Another Revolution in Boston.

I start this admitting that I’m not going to capture the TEDxBoston event in a blog post. But I’ll try my best.

You may be familiar with TED.com.  If not, become familiar with it.  TED is a experience focused on spreading important ideas about Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Some of the ideas spread by TED have made a huge impact on the world, and continue to do so.  TEDx is a venture on the part of the TED folks to allow others to create TED-like events.  TEDxBoston is one such event that took place this week.  It is branded as a TEDx event: it’s like TED, but is a independently organized.  I attended it will share share my perspectives.

The event was produced by Danielle Duplin and her team at Fidelity Investments.  Danielle was my boss a few years ago — and she’s a woman I adore and admire.  Her team planned, organized, and executed the event at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology.  FCAT is an amazing think-tank that fuels Fidelity with innovative ideas and serves as a collaboration hub for diverse groups within the company. FCAT also manages many relationships with external think-tanks and idea-exchange ventures, such as MITX.  Danielle, Peter, Wilfredo, Mike, Al, and many others produced a spectacular event.  I know exactly what goes into this, since for about a year and a half I was part of her production team at FCAT, producing events like this one (though most were less complex) about every two weeks.  I had also produced a classical music concert once before — and I know what goes into that.  TEDxBoston combined a full conference, with a classical music concert — and two other musical interludes!  And that’s  only the stuff we saw.

The event theme was to encourage revolutionary thinking.  It delivered on that theme.  Each speaker took a seemingly impossible challenge and demonstrated how they are solving it.  This was intellectually inspiring, but also emotionally moving.  Each element of the program was carefully orchestrated in pace and sequence to deliver many mini-stories in the context of an overall message of hope.

David Edwards Harvard professor and founder of Le Laboratoire lead the session with a talk about the very nature of idea creation and translation.  The very transformative power of ideas only comes by moving ideas outside yourself and into the world.  This changes you and the world.  Ideas that sit in you don’t grow, rather they remain protected.  But ideas that are shared change through the translation of person and context.  They become important via spreading.

Some of the ideas shared focused on technology and energy, some on health-care, and others on opportunities to entertain and be entertained — and there was a healthy blending of these topics onto one another. Ryan Chin spoke about smart cities and smart transportation.  Aside from the cool looking cars, the talk really focused on solving hard problems by boldly coming up with clever economical models that make us think about more possibilities that we might have imagined.  Now that more than 50% of the world population lives in cities, the way we think about cities will have to change.  We spend too much time and fuel trying to park cars. Our cars lay dormant for 80% of their lifespan. And new thinking about urban planning can drastically improve the lives of many, while doing a much better job of using energy resources.  Brilliant thinking.

Hugo Van Vuuren delivered a mind blowing talk about making batteries out of bags of dirt.  As it turns out 1.6 billion people live in electricity-less homes (30% of the world population).  Hugo and his team are on a mission to light up Africa (and elsewhere) — and they figured out how — by leveraging the electricity produced by microbes.  Taking food-aid sacks and the appropriate substrates, they can help people who live off-grid power at least a few essentials – like a radio, cellphone, fan, or medical devices.

George M. Whitesides also took us even deeper into the realm of creative thinking  and improving the human condition by demonstrating how simple paper-based diagnostic strips (similar to the interior of an over-the-counter pregnancy test) can help field doctors throughout the world diagnose many diseases with nothing more than a drop of blood and a 1 cm square of treated paper.  The costs involved are tiny, and the savings in human life and suffering are tremendous.

Two of the most emotional talks were delivered by Melissa Withers of the Business Innovation Factory and John Hoffman of HBO Documentary Films. Melissa spoke about the amazing design/research work that BIF is doing to create a better state of elder-care that takes the perspective of the elder to the center of the design experience.  Their finding to date, and ideas about the future were piercing.  John’s talk that followed was as emotional – as it described some of the work that HBO has documented in its many documentaries about Alzheimer’s.

In addition to the heavy topics, TEDx featured lighter notes of speculation and innovation into the way art can be shared, chocolate could be inhaled, and items could be improved – leading to significant improvements to life — like helping people take their medications properly by understanding why they don’t do so today.  There was even a quick, but poignant talk by Alexa Scordato about reverse mentorship as it relates to helping executives with Social Media skills.

I knew that I would not be able to capture the whole event here (sorry) — but I have to add a few words about the finale.  Ben Zander is amazing.  The El Sistema music program and the Youth Orchestra of the America were seat-riveting experiences in the power of music and culture.  Words wont do this one justice, so I will not try.  I’ll just say thank you to TEDxBoston for moving and inspiring us.  I look forward to the videos and more photos.  Check out their website (TEDxBoston.org) for more information. I also want to thank people who posted pictures on Flickr — in particular the amazing Joselin Mane.

Tagged as: conference, Enterprise 2.0, leadership, presentation, success story