A torrent of ideas

Having arrived home on an overnight plane from Beijing, I was a little worse for wear on Saturday morning. I was concerned that I would not keep up with the day, as I was due to attend the TedX Sydney event. How wrong I was. The event was truly first class – true to the vision of Ted and a mix of local and international ideas.?? There was a strong music theme to the day.

Four Play String Quartet  were mesmerising as they electrified the sounds from their stringed instruments. I was lost in the environment they created. The event was really well produced – with ideas coming thick and fast from the stage, including:

• An inventor who challenged his own carbon footprint and determined in western society it is almost impossible to get to 2000kw per day (as is the average in China).
• A music teacher who urged us to nurture creativity in the young, imploring us that this is what it is to be human.
• An historian who shared the voice of the early colony of Sydney – a woman’s perspective.
• A puppeteer who uses his hand via his iPad as his doll.
• A doctor who urged us that the greatest threat to our most precious resource is obesity.
• A scientist who models DNA so we can see how it reproduces and works.
• A creative team sharing how they collaborate to produce movies.

The day was a festival of ideas, colour, art and music. It was very well produced and sprinkled with a few Ted videos from other events. The two speakers from the audience who had three minutes to share an idea were passionate, articulate and inspired. One spoke of injustice, the other on honoring death as a beautiful thing. She said, “the last thing we will do in life is die – best make it a good experience”.

Below are some of my tweets from the event. I enjoyed it, was inspired and so pleased I made the effort to drag my bag of bones there.? ?I sat next to Carden Calder for much of the day which is insightful on which ideas are more likely to spread and why.?? Tweets from @Naomi Simson.

• If you do what you always did you will get what you’ve already got
• The world is a diverse place but there are some elements that connect us
• Narrative is melody and melody is story telling
• The closest collaborations often occur when the collaborators have skills that are diametrically opposed…
• Whatever works works… Be with it
• The story tellers job is to question. We need more questioning
• @carden roller coasters and zip lines the MOST Fuel efficient transport. Cool.
• Death has a bad wrap. It’s represented as violent dark and evil. Yet the last thing we will do in life is die… That is a given.
• @carden Loving Kerrie Noonan’s perspective on dying – that we r out of touch w the everyday business of dying
• @ carden most of us will not be surprised by death. Talk to your family about what you want. Talk about it. It won’t kill you!
• Think of waste as a resource… Looking at a pic of a mountain of rubber tyres from Veena Sahajwalla
• You can’t have a great colony without women. You can’t grow a great nation without women from historian Grace Karskens
• Health is our most precious public resource. Katharine Samaras
• Children need to make their own music

Naomi Simson is considered one of Australia’s ‘Best Bosses’. She is an employee engagement advocate and practices what she preaches in her own business. RedBalloon has been named as one of only six Hewitt Best Employers in Australia and New Zealand for 2009 and awarded an engagement scorecard of over 90% two years in a row – the average in Australian businesses is 55%. RedBalloon has also been nominated by BRW as being in the top 10 Best Places to Work in Australia behind the likes of Google. One of Australia’s outstanding female entrepreneurs, Naomi regularly entertains as a passionate speaker inspiring people on employer branding, engagement and reward and recognition. Naomi writes a blog and is a published author – and has received many accolades and awards for the business she founded – RedBalloon.com.au.