Home / News

News

Stephen Coleman featured on TED.com

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on February 8, 2012

This morn­ing Aus­tralian time, the sec­ond TEDx­Can­berra talk to be fea­tured on the main TED site went live.

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.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a response

Call for volunteers

By Ruth Ellison on February 3, 2012

TEDx events around the world are a huge group effort by a ded­i­cated group of vol­un­teers for each event. For TEDx­Can­berra 2011, a crew of 24 peo­ple was involved in doing all sorts of jobs, spend­ing over 1000 vol­un­teer hours to make TEDx­Can­berra happen.

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!

Posted in | Tagged , , , | 3 Responses

Thomas Pogge on TED.com

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on December 19, 2011

Fewer than one per cent of all TEDx Talks from the thou­sands of events around the world end up on TED.com. Today, we’re proud to announce that Thomas Pogge’s talk from TEDx­Can­berra 2011 is the first talk from our event to gain this level of recog­ni­tion.

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!

Posted in | Tagged , , , | Leave a response

Two TEDxCanberra presenters featured on TEDx Editor’s Picks

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on December 19, 2011

In the weeks since TEDx­Can­berra 2011, two pre­sen­ters have been fea­tured as TEDx Editor’s Picks — Stephen Coleman’s talk on the ethics of non-lethal weapons on 31 Octo­ber and, just last week, Thomas Pogge’s talk on the Health Impact Fund and his pro­posal for a new, more eth­i­cally and outcomes-based track for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal inno­va­tion. Both talks are embed­ded below so you can re-watch them.

We’re delighted that the ideas we loved are also wor­thy of recog­ni­tion by TED them­selves. It means a great deal to us that our pre­sen­ters get the atten­tion we think they deserve.

Posted in | Tagged , | Leave a response

Boho Interactive — Chaos, complexity, balloons and bunnies

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on November 8, 2011

In this talk at TEDx­Can­berra 2011, sci­ence the­ater group Boho demon­strate in “18 one-minute talks” that Com­plex­ity The­ory really can be under­stood by the aver­age per­son. Not only that, they bring to the fore a num­ber of global issues and dis­cuss them in the con­text of com­plex sys­tems interaction.

You have to see it to believe it!

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a response

Rafe Morris — Funny songs about real life

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on November 2, 2011

In this per­for­mance at TEDx­Can­berra 2011, Rafe sings a num­ber of his humor­ous songs that reflect upon the odd­i­ties of our lives, our obses­sions, and the relief of… well, you’ll just have to listen.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a response

Matt Noffs — Street kids and cane toads

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on October 31, 2011

In this talk at TEDx­Can­berra 2011, Matt talks about car­ry­ing on the busi­ness of the foun­da­tion his grand­fa­ther began and how it is chang­ing for the 21st Cen­tury, incor­po­rat­ing new ways of engag­ing home­less and at risk youth, and how an intro­duced pest, the cane toad, has become a part of the picture.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a response

Sally Webster — Travel stories for young people

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on October 31, 2011

In this talk at TEDx­Can­berra 2011, Sally talks about her own pas­sion for travel, her writ­ing, and how she believes we can engage young peo­ple in the cul­tures and places they travel to.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a response

Sam Prince — Serendipity and success

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on October 28, 2011

In this talk at TEDx­Can­berra 2011, Sam tell sto­ries about how serendip­i­tous moments have brought him and the One Dis­ease At A Time Foun­da­tion their success.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a response

Sam Perry — Mentoring indigenous youth

By TEDxCanberra Organisers on October 28, 2011

In this talk at TEDx­Can­berra 2011, Sam reflects on his work with the Aus­tralian Indige­nous Men­tor­ing Expe­ri­ence and how he, a priv­i­leged white per­son, com­pletely changed his life to become a part of the work he now does.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Responses