Slides for the talk given at the Lead­er­ship Dri­ves Suc­cess conference for the Tourism Indus­try Coun­cil ACT.

Something special and affecting read to us at TEDxSummit in English by Jason Hsu of TEDxTaipei and in the native Greek by Katerina Biliouri of TEDxThessaloniki.

There are real, and enduring messages in it for those of us who wish to create change in the world. Better yet, it’s no less about relationships, friendship and love.

I hope you enjoy Cafavy’s Ithaca.

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon—do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1911) (Greek original)

Last week was a profound experience for me; I attended my third official TED event — the TEDxSummit for TEDx organisers, held in Doha, Qatar.

Bringing over 650 TEDx organisers from in excess of 90 countries together in one place (and maybe one of the few places in the world where this was possible), the TEDxSummit gave us talks from TED speakers including Hans Rosling, Maz Jobrani and Juan Enriquez as well as the opportunity to collaborate and work with each other in powerful ways; we had the opportunity to spend two very immersive days speaking with and learning from each other.

The organisers did me the honor of asking me to conduct two separate workshops; one for new TEDx organisers and another for intermediate-advanced organisers. The feedback I received directly from other participants was extremely positive. I’m keen to hear and read the official feedback when it comes in.

Travelling nearly a day each way to spend a week in a country where everything is unlike your home is a strange experience (not because you’re in the Middle East, which is incredibly interesting, but because Qatar is a nation in flux where a society is still passing through Tuckman’s stages of group development and will emerge at some point in the near future into what I imagine will be a profoundly interesting norming and performing phase).

It’s not hard to spend time with people you like a lot and share head space with. Though it does mess with you emotionally (in good, bad and sometimes confusing ways).

What is hard is the very real emotional amplification that goes on at an intensive, immersive event like TEDActive or TEDxSummit. I think it’s possibly a form of Stockholm Syndrome; though one with a bigger up side (does such a phenomenon have it’s own name?).

There needs to be some post-event introspection to come down off the high and to ensure that the whole “drinking the Kool-Aid” problem doesn’t pervade our post-event thoughts. I’ve done these events three times now and it doesn’t change, but conscious awareness to the affect these events have on you is critical.

Some concerted, objective self-analysis helps you make a better set of post-event decisions on the actions you need to take. I still have really good friends from my trips to TEDActive. I imagine I’ve made another set of friends (and reinforced old friendships) this time.

Thank you to all the fantastic people I met in Doha.

Some of my photos are below.

TEDxSummit 2012 Newbie Talk — Ticketing and registration

TEDxSummit 2012 Intermediate Workshop — Building a great Volunteer Team

I hope you find these assets useful.

Equally, I was honored to be selected to give two workshops on my experiences organising TEDxCanberra — a short session on ticketing, registration and crowd management and a longer, hour-long workshop on building and sustaining a volunteer team.

The gallery below shows the sketchnotes I prepared for my workshops, and those I made for my own use while at TEDxSummit.

Meta sketchnote

Sketchnoter’s kit

TEDxSummit Country Leaders’ Meeting

Workshop 1 — Ticketing and registration (1–4)

Workshop 1 — Ticketing and registration (5–6)

Workshop 2 — Building a volunteer team (1–4)

Workshop 2 — Building a volunteer team (5–7)

TEDxSummit Action 4: Knowledge Sharing and Mentoring — Meeting 1

TEDxSummit Action 4: Knowledge Sharing and Mentoring — Meeting 1

Opening Night — Rhagava KK, William Noel, Maz Jobrani and Nesrin Ozlap

Opening Night — Wolfgang Kessling, Fahad Al Attiya, Zain Awaf, Diana Laufenburg and Yahay Alabdeli

Opening Night — Hans Rosling

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Don’t have sex with anybody who isn’t turned on by knowledge or the very many ways to get it. Make this your creed. Put it on a T-shirt. And then don’t take that T-shirt off for anyone who violates your very impressive, lovely standards.

What a glorious notion!

Image via Wikipedia

Like any organisation, TED, and those of us that attend or organise TEDx events (I am the licensee for TEDxCanberra), as its community, need to be aware of the need for positive change and reinvention. I’m well aware that TED itself is going through a period of introspection about its relevance and the shape it takes into the future; it’s a subject of discussion that TEDx organisers around the world have been asked to contribute to.

As someone whose day job it is to help to define the way an organisation gets out its message and designs and delivers the things it does, I’m more than abundantly aware that no matter what insiders believe (and I do believe that TED really does have the best interests of the globe at heart and really is interested in “ideas worth spreading”) that it doesn’t matter. What matters is perception. Because for most people, even otherwise smart, critical thinkers, perception is reality.  And there’s no use arguing against it.

For example, the matter of the cost of TED is often contentious. Sure, its production values are insanely high and it must cost a terrifying amount to put on, but what almost everyone I’ve spoken to outside the TED community don’t know is that TED runs non-profit. When I point this out to many people they’re often far more circumspect in their criticism of TED after that realisation.

Overall, I think the biggest problem TED faces, to quote my Marx, is that it has become something of an opiate of the masses. It’s all too easy as a reasonably wealthy, middle class person, to attend TED, or a TEDx or to watch videos and to feel aware of problems in the world and become smug and self-satisfied that in your awareness, you’ve helped.

Not by a long stretch.

What really needs to follow is action. To take ideas worth spreading and convert them into actions worth doing.

Every. Single. Time.

Truth be told, the TED community already does this. It’s another thing too few are aware of. For the past number of years, TED has become really not just a single event, but a continuum of things — events, the TED Prize which funds US$100,000 of work by an outstanding individual (it’s worth looking to see who the winners have been), the TED Fellows, and other good works that are funded out of the Sapling Foundation. So, the actions worth doing that I put forward already happen. It’s just that most people don’t bother to look that deeply. They just see an expensive, exclusive event.

That said, I do think that there is an element of the audience, both physical and online, that feel they satisfy some “involvement in the world” quota just by showing up. I think it’s incumbent on us to make sure that percentage is small by encouraging action, no matter how small. If the end result is that someone walks away with their views changed, that may be enough, or a starting point.

I’d like to urge the international community of TEDx organisers to be a part of that; to be a community that doesn’t just showcase great ideas, but that inspires, drives and gets involved in action. To be defined by betterness, in the sense Umair Haque outlines in his book of the same name.

We’ve done it a little at TEDxCanberra, but are focussing on it more strongly this year. We’re going to ask presenters, where possible, to challenge the audience to get involved, or to leave them with a question, or a call to meaningful action.

No more neat bows.

If the doing of important things was what the rest of the world saw from TED rather than the (somewhat incorrect perception of the) wealthy and famous attending an expensive, hard to get in to event where they satisfy their perception of being involved by listening for four days, I think there might be fewer of the negative analyses out there.

As I said, perception is reality. What people see in TED, regardless of what we believe on the inside of that community, is what it is.