Social media and TEDxGranta 2012: Alive & Kicking
So we're still on a bit of a high since TEDxGranta 2012: Alive & Kicking, which took place on 9th March at The Junction in Cambridge. What a great event to be part of. We kicked off with Women Shaping The Future in 2011, ran a salon with CamCreative in September 2011 on the theme of Telling Stories (with content for the evening curated by Sookio) and with our third event it feels like we're really hitting our stride.
Our role at TEDxGranta
Sue's role on the TEDxGranta team is to look after the social media channels - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a bit of Google+ - keeping people updated with information in the run-up to the event and live tweeting the event itself. The rest of the year we tend to post content of broader interest to our followers, so it's generally TED-related, Cambridge-related or simply about innovations in tech, entertainment or design that make you go 'oooh, look at that!'
Sue also helped shape the Alive & Kicking concept for the day, writing the short description (above), offering suggestions for web content and helping the rest of the team find a good balance of speakers. When putting on a TEDx event you are required to show a certain amount of TED content along with the live speakers, so she was also involved in picking the TED Talks which were shown.
Karolina Yilkova, one of the Anglia Ruskin University students Sue has been mentoring, was also involved on the day, supporting the main team and helping the event run smoothly.
Who was on at TEDxGranta?
We had a fabulous line-up, spanning tech, cuisine, linguistics, society and animation, along with live music and a blindfold kung fu demonstration. Wallace & Gromit were even there - with their own seat in the auditorium! We'll have videos online soon, but in the meantime you can find out more about the speakers here:
- David Constantine MBE, Co-founder of Motivation
- Merlin Crossingham, Creative Director of Wallace & Gromit
- Tim Hayward, Food writer and saviour of Cambridge favourite, Fitzbillies
- Gil Karpas, Soulful singer-songwriter
- Shelley Katz, Pianist and Music technologist
- Kirsten Lavers, Founder of FLACK, Cambridge
- Tim Minshall, Senior Lecturer, Institute of Manufacturing, Cambridge University
- Tim Morley, Linguist and teacher of Esperanto
- Ross Sargent, Co-founder, Cambridge Kung Fu
- Eben Upton, Co-founder of The Raspberry Pi Foundation
What makes TEDxGranta so special?
TED and TEDx events are praised around the world for offering so many new perspectives, which in turn spark off new ideas and approaches. Celebrated arts venue J2 at The Junction made the perfect base for TEDxGranta; a creative space with an intimate atmosphere. The speakers were authoritative and enthusiastic, yet very humble.
We also showed some Ads Worth Spreading, an initiative run by TED to recognise innovation, ingenuity and intelligence in advertising. Really clever, really funny stuff. We liked them so much that we tracked down TED's Ronda Carnegie and produced a feature for Luerzer's Archive.
Attendees didn't just get to watch the mix of live speakers, TED Talks and Ads Worth Spreading, they were also able to join a workshop on mindful movement in the afternoon (to wake them up after that lovely paella) or chat to Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton about the incredible new device which has got the tech community in a spin since it went on sale a week before our event.
For blog posts about the day and videos of all our talks, please go to the TEDxGranta website.
Or look at the photoset on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com//photos/45319591@N00/sets/72157629591329651/show/
