Mars is in the wrong place!!! @TEDxBRUM #vibranteconomy #powerofus
Mars is in the wrong place.
There aren’t enough organs. Need a heart transplant? Then you’re on a waiting list in Britain…and a donor heart has only a few hours before it must be in you. You are desperate – so searching online you discover you can go abroad for the operation and also (conveniently) book ahead weeks in advance. The chilling logical conclusion is that your donor will be murdered to schedule to allow you to live.
Just two of the hard hitting, WOW, holy cr@p facts doled out at TEDxBrum #PowerofUs event – no need for coffee here! Saturday was like a superfast download of inspiration/learning/challenge into your brain – around 20 amazing acts and speakers - covering a whole range of topics - curing cancer, fighting gang culture, discovering black holes, revolutionising childcare, stunning talk on mental health/depression from Jayne Hardy - an amazing fire and brimstone preacher from Detroit on what they have done to re-energise the city to name a few- it was pretty full on I have to say – humbling, inspirational, emotional, exhausting and a great great privilege. So thank you very much Sacha Romanovitch for the invitation for Daniel Arda and myself thank you very very much to my amazing wife Jo for looking after not just our kids but also friends’ on sleepover and letting me go despite having 4 under 5 to control! Read Dan's blog here.
[Aside – if you don’t know what TED is google TED talks and check them out – Ellen MacArthur: The surprising thing I learned sailing solo around the world, Bill Gates: Innovating to Zero or Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity]
In Sacha’s talk she mentioned sustainability and the sad fact that we, as a generation, will be handing the world over in a worse state than we inherited it, for the first time in our species history. When we look at the world from the outside we are all in it together in a very thin layer of biosphere upon which we depend for the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. What would our report card say from a galactic planetary governance audit, perhaps something like “Bright. But struggle to throw off biological origins - prone to factional squabbling, wilful blindness and short term thinking although some promising innovation – improvement needed”?
Yesterday’s theme was #PowerofUs (trended to No 1 on UK twitter at points). It all starts with people, y’all! People have ideas. People collaborate with other people to develop the ideas. Then people get on with implementing the ideas to solve the problems they’ve had ideas about. Not complicated but very very powerful. Want to change the world? YOU CAN! This is how innovation happens and each and every person has this power. How are you using yours?
Incredibly humbling because all of the people on the stage are people who saw problems and just started to fix them. From the theoretical physicists who set out to prove Einstein right, or wrong ( I met one, Andreas Freise (in picture), mind blowing chat with him about future research into dark material – the sci-fi/physics geek in me was blown away), eventually succeeding 100 years after General Relatively was published and in so doing proving the existence of black holes as they observed the energy from 2 of them colliding around 1 billion years ago – WOW. To the amazing Simon Willis, part of change.org, bringing millions of people together to petition for change across a range of subjects – changing the world. To the inspirational Amy Martin who decided pre-school childcare must be much much better (think about it – we’re outsourcing the development of our children’s brains!) and decided to do something about it.
Inspirational because of what they have achieved or are achieving and the strong, over-riding, consistent message that it all starts with people – we have the power. And increasingly the means to use it.
Other powerful themes emerging consistently from various speakers over the day and bought home powerfully by Sacha in her talk, for me were:
Transparency/honesty – we must be open and honest with each other – if we can’t see or won’t acknowledge or talk about the problems we can’t fix them
- Collaboration – to refine solutions and bring different perspective and insights to the table we must work together and this means
- Being Inclusive – make space for people, encourage diversity of thought, welcome alternative views, challenge and opinions – empower people to bring all of themselves to the table
“It takes a village to raise a child but if the child doesn’t feel they belong in the village they will burn it down to feel the warmth.” (Craig Pinkney – Gang Violence)
Working together, with shared purpose, collaborating, making space for everyone to input, drawing on different perspectives, anything is possible.
As Muhammed Ali said:
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary.”
So come on, get involved, jump aboard, step up, use your power – what do you want to change?