On Sunday 23 September 2011 Tracey (MizTee) Habron attended a private lunch in honour of Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Tracey is one of our TEDxMelbourne organisers who can usually be seen at the front of house for events – first on the registration desk with her team and then organising whatever else will keep attendees happy… like food! Here is her review of the event.

“Some days are diamonds, some days are stones,” go the lyrics of an old John Denver song. Today was definitely a diamond day. Don’t get me wrong – my stone days are far and few between. My days are more like garnets and amethysts with the odd emerald and ruby day. But today was definitely a diamond day. Diamond days are days when you have a great experience that is a level up from your good or really good experience.

On Sunday 23 of September 2012 I was privileged to represent TEDxMelbourne at a private lunch in honour Captain Charles Moore.

Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an endless floating waste of plastic trash. Now he’s drawing attention to the growing,choking problem of plastic debris in our seas.

Charles Moore is founder of the Algalita Marine ResearchFoundation. He captains the foundation’s research vessel, the Alguita, documenting the great expanses of plastic waste that now litter our oceans.

What I learned is that we now have more plastic in the ocean than we have plankton – not exactly they way the ocean should be. You can watch his TED talk here.

Just being able to listen to Cap’n Charles was a good experience, but meeting other interesting people makes it a really good experience. I am really lucky to meet people at events like this who are passionate about something, even if I don’t share the same passion.

TED is always about spreading ideas and this happens when you meet people who think and have ideas to share so they can spread. I enjoy meeting people. I am generally curious and I like to learn things. Being surrounded by interesting people made lunch even more enjoyable.

What took the lunch from good to really good to great was the venue. The lunch was held at Silo by Joost (pronounced Yoast). Joost Bakker is a Dutch-born, Melbourne-based sustainability architect and eco-artist who has collaborated with café maestro Danny Colls (Liaison, ex Café Racer) to design Melbourne’s first waste-free café. Pretty darn awesome!

Freshly prepared food was served to share – there is something wonderful about sharing food. The energy in the sharing is almost collaborative. And when I say fresh, I mean fresh. All food is prepared as required. It does make a difference to the taste.

But what really got to me was the bread. I am a girl who doesn’t eat too many carbs – I have one of those bodies that just blows out when looking at carbs. I love carbs but if I ate all the carbs I wanted, I would be a large lady. I have been a large lady and I don’t want to go back there.

The bread at Silo could have me going back to large though. I remember eating aslice and thinking it was so good and that I had had something similar before but couldn’t quite place it. When Joost explained, it all made sense.

The wheat is milled on the spot and then used to make the dough. From milling to eating is a mere 12 hours. It is the freshly milled wheat that makes the difference! And what a difference!

It was right after the explanation that I remembered where I had eaten similar – at a friend’s farm in Numurkah. He gets wheat from the local farmer and mills it himself to make bread. They are onto something – I can see a habit forming and me trekking across the city for a bread fix.

Silo by Joost is an experience. A great experience. They make their own butter and soy milk. Organic milk is delivered in stainless-steel vats, mineral water arrives in kegs and fresh produce comes direct from farms and markets in reusable crates. The whisky is in a wooden barrel and from local distillery Bakery Hill. They also have a fabulous Barista!!

This is the type of initiative I would like everyone to support. I would love everyone to visit but not all at once. It is a small place. The communal table only seats 15 people. I suggest getting there early or late for lunch. They open at 6.30am for those in need of an early caffeine fix or porridge from hand rolled oats.

Tracey (MizTee) Habron
Tracey is one of the TEDxMelbourne organisers who can usually be seen at the front of house for events – first on the registration desk with her team and then organising whatever else will keep attendees happy… like food!

Leave a Comment

In the lead up to our Future Leadership event on August 24th, we will feature blog posts from various leaders talking about their passion and expertise.

Today’s article is written by Peter Cook, a best selling author, speaker, trainer and mentor who is passionate about helping people and organisations implement projects that matter.

Peter is passionate about implementation, and specifically implementing Thought Leadership, Innovation and Sales.

A thought leader is recognized by peers, customers and industry experts as someone who deeply understands the business they are in, the needs of their customers and the broader marketplace in which they operate. They have distinctively original ideas, unique points of view and new insights.

Peter shares with us a brief and interesting history of the term “Thought Leadership” and challenges us to be thought leaders in our fields of expertise instead of just becoming thought followers.

Have you noticed that suddenly everyone is a thought leader? It’s become the latest corporate buzzword. I did a search on my LinkedIn network – 20,102 people that I am connected with have “thought leader” in their description. (But just to put that in perspective, 3,932 had “rock star” in their description and there were five “mythical figures”.)

Still, that’s a lot of thought leaders.

Wikipedia tells me that thought leader is “business jargon” – ouch. Where did it all come from? And what does it really mean?

The term was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the magazine, Strategy & Business, who said that “A thought leader is recognized by peers, customers and industry experts as someone who deeply understands the business they are in, the needs of their customers and the broader marketplace in which they operate. They have distinctively original ideas, unique points of view and new insights.”

Sounds pretty cool. Matt Church popularised the concept in Australia after in 2004 he founded Thought Leaders, a training company that has since expanded into the US, India and Europe.

When asked about thought leadership, Matt says that the world is changing, and if you are in the business of being an expert, Google has changed everything. Mat contends that an expert used to be someone who knew stuff. Now anyone with an Internet connection can get more information than they will ever need. This information overload has created three vacuums: meaning, relevance and engagement. And that, says Matt Church, is what a thought leader needs to provide – meaning, relevance and engagement.

Of course to be a thought leader you need to do that in a way that builds on the thinking in your field of expertise.

Stephen Covey gives us a great example of this with his Time Management Matrix which maps that which is important against that which is urgent. It’s a model that most of us are familiar with – ‘urgent’ is on one axis and ‘important’ is on the other. Covey uses the model to make the point that we need to spend less time on the urgent, non-important stuff, and give much more priority to the important, non-urgent stuff. It’s a piece of thought leadership that has influenced millions of people, and made tens of millions of dollars.

However it wasn’t an original idea. He quotes Goethe who said “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least” as the source of the idea. Covey took that idea, and made it relevant, engaging and meaningful. He attributed the source with honour, and through his thought leadership has changed the world.

So by all means call yourself a thought leader, but if you do make sure you’re not actually just a thought follower. Go forth and build on the thinking in your domain, provide meaning, relevance and engagement to your people and make the world a better place.

Peter Cook is a best selling author, speaker, trainer and mentor who is passionate about helping people and organisations implement projects that matter. With a Masters of Business in Organisational Change, a Bachelor of Science in Advanced Physics, a Bachelor of Laws with Honours, and a Diploma in Financial Services, his consulting and coaching programs across Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the US has guided various businesses – from startups to some of the biggest names in the world – towards business and financial mastery.

• The anatomy of an idea – how to make yours worth spreading?
• What’s the difference between a thought leader and a thought follower?
• How to capture your IP to have the biggest impact?
• What are the different elements of an idea worth spreading?

Have your say below, or start a conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

Leave a Comment

In the lead up to our Future Leadership event on August 24th, we will feature blog posts from various leaders talking about their passion and expertise.

Today’s article is written by Mark Thomson, a registered architect and Corporate Sustainability Principal of the Schiavello Group of Companies.

Cardboard Capers was conceived as a repurposing process. The idea is to find more uses for waste materials, extend their life cycle via creating a value plus concept and then ensure that the cardboard is responsibly recycled.

Mark shares with us his passion for the Cardboard Capers project and the process involved in repurposing waste material. Channel 10 in Brisbane has recently run a story on this project.

A trip to a landfill makes you realise how much our society wastes. What’s worse is that you realise much of what we waste is avoidable and that our current efforts in recycling are somewhat simplistic.

Following a nose to tail car accident, I learnt that vehicle bumper bars are delivered in large cardboard boxes and then tossed in a recycling bin, often to be contaminated with other greasy but recyclable objects from the vehicle repair process.

With approval from a supportive vehicle repair business, I collected these boxes ‘plus other cardboard and held a design workshop for architecture students challenging them and inspiring them initially to create some cardboard cubbyhouses.

Cardboard Capers was conceived as a repurposing process. The idea is to find more uses for waste materials, extend their life cycle via creating a value plus concept and then ensure that the cardboard is responsibly recycled. The process is relatively simple but requires an initial vision, determination and persistence to execute a practical solution, time input of volunteers and supporters, organisation of interested parties, clarity of environmental objectives and engagement of community interest.

The process of trialling the concept proved valuable in understanding the issues and working through practical solutions to satisfy the varied stakeholders. Storage of the cardboard was the first issue to be resolved. Enter a business colleague with a growing business, who offered access to his warehouse for initial cardboard storage. Collection of the cardboard occurred every 2 weeks initially to understand the quantity of cardboard available. Transporting the cardboard required a covered utility vehicle and the process of sorting, moving and storing the cardboard offered an understanding of how transport and warehouse logistics would become a critical ingredient to the success of the process.

The next consideration is quality control, ensuring the cardboard is uncontaminated, free of plastic, tape staples and other ancillary packing materials to facilitate future recycling as a clean non toxic resource.

The design workshop is the next complex process. Organising participants, providing cutting and non toxic fixing materials including glues and transporting (and feeding them ) during the workshop exercise. Protocols are established, an induction occurs and safety issues explained to ensure a successful workshop outcome.

The workshop, with the enthusiasm and talent of design students, results in a multiple objects conceived to delight kindergarten children. Designs included a clock with movable hands, a working pinball “machine”, a stingray costume, a rocking horse and cubbyhouse with adjustable windows and doors.

A local kindergarten was the recipe rant of the Cardboard Capers products and the design students handed over the objects and witnessed the joy the children had in experiencing new play objects, which they were quick to decorate and customise for their play use. The final stage of the process involves the removal of the objects for recycling and replacing them with new repurposed cardboard objects to provide a continuous and sustainable cyclic program.

Mark Thomson is a registered architect and Corporate Sustainability Principal of the Schiavello Group of Companies.

Leave a Comment

TEDxMelbourne is growing… fast. It was only a few years ago that this non-profit was first founded.  Today we have over 1200 people attend our annual events and our online community  reaches over 10,000 people.

Our goal is to become the premier event in Melbourne for thinkers, leaders and change-makers to meet and create action. The volunteers involved with TEDxMelbourne have a passion for innovation and leadership.  We believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.

But we need your help.

We’re hungry for new skills and experience on our volunteer committee. If you think you can help us grow our brand, build our community and deliver our promise of ‘ideas worth spreading’ in unique and innovative ways, then we’d love to hear from you.

What makes a TEDizen?

We’re looking for go-getters who are self-driven, love playing in a team and exploring new ideas – after all, we’re all about ideas.

Ideally, we want people who are:

• Resourceful and show initiative
• Lateral thinkers
• Energetic and passionate
• TED ‘groupies’
• Natural leaders
• Able to work autonomously with little input
• Team players
• Able to deal with ambiguity and/or stressful situations
• Personable and friendly

The gigs

We are always on the lookout for talented volunteers, and whilst below are some specific roles we’re looking to currently fill, if you feel you can contribute in a different way – no matter how big or small – please contact us.

Mr./Ms. Engagement – Media/Marketing specialist
TEDxMelbourne is a fast growing community, but there’s tremendous opportunity to get our story out to a larger audience. We’re looking for a proactive volunteer to develop and drive a media strategy whilst working with our PR partners – Edelman Australia.

• Strong experience in the media industry
• Established contacts in newspapers, TV, radio, etc. (preferred)
• PR experience
• Create and co-ordinate the distribution of media releases
• Development of a press kit and maintenance of media resources

The tech head – Website developer
Our WordPress site is constantly updated with new goodies including event information, speaker bios, blogs and articles, and much more. We’re currently undertaking a massive re-development of the site so it truly brings the TEDxMelbourne brand to life, and need someone to work closely with our Creative Director & Digital Manager in building it and/or maintaining it.

• Experience in similar role
• Experience working with WordPress essential
• HTML and JavaScript/jquery
• Build webpages, features, tools and apps across a range of platforms including WordPress and Facebook
• General website maintenance

Right arm (or left arm for the lefties) for Head Curator
Although our Head Curator is the guru of getting things done, he needs support. He has a team of volunteers around him coordinating the various aspects of TEDxMelbourne, but what about all the things he needs to get done? Grant proposals, keeping up to date with what’s happening with other TEDx groups, and the long checklist of pre-event jobs are just a few things on his mind – and he’s a volunteer too! We’re need an assistant for our Head Curator to help make TEDxMelbourne the premier event.

• Strong report/grant writing skills (preferred)
• Experience in event management
• Be comfortable pro-actively seeking information
• Self-driven to take on new projects and ideas
• Excellent organization/administration skills and attention to detail

The mouth and ears – Community Engagement officer
With a growing online audience that currently reaches over 10,000 we’re looking for ways to further engage our online communities.

• Experience managing brands online
• Experience in editing email newsletters through mail chimp (preferred)
• Ability to adjust copywriting style to suit media releases, the web/social media, media releases, partnership proposals, and blogging
• Understanding of a range of platforms, especially Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
• Schedule updates and posts into our social stream – confidence to respond to simple queries and coordinate responses from the team for more complex interactions
• Source ideas for social content
• Monitor social mentions and online PR
• Provide quarterly reports on social activity

How to apply

If you’re interested in working with us, please fill in our volunteer application form here.

• Apply to volunteer for TEDxMelbourne right now
• View and/or print this information in a handy PDF
• Find out more about our current team & your potential TEDx-colleagues

Leave a Comment

We’ve hooked up with The Awesome Foundation for something really special, and quite frankly, awesome.

Not sure who The Awesome Foundation is? Really? They’re devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe, and they distribute a series of monthly $1,000 grants to projects and their creators.  The Foundation provides these grants with no strings attached and claims no ownership over the projects it supports.  It is, in the words of one of their trustees, a micro-genius grant for flashes of micro-brilliance.

So TEDxMelbourne is devoted to spreading awesome ideas, and the Melbourne chapter of The Awesome Foundation can help make them a reality. What a team!

The totally awesome news? The July grant winner will not only win a cash injection of $1,000, but you’ll get to speak at TEDxMelbourne about your awesome idea worth spreading.  That’s a rare opportunity to share your idea with our audience of awesome, diverse and influential change-makers.

So let’s break it down:

• The winner will get to speak for 5 minutes at our TEDxMelbourne August 2012 event only (August 24).
• The talk must adhere to TED speaker guidelines.
• The speaker will be coached to the TED talk standard. This means compulsory attendance at our practice day (August 23) plus at least 3 meetings beforehand to craft your talk with our TEDxMelbourne curator.
• The talk must be about your “idea worth spreading” – no selling, branding or product/service positioning, no calls to action for volunteers or funding (these are TED rules).
• The video of your talk will appear online at our discretion.

All Awesome Foundation applications from June and July will be considered for the competition.

So get your applications in and spread the word as TEDxMelbourne goes Awesome!

• Apply now
• Read about it on the Awesome Foundation website
• Find out more about The Awesome Foundation

Leave a Comment

Our first event in 2012 was also our first ever purely social event with no speakers, performances or videos – just an opportunity for the TEDxMelbourne community to get together.

The evening proved to be an inspiring way to ‘leap’ into the year, with attendees enjoying the view from The Deck at Mercantile Place as they shared their big ideas worth spreading.

One lucky TEDx-er won two tickets to our main TEDxMelbourne event in August, we shot some footage of attendees explaining what TEDx means to them, our curator thanked everyone for being so awesome and we handed out conversation starters to help everyone get to know each other, including questions like:

View all the photos from the night on our Facebook page

Leave a Comment

How does the collective power of social media help spread ideas worth spreading? Oh, only in like, a hundred different ways!

In fact, the simple act of you taking a couple of minutes to read this blog is contributing towards the online buzz around TEDxMelbourne.

And because of people like you, we’re thrilled to report that we’ve reached more than 780,000 users online according to this nifty Amplify Effect tool.

Amplify Effect was an innovation experiment developed as part of AMP’s 2011 innovation and thought-leadership festival, Amplify. Not only does it track things like tweets and Facebook fans, but you can ‘like’ your favorite talks and grab a piece of code for each of our speakers to share on your own blog or website, amplifying the event even further.

We think it’s really cool, and a great way to measure any event’s reach and value.

Here’s TEDxMelbourne’s Amplify Effect results so far:

Can you help us reach one million?

View the details and help amplify TEDxMelbourne here

Naturally, there are plenty of other ways for you to spread TEDxMelbourne’s ideas worth spreading: like tweeting about your favorite talk, sharing our website with a friend or just saying ‘hi’ on our Facebook wall sometime.

^JK

Leave a Comment

Monique is a co-founder of Flexicar and led the business as CEO from its early days through to its sale to Hertz in December 2010.

She grew up in the Mallee (northern Victoria), where her family still lives. Graduating with honours from the University of Melbourne in both Engineering and Arts, Monique previously worked as an engineer/project manager in the infrastructure sector.

Her experience includes time in both the private & public sectors on projects as diverse as a renewable energy program for remote Indigenous communities, an urban regeneration project for an old mining town in the north of England and a new head office building for Sainbury’s in Cario.

In 1998 she was awarded the National Association of Women in Construction Young Achiever Award. She is the Chair of the Moreland Energy Foundation Limited, a Fellow of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership and an Associate of Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute.

In 2009 she was the Victorian Winner of the Hudson Private & Corporate Sector Award in the Telstra Business Women’s Awards, and in 2010 she was appointed an Australia Day Ambassador.

Monique has recently return to Australia after completing a two month Churchill Fellowship investigating the latest developments in innovative sustainable transport globally.

Monique is passionate about new ways of doing business that are financially, socially and environmentally sustainable, and she aspires to be a serial “eco-preneur”.

Leave a Comment

Annalie Killian is Catalyst for Magic at AMP. She brings creativity and innovation to business by cultivating a culture of collaboration, championing the exploration of trends, and fostering experimentation with new ideas and emerging technologies. Annalie founded AMP’s crowd-sourcing innovation programme for employees, which grew from a grassroots movement in 2003 to a company-wide programme by 2009, and is producer of AMP’s biannual festival of innovation in business, leadership and technology: Amplify. 

Amplify Festival attracts edge-thinkers and change agents to Australia from all over the world, and provides an immersive learning experience for AMP employees, customers, partners, and a growing public audience. In between festivals, Annalie curates monthly Social Business Salons to accelerate the technology transfer and adoption rate by business leaders.

In 2011, the US based Aspen Institute invited Annalie to become a Fellow of their First Movers Programme, designed to develop and connect global leaders working at the intersection of business growth and social innovation.

Prior to AMP, Annalie lead the Public Affairs function of BHP Billiton’s Aluminium Division in South Africa where her work won numerous international awards for social innovation. Annalie’s corporate career started with Deloitte as an accountant.

Annalie practices an open innovation approach, and shares what she learns through frequent public speaking engagements, via her blog Catalyst for Magic (recently named one of Australia’s top 25 business blogs by Smart Company) and on twitter as @maverickwoman, where she has been tweeting her magic from Twitter’s early days.

Leave a Comment

Technology entrepreneur Evan Thornley is Chief Executive of electric car network Better Place Australia.

The former Victorian MP also co-founded and served as chairman and CEO of internet search advertising company LookSmart Ltd, one of the few Australian technology companies to be taken public on the NASDAQ Stock Market.

Evan has worked as a management consultant with leading global management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and was the founding Chair of the Board of Per Capita, a public policy think tank.

Holding degrees in Law and Commerce from The University of Melbourne, where he served as student body President, Evan has served on the board of the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, and was a Founding Director of GetUp.

Leave a Comment