Past Events

TEDxMelbourne #5: 20 November, 2010

Our most ambitous and successful event so far with 15 speakers and performers. A diverse group of thinkers with many different backgrounds made a contribution to our theme of Community & Youth.

Mike Penrose

Mike Penrose is Director for Emergency Programmes for Save the Children. With a background in humanitarian aid, Mike has worked in most of the major humanitarian and conflict related crises since his first mission during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. This has included the management of response programmes in over 25 countries including Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Liberia, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq and Somalia. Mike also acts as a specialist trainer on hostage survival to several Governments and large corporations since being held hostage by Chechen Rebel Fighters during the 1996 conflict.

Andrew MacLeod

Andrew MacLeod is the CEO of the Committee for Melbourne, an independent network of Melbourne’s senior leaders who play a key role in shaping the future. In his career, Andrew has run humanitarian teams for the Red Cross and the UN globally, ideally placing him to talk about the future of business and Generation Y’s desire for social returns, as well as financial returns, and shape our future cities to be economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

Elliot Costello

In 2008, Elliot Costello initiated an international volunteer project which lead to the formation of YGAP (Y-Generation Against Poverty) – a youth based not-for-profit organisation entirely run by volunteers. Elliot now represents the organisation as both Co-Founder and CEO. Managing volunteers across Australia, UK, Denmark and the US, Elliot is responsible for YGAP’s international project outcomes across both Africa and Southern Asia. In 2010, Elliot launched the Kinfolk Project – a cafe which channels all funds to YGAP’s international work as well as local charitable projects. Kinfolk has been recognized as one of Melbourne’s most successful social businesses.

Lucinda Hartley

Trained as a landscape architect, Lucinda Hartley, 28, spent two years working in slum communities in Vietnam and Cambodia before launching Community Oriented Design – [co]design studio. Selected as a 2010 Youth Action Net Global Fellow, Lucinda has been focusing on how young people can be engaged and mobilized to improve cities and space through community oriented design. Lucinda’s commitment to sustainable design has been recognised by awards from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA), Asialink Dunlop Fellowship and the internationally competitive Endeavour Executive Award. Moreover in 2009 she was profiled in FuturARC Magazine as one of the top 30 design sustainability pioneers in Asia-Pacific.

Amanda McKenzie

Amanda McKenzie is one of Australia’s rising environmental leaders. Amanda is currently National Director of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, which she co-founded in 2006. In three years the AYCC has grown into the nation’s largest youth run youth organisation with 56,000 individual members and 30 organisational members. Amanda represents Australian youth in discussions with Federal Ministers, State Government representatives, business and industry representatives from Australia and around the world.

Amanda has been instrumental to building the global youth movement on climate change helping to organise the Global Youth Climate Conference in 2007 and 2008. Amanda contributes widely to the debate on climate change publishing in Australian and international publications. Amanda was awarded joint Young Environmentalist of the Year in 2009, holds an Australian Leadership Award from the Australian-Davos connection and was awarded the Monash University Distinguished Young Alumni award this year.

Jan Owen

Jan Owen AM commenced as CEO at The Foundation for Young Australians in September 2010. She is recognised as one of the leading pioneers of Australia’s youth sector, having headed up Australia’s first youth representative bodies, as Chairperson of the National Youth Council of Australia and President of the Youth Affairs Council of Australia. Since 2002, Jan has been the Executive Director of Social Ventures Australia, an organisation that has pioneered new investment, social innovation and entrepreneurship models to increase the impact of the social sector.

Prior to this, Jan founded the CREATE Foundation where she was the inaugural CEO for nine years. With over two decades of experience in these sectors, Jan has led numerous partnerships and collaborations including the National Coalition for Children and the National Children’s Summit; and, most recently, the Social Enterprise World Forum. In 2000 she received membership to the Order of Australia for service to children and young people.

Chuck Berger

Charles Berger (Chuck) is Director of Strategic Ideas at the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), one of Australia’s leading environmental advocacy organisations. He leads ACF’s efforts to better align economic thought and policy with ecological and human reality, and to address the underlying drivers of environmental degradation such as unsustainable consumption, growth in resource use and population pressures. Prior to his current role, Chuck worked as a corporate lawyer in private practice in New York and Brussels, and then as ACF’s in-house lawyer for several years. He holds law degrees from Yale University and the University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Adam Jaffrey

Adam Jaffrey is an Anti-Violence Evangelist for the non-profit group Step Back Think. For the past 3 years, Step Back Think has been using their youthful insight to put an end to street violence, in particular alcohol-fuelled violence. The organisation was founded after a close friend of the group was assaulted in Melbourne’s CBD and left with a permanent Acquired Brain Injury. This tragedy motivated the group to tackle the issue of street violence from many angles including legislative changes to liquor laws, partnering with national sporting icons and launching a pilot education program. Adam led the change in many of these programs and is excited to be involved with many new projects commencing in the coming months.

Tania Major

Tania Major is a Kokoberra woman from the remote community of Kowanyama in Cape York Queensland. She holds a degree in Criminology from Griffith University, and at 21 became the youngest elected regional councillor in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). Tania was honoured by being named the Young Australian of the Year in January 2007. She was also voted as Young Leader of the year for the 2007 Deadly Awards, and YEN Young Woman of the Year for Community Vision.

Since 2002 Tania has publicly addressed many national and international forums, speaking on Indigenous and Youth affairs as these relate to remote communities, particularly those in Cape York. Tania is currently the GenerationOne Spokesperson.

Radhey Shyam Gupta

Radhey has repertoire of 40 years of Sitar playing as an expert who has successfully performed at numerous concerts in India and Australia. Radhey obtained a degree in music in Agra in 1966 and completed “Sangeet Visharad” from Gandharva Mahavidhyalaya. Though a graduate of IIT Delhi and an IT professional, he has continued his passion for music by performing, teaching and organizing music functions at Melbourne. All over the World hundreds of eager music learners receive free lessons on his website www.sharda.org

Gerard Veltre

Over the last 15 years Gerard Veltre has worked with diverse groups of young people and their communities around Australia to foster an inclusive culture of dance and theatre that champions artistic expression. These communities include remote Aboriginal communities and young people in prisons. Gerard is currently Artistic Director of Phunktional a company dedicated to making entertaining art that creatively explores issues about conflict and social justice to promote wellbeing and sustainability.

Kumari Middleton

Former professional dancer, Kumari dreamt of a place where youth come together to share stories and learn about cultural awareness, prevention of substance abuse, sex education and more, while enjoying themselves through the experience of performing arts.

Turning this dream into a reality, she now runs Mayibuye, a community dance and life skills program which she co-founded to keep young people off the streets and engaged with life. Active in both Australia and South Africa, the program fundraises with dance and theatre performances, allowing the students to present educational messages on topics including the danger of drugs, the importance of speaking out about violence and abuse, and ways in which to overcome crime and poverty.

Steven Persson

Steven a social entrepreneur, has been working with The Big Issue, Australia’s largest street magazine and social enterprise since 2005 providing opportunities for homeless and socially marginalised people to improve their circumstances.

Working in the NGO sector for over 20 years, Steven holds a tertiary qualification in education for the disabled. In both corporate social responsibility and sponsorship arrangements, Steven has engaged with and managed relationships with some of Australia and the world’s largest businesses.

Emilie Zoey Baker

Emilie Zoey Baker is a published award winning poet and slam champion, she has performed poetry all around the world including Paris, New York, London and Chicago and is the state coordinator for the Australian Poetry Slam. She was the first ever Australian to compete in SlamReview as part of the 2010 Berlin International Literature Festival which she won! Emilie is also the Education Officer at the Australian Poetry Centre and coordinator of the first ever teen team slam, OutLOud as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival 2010.

Dig Deep

The Dig Deep Drop-in Centre at the Arts Centre provides ongoing inspiration, support and training for emerging artists focusing on hip-hop and urban music. It establishes a collective, creative working environment in the form of ongoing series of weekly workshops in the Arts Centre’s new Digital Learning Hub.

Participants develop a range of skills focusing on the utilisation of current software, production and performance techniques. Tutoring and mentoring is carried out by a combination of established artists and studio specialists. The Dig Deep Drop-in Centre develops strong supportive community networks with the Arts Centre. These are established initially within the workshop environment and then propelled outward via performances and the digital delivery of new work on the Dig Deep website.

TEDxMelbourne #4: 11 August, 2010

This was a short evening event based around the theme of Entrepreneurship and featured these TED Talks including David Pogue, Cameron Herold, Chip Conley and Naturally 7.

TEDxMelbourne #3: 13 March, 2010

With our confidence growing we had two live speakers: Pat Naughtin on Saving Millions with the Metric System; and Maurício Buchler on The Evolution of Education Through Entertainment. We also streamed the event in to the world’s first 3D Virtual TEDx conference.

TEDxMelbourne #2: 14 November, 2009

The second TEDxMelbourne built on the enthusiasm and fun experienced at the first event. Again, it was held at Monash, Caulfield and featured Greg Smith on Valuing Our Finite Resources.

TEDxMelbourne #1: 17 January, 2009

The inaugural TEDxMelbourne event was held at Monash, Caulfield and featured lots of TED Talks plus guest speaker Ninian Peckitt: Rebuilding the Face with Engineering Assisted Surgery.