TEDx Sheffield

TEDxSheffield
Yesterday was my first, but I hope not my last TED event I spent the afternoon at the showroom Sheffield for an afternoon of ideas, thoughts and me trying to sit still.

I have used the TED website before so when I heard that TEDxSheffield was on a day I was free and a friend had a spare ticket I jumped at the chance to have the ‘TED experience’ first hand. Now any of you that hasn’t heard of TED or have heard but never explored (shame on you),
TED is:

‘TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader.’

The TED website http://www.ted.com/ is filled with days worth of talks on many subject, many that inspire and inform. I would highly recommend that you have a look.

TEDxSheffield is about:

‘the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. (Subject to certain rules and regulations.)’

So how was TEDxSheffield?....thought provoking, exciting, generally fantatastic (apart from the fact that I don’t do the sitting sit thing very well).

Chris Anderson welcomed us and introduced us to our first speaker Cennydd Bowles who talked about the beauty of the web, or lack of beauty in the web, the potential that was there for art and beauty and how functionality doesn’t create beauty. The fact that trying to please everyone often pleases no one. Very Thought provoking and he used a gorgeous font for his text.

The next talk was a TED Talk introduced by Jonny Douglas of Jonny Douglas Design (http://www.jonnydouglas.com/) or @JonnyDouglas on twitter. This was a talk about gross national happiness, another talk to make you think.

Then on to our second live speaker Richard St John, now this guy was a professional, but not in a *yawn* he does this talk times a day, he was lively and talked on ‘success’ he had talked to over 500 successful people and he talked about the values of success (he has a book too, 8ways to be successful). The main thing about Richards talk was his obvious love to push himself and he had climbed many mountains and ran many marathons (I may wish to follow in his footsteps after seeing the photos). Here is a small extract of his talk http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success.html

Then it was time for a break to stretch our legs, then on with the afternoon’s entertainment.
To get us back into the swing of things they showed us ‘Terrible Terry Tate, Office Linebacker’ if you have never seen it please google it, its a good giggle.

Our next talk was from Alex Graham, CEO of Wall to Wall, a media company responsible for creating shows like, Who do you think you are, The 1900’s house and Man on Wire.
I found him interesting, it’s obviously not his day job, but he had some good stories and the pretence of, “5 ways to kill creativity” was a good framework. Being a fan of the 1900 house as a child I was very excited to hear the man who had produced one of the first TV series I remember watching as a family.

Then was my favourite speaker, Tom Scott (although his time slot was a shorter one) with his amusing and thought provoking take on social media. He was very good, funny, I was taking notes. It was more of a show than a talk and after an afternoon of trying to find it you can see a recording of his talk
http://www.tomscott.com/mob/

Then we saw a famous TED talk about not being a leader, be the first follower a short but neverless entertaining talk by Derek Sivers titled’ hoe to start a movement’
Then we went onto the penultimate speaker Andy Hanselman, who as a friend of mine was one of the main reasons I wanted to support. Having heard Andy speak before he always keeps motivating me and today was no different.

And so onto the last speaker of the day Doug Richard and with an open letter to Mr Cameron, I found it thought provoking, sensible and ...funny. I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting the humour, but I found that he made me think, question things and smile.

So as the afternoon drew to a close, I was sad it was over, looking forward to next time, loved the constant tweeting...oh and knew that I would be spending most of my free time finding other inspiring talks on the TED website.

oh an a shameless twitter plug follow me @ruthamos