Some of Steve’s photos are below.

So, it is with great pride that we’d like to announce that for 2012, TEDxCanberra will be moving to the Canberra Theatre Centre’s Playhouse and will take place on 8 September 2012. Pencil it into your diaries now.

Seating just over 600, The Playhouse has been home to Bell Shakespeare, Tim Minchin, Sarah Blasko, Davis Strassman and the local Rock Eisteddfod. And now, TEDxCanberra too!

This move, which has been several months in planning and negotiation will ensure that we no longer need to disappoint the very many people who wish to come to TEDxCanberra and could not due to capacity restrictions; last year, there were 250 people that wanted tickets that simply couldn’t get them.

It should also mean that the rush for places won’t be so awful.

We have a few other special plans in store for TEDxCanberra 2012, including guaranteed student places, but we’ll be making the announcements about those things in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we can now have some more definite conversations with prospective partners and some very exciting presenters we have in mind!

Something special is happening in Berlin on the evening of Thursday 5 April — TEDxChange — The BIG Picture — will take place. So, what’s TEDxChange you ask?

TEDxChange is an initiative, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, devoted to ideas worth spreading in the areas of global health and development. The TEDxChange team works with TEDx organizers around the world to help facilitate meaningful discussions on topics such as vaccines, polio, malaria, HIV/AIDS, maternal and newborn child health, and agricultural development. The TEDxChange initiative also includes a global signature event convened by Melinda Gates and broadcast across the TEDx community.

The short video below explains a little more about TEDxChange.

Here at TEDxCanberra, we’ll be holding a very small (it is, after all, the Easter long weekend) official satellite event to coincide with the main event. Given that Berlin’s time zone doesn’t exactly mesh well with Canberra, we’re going to watch the archive of the live stream from Berlin.

As it turns out, it’ll actually be Good Friday here in Canberra; a day, regardless of our faith or not, that we should pause and consider those who share the planet with us, and how, especially for those in the developing world and in regions affected by chronic conditions otherwise controlled or eliminated in our part of the planet, just staying alive can be a struggle.

Trib, you’re the Creative Catalyst for TEDx Canberra. What on earth does that involve?

Organisations always have such terrible titles for their people and TEDxCanberra is at least a little guilty of the same thing, though we try to be creative without sounding like complete wankers. I could call myself “Licensee” and “Creative Director” and it’d be accurate, but using Creative Catalyst deliberately makes me focus on my role in our volunteer team; I’m the guy whose job it is to come up with impractical ideas, to toss things into the mix that others might not have thought of and to dream up the shoot for the stars version of things I’d like to see at TEDxCanberra each year.

As an example, I’m a huge fan of the Slovenian acapella choir, Perpetuum Jazzile (nerdy, I know). I’d just about do anything to have them at TEDxCanberra. But it’s not realistic, is it? It’s one of those crazy ideas. So, having that idea gives us a starting point to work from gives us a journey that’s more realistic — from Perpetuum Jazzile to acapella choir to local choir. That’s something we can bring to TEDxCanberra.

Of course, if we find a wealthy benefactor to get us PJ…

How does a TEDx event differ from TED?

TED’s like the NRL Grand Final (not that I’m a fan of NRL, I’m a union lad, myself) and TEDx is like the local Colts final. It’s smaller, less slick and more grassroots. I’ve been lucky enough to be to TED a couple of times now and it’s a mind-blowing experience. It’s like spending a week in a class full of geniuses who can’t see that “no” is an option. And it’s not just the presenters on stage, it’s everyone. Every person in the audience is just as interesting and capable as those on stage. Especially the little guys. And particularly the TEDx organisers. TEDx seeks to bring a micro version of that experience to local communities.

The community that I’m a part of — TEDx organisers from around the world — are amazing people. They’re all doing something significant and important in their own communities; from getting a TEDx event running in Baghdad to helping get startups off the ground to doing the most creative work in their field. Every person you turn to does something different and powerful. I’m actually headed to Doha in April to spend a week working with TEDx organisers from around the world on making TEDx an even better experience.

The team at TEDxCanberra are no different. We’ve got a core of volunteers (all TEDx events are run on a volunteer and non-profit basis; there’s nothing in it for us other than the doing) who work in a range of industries. They give up huge slabs of their time to help make TEDxCanberra real. In 2011 we burned something like 1200 hours of volunteer time to put our event on.

How long has TEDx Canberra been going?

I was at TED in 2009 and the announcement of TEDx was made not long after I came home. I stewed over it for a while and in February 2010 flicked an email to a few friends and other folk in canberra who’d been to events like BarCamp or were involved in the innovation community. After an early March meeting one Sunday in my lounge, we decided on making TEDxCanberra 2010 a reality. Eight months (and 1000 hours of volunteer time) later we had a sold out theater and 16 speakers good to go.

On a slightly grander scale, TEDxCanberra 2011 was much the same. We ramped up the production values but stayed in the same venue to ensure the experiements we tried were scalable and sustainable. This year, with lessons learned, we scale up again.

We’ve run two sold out events — 2010 and 2011 — at the National Library of Australia theater. It seats 300 people. Sadly, we’re moving on from the NLA this year. We love them for helping make the past two years a reality, but we had to turn away 250 people who wanted seats last year. That’s just not sustainable. Either we change venue to somewhere larger or it gets too exclusive, and we’re deliberately focussed on inclusiveness and the community. Without our community, there is no TEDxCanberra.

What makes TEDx Canberra special or different to other TEDx events?

Within the rules framework that all TEDx events run under, we can make a number of choices about how we run. One of those choices is how we decide who makes up our audience. We made a very deliberate decision for TEDxCanberra 2010 to be as open as we could. Unlike a number of TEDx events, we don’t curate our audience in any way. If there are places available, and you want one, you get one provided you pay your registration fee.

We don’t feel this approach diminishes the diversity or interestingness of our audience in any way. We had people aged from 10 to 80 in our audience last year. They came from all over including Darwin, North Queensland, outback South Australia and oddly enough, The Netherlands. About 30 per cent of the audience comes from outside Canberra. They have diverse jobs too; they’re public servants (it is Canberra, after all), diplomats, teachers (we get a lot of those), students, business people, NGO workers and more.

Our Exec Producer, Clare Conroy, insists the speaker lineup includes what she calls “head and heart” talks. There needs to be a range of things on stage that speak to our logical selves and our emotional selves. That’s why we’ve had everything from Nobel Laureates to high school students to 3rd sector social entrepreneurs to futurists to musicians and Australians of the Year on our stage.

That kind of rich mix makes for an invigorating day. No two talks are alike and we deliberately mix it up. It keeps the creative juices flowing, the talk in breaks excited, and brings diverse groups together that might otherwise not often be in the same place. There have been more than a few serendipitous meetings from our two events that have brought people together to collaborate.

What makes TEDx an event that Mumbrella and Encore’s readers (people who work in creative industries, media, marketing and screen) should attend?

Well, it’s awesome! And while that’s my subjective view, the feedback we get from participants suggests they have a pretty good time.

But in all seriousness, by coming to TEDxCanberra, you get a whole day of short talks from interesting people across a range of disciplines who are all doing something amazing, or important or creative (or all three and more) in order to change the world. This year, we’re focussing on an idea we’re calling “no neat bows” — we don’t want any of our talks to be those neat, packaged pieces where you walk away thinking “that was interesting”. Rather, we want all of our presenters to issue a challenge, or pose a question, or have audience members walk away motivated to take action to do something in their communities that makes a difference.

It’s about taking that TED maxim of “ideas worth spreading” and moving to what we’re calling “actions worth doing”.

Who would you like to see apply to take part as a presenter? What are your criteria, and who decides on the final line up?

Australia is so full of interesting people it’s hard to choose. We try to select presenters who will end up attracting the attention of the TED team in NYC, whose talk isn’t hyper-local, but addresses a wider issue. The two talks from TEDxCanberra 2011 selected for featuring on TED — Professor Thomas Pogge’s talk on the Health Impact Fund and Dr Stephen Coleman’s talk on the ethics of non-lethal weapons have both attracted over 160,000 views and hundreds of often heated comments. That’s exactly what we’re after!

I’ve actually got a bit of a wishlist for TEDxCanberra 2012:

• space and space science
• an adventurer
• a Muslim (woman?) to discuss something other than Western perceptions of Muslims.
• a storyteller (Sally Sara maybe?)
• a young person doing something important
• clever tech
• a faith leader
• an a capella choir

I’d definitely like more people to be aware enough of TEDxCanberra to apply to be a presenter or to suggest possible presenters to us. I’m sure Mumbrella and Encore readers know a bunch of these sorts of people (or are them). They should totally nominate. We announced our open nominations just last, week actually.

As for who decides, it’s a bit of a process. We’re constantly looking all over the place for interesting performers, speakers, doers of stuff. We mix those folks in with the nominations we receive and conduct a bit of a vetting process. Then, we invite a shortlist to tell us what they would say if they had the stage at TEDxCanberra. From there, we trim again and actually invite people to present or perform. We have a speaker curation team who does this alongside our leadership team to ensure we gather the best possible talent to showcase to the world.

Thank you!

No. Thank you for asking me to talk to you. It has been a pleasure.

The best moments at events like TEDxCanberra come from the least expected places — a presenter who was nervous during rehearsal, someone putting an unexpected slant on their subject, a friend of a friend with an interesting idea.

In the interests of exploring just what Australia might bring to the world of TEDx, at TEDxCanberra we’re searching for voices, talents and ideas that delight and surprise us and will hopefully do the same for our attendees this coming Spring.

It doesn’t matter to us how old you are (or how young), what you do (we’ve had Nobel laureates, Australians of the Year, teachers, students, lawyers, musicians, artists, ethicists, futurists, skeptics, dancers and more on our stage) or how experienced you are (some TEDxCanberra presenters have never spoken publicly before, others speak to audiences almost every week) — we want to hear from you about what you’d say at TEDxCanberra 2012 if you had the chance.

Several of our presenters have had their talks shown on the main TED site with much success. Imagine if you could present your idea to 200,000 engaged and interested idea spreaders!

All you need to do is submit your ideas to us and we’ll consider them. You can nominate yourself or if you know someone that should be on our stage, we encourage you to nominate them.

Nominations are open now and will close for this year’s event on June 15th 2012.

Following on from the enormous success of Thomas Pogge’s talk on TED.com last December, now another Canberra local, Dr Stephen Coleman, who is a military ethicist and Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales at ADFA, is in the eye of the TED world.

We spoke to Stephen who has recently returned from an international tour of some of the world’s largest defence departments where he shared his perspective about the problems of military use of non-lethal weaponry as a deterrent to lethal force.

Dr Coleman said, “The US rules of engagement state that military are only able to deploy non-lethal weapons under the same circumstances as lethal weaponry. However in Australia, while the military don’t have access to non-lethal weapons, it’s a real problem with our police, these weapons are being far too widely used.

“TEDxCanberra has provided me with an opportunity to share my work with an influential and international audience. I strongly urge people with new and exciting ideas or projects to get involved in the 2012 event.”

Given that there are now well over 12,000 TEDx talks, and fewer than one per cent of them end up on TED.com, it really is a testament to the calibre of our speakers and the quality of the event program.

We understand that volunteering can take a significant amount of time, but you’ll have fun in the process, learn lots, meet lots of interesting people and help make this event happen!

Three tiers of volunteers

We have three tiers of volunteers, with differing levels of time commitment:

• On-the-Day Helper — generally involves one or two meetings before the event, rehearsal day time and being part of the actual event.
• Volunteer - able to give occasional, specific assistance based on your skills, but unable to commit to being a part of the core team that meets on a regularly basis. If you volunteer at this level, you will be assigned to one or more teams, depending upon how much time you can commit.
• Core Member - group of volunteers who dedicate significant time to the event. This involves regular meetings (fortnightly to weekly) as well as the time required to organise and chase things up. Core Members may have responsibility for one or more teams or functions.

Expectations

Our expectations are simple — we expect our volunteers to be passionate about TED and TEDx, to communicate with their relevant Core Member(s) on a regular basis, meet deadlines and represent our TEDxCanberra brand appropriately.

Does this sound like you? If so, nominate as a TEDxCanberra volunteer!

TED selected Thomas’ talk because they believe, as we do, that the very important work he is doing to make the Health Impact Fund a reality has the potential to revitalise pharmaceutical innovation and ensure the availability of medicines to the world’s poorest people on an equal standing with the world’s wealthiest.

His idea, as TED have chosen to title it, really is Medicine for the 99 percent.

When we caught up with Thomas last week, we hadn’t heard that this was going to happen. Learning about it from our friends at TED over the weekend was quite the early Christmas present!

So without further ado, here once again for your enjoyment is Thomas Pogge at TEDxCanberra 2011!