “common soon” projects of) Creative Welly and Creative Leadership NZ (reach out if you want to know more or subscribe to blog posts on the right hand side there).
Thanks to the event organisers for the opportunity to have voice:
DK gave an inspiring address to the Rotary Club Forum: “Achieving the ‘Impossible Dream’ for Wellington: the city and region” on Tuesday 1 August 2017. His themes included creativity, innovation, compassion, empathy and branding. He challenged the audience on achieving a “creative Welly”, connecting the creative capital, providing leadership across the sectors, an independent collective and a community that is simultaneously globally minded and locally focused. He personifies the quote of “Life’s too short not to be audacious.” He set the stage for a Forum that was bold, diverse and audacious about achieving ‘Impossible Dreams’ for Wellington.
Dr Roger Blakeley Chair, Wellington Rotary Club 2017 Forum
TL:DR Nearly everyone who reads this won’t care (and that’s why Facebook succeeds).
Facebook recently blocked me for the same reason it did nearly ten years ago.
When attempting to log in a couple of months ago to check the TEDxWellington Facebook page, was notified that access has been denied and to rectify the situation a scanned image of a government issued ID was needed (rings any bells?):
As you can see the reason cited was due to someone challenging my name.
I doubt very much that it was a person.
More likely, an algorithm.
One which noticed I wasn’t using the site much and when I did it was via a proxy (to protect my data, more will be explained).
Data accumulation is the only thing Facebook cares about as fuel to stay alive and also thrive. However, the need for more is exposing the hollow brand priorities and weak foundations of this mighty but fickle empire.
Facebook was always intended, not to be a utility for its users, but a mechanism for mining the information it’s users share on it, then leveraging that against other data most doesn’t know it collects, along with other zeros and ones it has about someones friends, what sites they visit, the weather that day, which mobile phone you use, where you bought something online and what and when etc, which all increases the return for shareholders as it maximising eyeballs for their advertisers and other agencies it sells the insights of all its users to.
Now to return to my situation: for a company built on information, not knowing my name has been challenged before and was also rectified seems odd, right? Any human would look at the evidence I gave back then and in response to the most recent enquiry (which included links to this site plus highlighting the previous time they disabled my account for the very same reason nearly a decade a go), then pretty much straight away would have enough details to re-instate the profile and let me on my merry way. Granted, a human would have to click and read and watch a little, maybe, although the outcome would be swift and obvious. And there’s the rub. No human is now involved in making these decisions.
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
(Redacted Friend’s Name): What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
And of course the argument from users is always: they don’t care about little old me, sharing pictures of my cats and kids plus random Star Wars gifs.
You’re right, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. It’s about you times 2 billion and the data which is cross-referenced against you based on the evidenced shared above.
Facebook is not a social media platform, it’s a casino. The house always win and of course it will make you feel special with free drinks if you’re playing, showing off all the pretty people in front of faux scenery, but you still have to pay-to-play and the odds (algorithms) are stacked in their very favourable favour.
So I’m out.
I have tried not to be though.
Have sent a few follow up emails and completed forms online asking me to be reinstated:
…but alas, no reply. Have hit up two Facebook employees I have contacts for as well, no response either. There’s not even a facility to even delete my account. I remain in a virtual limbo.
I’m a tad gutted as some relationships and communications were carried out solely through the platform, plus I set up the TEDxWellington page there which after this years event I’m seriously thinking of not using further (we’ll just direct folks to sign up to our email newsletter / blog). A massive decision as last year we got 250,000 reach just on our event announcement plus we use it to connect with our amazing community—ethics has to trump convenience.
I know nearly all those who digest this will be FB users and I’m intrigued of the reaction when reading through the links provided above which cites credible evidence on why the platform is toxic…
…remember, as a service, they are banking on you not caring. Literally, taking it to the bank.
And if you don’t care, why should they on what they can get away with.
For the past 9 months TEDxWellington has been a massive focus of mine. Above are the final thirteen talks which are the highly public product of the event and which rock!
As the licensee, my job is to be across all aspects of development and delivery whilst ensuring all the rules are adhered to plus also build / communicate / inspire the volunteer delivery team to deliver upon the vision (on top of leading the speaker coaching as well).
Phew!
The reason I devote so much of my time to such an endeavour which none of us get any kind of monetary remuneration for, is to give people voice.
There’s the obvious voices on the stage but also those in the audience who to come together and experience a TEDx event, then share as a community plus discuss and connect around the topics presented. There’s also enabling a core team of disparate strangers to collaborate and build something within the confines of the format. And finally, there’s the idea of giving a city an expressive platform to illustrate its own wonderful story (as most of our speakers / performers are always drawn from the region itself).
This year was all about scaling:
to a 1,000 person event (sold out again)
5,000 watching the livestream
the team to deliver such a beast of an experience
in the complexity of interactions between all of the above
Along with my co-organiser Hannah, the learning and insights of what to do and equally, what not to do, also expanded in scale.
Even though nearly every external aspect of the event was a success, there’s always stuff to improve upon and do better, and there are many aspects to change and tweak for the next annual event in 2018 (with a few adjustment to trial with the upcoming TEDxWellingtonWomen event in November).
And as I start to reflect further and write up the review blog post for the event plus finish off the finer details like paying invoices, following up with partners / sponsors, ensuring all the speakers are happy etc., I can’t help but feel that twinge of excitement for next year, as hungry to revisit the theme of doing something unique like in 2016.
As you can see from above we’re trying exploring different categories. We’re very excited about the ‘Pay It Forward’ options in which folks can buy two spots and gift one to be distributed to one of the local charities we’ve partnered with.
Our theme is “What’s Your Perspective?” and the creative vid above needs to be watched all the way through, trust me!
Please, please, please share far and wide as this year will see us taking over the St James Theatre to enable the largest TEDx ever in the capital (1,000 curious souls will be in attendance).
Last month I finished up delivering seven social media presentations and masterclasses for Library and Information Association of New Zealand (LIANZA). The mini-NZ-tour took me to New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Christchurch, Dunedin, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland.
Curation is still a mayor skill-set theme along with the idea of asking what’s best not what’s new (see above) to highlight that technology and social media is a suite of tools to utilise not just a shallow trend focussed on only the latest.
Librarians get the idea of nurturing and enveloping new knowledge. They are curious and open by nature, and was a pleasure to collaborate in building new practises and was thrilling to see the adoption during the hands-on workshop portion of the sessions.
DK delivered an innovative series of social media workshops for us, that got great feedback from our members. He was the ultimate professional and really easy to work with. Comments from attendees included:
“It’s not often I come across someone who can alter the way I use the internet.”
“DK was a brilliant presenter – enthusiastic, entertaining and helpful.”
“I really like his teaching style (watch, listen, then do).”
