TEDx Newcastle

I attended the TEDx Newcastle event last night at the Tyneside Cinema.  A community organised offshoot of the global TED events.  A really well organised event that had three local talks and two “roll-vt” talks from the main TED events.

The three local talks were given by Mike Stenhouse, Chris Stainthorpe, and Andy Budd.  Two first and last covering user experience with the middle talk covering privacy.  They were all filmed so look for the videos online – there was talk that they’d be available somewhere!

The two “TED talks”, for me, were the highlight of the evening.  I’ve watched a couple of the TED talks online and the two that were shown on the night were definitely up there with the best that I’ve watched.

• Ed Ulbrich gave an overview of the visual effects work on Benjamin Button.  Well worth a watch but it did raise the interesting question that if an actor plays a character but it’s not really him for the first hour of a film (watch the talk) then how far off having completely digital actors are we.
• The second TED talk was by far the highlight of the evening with Dan Pink talking about how motivation and carrot-and-stick approach to incentives doesn’t work and possible new ways of managing and rewarding people for working.  Certainly something to think about for any managers out there!

And in closing they played a video from the Playing For Change project.  Recorded at various places around the world in the local style and then mixed into one track.  It felt a little random tacked on the end as it was but it’s well worth having a look at Stand By Me on YouTube.  Absolutely fantastic and you can buy the CD and DVD that came out of it.