OK, so TEDx Johannesburg is over, now what? On the flight home I found myself thinking: “OK, that was great and I feel inspired. So what? What do I need to do to make the whole thing worthwhile? Because if I went and saw ordinary people doing extraordinary things and I do nothing as a result, what was the point?”
So now I get to go over my notes and try to make sense of all the cool things I heard and experienced. I’m going to try and think a little bit more deeply about what each of the presentations that moved me actually meant in terms of who I am and what I’m trying to do with my life. I’ll post my notes from each presentation, together with my thoughts on it. Bear in mind that the collection of posts that results is really not for anything other than a way for me to reflect on what happened, and to try and figure out how to move forward with that. If it happens to be interesting or something more for anyone else who was (or wasn’t) there, then that’s great.
I’m going to push it out by individual presentation over the next week or so, so that it’s more manageable for me to work with, and which also splits the content into discrete chunks that are easier to read. If you presented and don’t see your work here, please don’t be hurt. Not everyone can be all things to all people, and I think the idea that each of us found every presentation to be a life changing experience isn’t really realistic. And besides, you can take solace in the thought that I’m just a small-time blogger, and that you at least got to present at TEDx 🙂 For me at least, the whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts.
Comments
One response to “TEDx Johannesburg is over, so what now?”
Hi Michael,
I agree 100% with what you say, that “the whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts”. The intent was always to have a diversity of presenters from a diversity of viewpoints, and a similar disparity in background, experiences and the like in the audience members.
Therefore one would have to expect that certain of the talks would risk being “old hat” or at least not mind-blowingly novel to certain of the audience members. My hope was simpy that it would not be the *same* talk that generated that experience in every audience member at the same time.
We’re already seeing results from the interactions that happened on Sunday, with at least one attendee actively helping Sister Mabanda with her Panty Project, possible project cross-sponsorship for certain social upliftment projects and offers of help in navigating “the system” to people trying to interact with NGO’s by some of the speakers.
There’s more happening, of which I’m only vaguely aware at this point, but it looks like we’ve managed to achieve at least most of our objectives, which is a wonderful thing.
Thanks for coming and being a part of it.
Andrew