TEDx Sheffield
I went along to a couple of TEDx events last year - my thoughts on them were a bit mixed but I figured 2nd year in and perhaps some lessons would have been learnt. And at TEDx Sheffield, I think they were.
The Showroom Cinema provided a cracking venue and all in all, an audience of some 300+ were treated to 6 real life speakers and 3 recorded lectures from TED’s online archive.
Cennydd Bowles opened the afternoon with what I think was intended as a rallying cry to the digital designers in the room.
He declared that, so far at least, there have been no visual masterpieces on the web, or even in the broader digital world. Holding up examples like the the Birdsnest stadium in Beijing or Michael Angelo’s David as icons/masterpieces that the digital world lacks.
Bollocks!
For a start the comparison is ridiculous and nonsensical. A website is obivously a movable feast, constantly evolving and changing in a manner that’s completely incomparable to Art, Architecture or even more modern media like TV or press advertising.
They’re not stand-alone pieces. They’re mechanisms for delivering information - often lots of it - and if you ask me, there have been plenty of iconic websites over the years that have broken new ground and totally changed the online landscape.
The most obvious of examples being the google homepage but you can easily sign post things like the BBC’s I-player, the MillionDollarhomepage, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter as examples of sites that have, at that particular moment in time, done things differently and as a consequence changed the digital world.
For what it’s worth though, I happen to really agree and appreciate everything Cennydd said about the power of beauty and aesthetics when it comes to making sites more successful and easier to use. And I definitely think we can get better at helping clients understand the value in making their communications beautiful.
That being said, I still think if you design something to work as easily, as efficiently and as economically as possible, it’ll be beautiful as a consequence - I say it all the time but, the Bauhaus mantra of, form follows function hits the nail on the head for me.
So yeah, the first talk got my goat a bit - but I loved that, there’s nothing worse than a feeling of ambivalence!
Next to the stage was Richard St. John, a long time attendee of TED in Los Angeles and now professional speaker.
When I hear “professional speaker” I can be guilty of rolling my eyes a little but I really liked this guy’s talk.
It centred around the story of how he was once asked simple question by a young girl that he couldn’t answer, “How do you become successful?”
His subsequent journey led him to speak to over 500 of the most successful people in the world and he’d come up with 8 key attributes.
I’ll not go through them all now but you can find a 3 minute, condensed, version of his talk talk at the TED site, here.
A break for coffee and on with the show.
For some reason they decided to settle the audience down with a couple of quick recorded videos - the first, bizarrely, was the old but still hilarious Reebok viral of Terrible Terry Tate, Office Linebacker
Our next live speaker was Alex Graham, CEO of Wall to Wall, a media company responsible for creating shows like, Who do you think you are, The 1900’s house and the excellent film, Man on Wire.
Not the best speaker of the afternoon - that’s not what he does for a living though - but he had some good stories and the pretence of, “5 ways to kill creativity”, was a great way to hold it all together.
Next up with a shorter time slot but arguably steeling the show, was Tom Scott with his amusing and thought provoking take on social media. He was very, very good and I found myself quite jealous of him in the end!
You can see a previous recording of his talk on his own website, here.
We were then in for Andy Hanselman, another professional speaker and Management Consultant *sigh*.
He wasn’t bad but judging by some of the responses on the #TEDxS twitter feed, he probably wasn’t the most popular speaker of the event either;
“Buy from me, I am not a management consultant. #TEDxs #uniquesellingpoint #reallifebrent #satiretilmyeyesbleed #topbuttonundone #patentshoes”
“An Englishman, Scotsman & an Irishman walk into a bar. They’re shouted at by a managament consultant. They settle their differences. #TEDxS”
“All these tweets about shouting Management Consultants are making me less sad about missing #TEDxS”
So onto the final speaker - closing the show was ex Dragon, Doug Richards with his open letter to David Cameron.
An unexpected subject but very well delivered, Doug shared his thoughts on how we can all make Britain Great again and emphasised the importance of not just saving money but becoming more productive.
There were some great points throughout his talk but I’m dying for sarnie and I‘m sure all the talks will online soon enough.
Hats off to the organisers, all in all it was a really enjoyable afternoon - I came away with thoughts in my mind and opinions to share - what more can you ask for?
