Visualising TEDx Melbourne

It was a thrill to be at the recent TEDx Melbourne event - not on the stage as a speaker, nor in the audience. I was on the sidelines graphic recording as the speakers presented on the topic of Education Leadership.

Three 18 minute talks showing a global, state and local perspective of leading in education. As the room was being set up before the event, and the TEDx banners and signage were put in place, the speakers did microphone sound checks and a had a final run through of their talks.
Then it was show time; the speakers presented, the audience listened, and I listened too... capturing in the moment the key themes I was hearing. Here's the end product - a large wall chart. At the end of the evening I was interviewed for a podcast (the edited link is here) by the guys atEdTechCrew (the full podcast) about graphic recording and using visuals as well as words. 

So... if the stage was yours, how would you structure your 18 minute TED talk? How would you start off? What would your key points be? What stories would you tell? How would you finish?

There were more speakers to listen to this week at the LAST Conference (Lean, Agile and Systems Thinking) in Melbourne. I presented on the topic of Visual Collaboration and also captured several of their presentations using the ipad. Several speakers had more than 18 minutes to fill and so I wondered, how did they prepare? What were their key points? I was tempted to walk over and 'pull the plug' on the data projector and slide show a couple of times! Too much reliance on what was on the big screen, not enough faith that their content and thinking could be delivered even more powerfully without the technology. 

As Leonardo Da Vinci said "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". It's not always quick to simplify, but it's most effective and most engaging in a busy firehose-full-of-information world.

Get closer to simple before you stand and deliver your next talk, presentation or workshop. Your audience will be engaged and it will be memorable for the right reasons!