In which ways TED can be seen as a intercultural event ? – Case study TEDx Macquarie University
Event Details
Time: Saturday 19 October 2013, 9:00am – 6:00pm
Location: Macquarie Theatre, Building W2.4A, Macquarie University
Ticket: $50 Students, $100 General Admission
Capacity: 500 seats
Cocktail Party: 6pm – 8pm
On Saturday 19 October 2013, we were privileged to attend the TedxMacquireUniversity intercultural event titled Futureproof held at the Macquire Theatre, Building W2.4A, Macquire University. TED, established way back in 1984, sells itself as a platform and global movement devoted on bringing about meaningful change through ‘ideas worth spreading’. TEDx stemmed from this spirit of TED’s mission and is thus meant to afford organization, communities, and individual the platform to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the grass root level. The TEDx events are sold as open-source, local- and community-driven events designed to inspire thought leadership, visionary insight and innovation. Therefore, TEDxMacquarieUniversity is an inspirational high-quality independently-run event (jointly organized by university administration and students), consisting of engaging talks, captivating performers, invigorating action projects, exhibitions. Talk sessions form the primary component of the TEDx events which involves a series of captivating, thought-provoking and innovative talks lasting a maximum 18 minutes. Performances entail a range of acts by culturally different artists, musicians, dancers, comedians, and poetry slammers. The exhibitions at the event consists artworks by students, computing demonstrations along with experiential marketing displays in the xLAB. Finally, the TEDx events tout themselves as the ultimate place to network, from coffee breaks, projects, workshops and exhibitions to cocktail canapé networking at the end of the day. Our aim was to put all these to test by finding from the audience, guest speakers and organizers how TEDxMacquarieUniversity is an intercultural event and its place in bringing different cultures together.
Our group consisted of 3 female students: one from Australia, one from France, and one from Thailand (herein thereafter referred to as A, F, and T respectively). The event attracted the participation of a diversity of people ranging from young entrepreneurs to researchers to futurists to sustainable thinkers to scientists to share their unique insights on the topic of the day, future proof. Our decision to settle on the TEDx event from a long list of prospective other intercultural events across the length and breadth of Australia was informed by the fact the director of TEDxMcq, Lucas Berullier, happened to be a friend from Paris with the French member in our group. This would give us some leverage in securing interviews with the director himself, the quest speakers as well as the audience. In line with the theme of the event, we had ‘future-proofed’ our research as we guaranteed to get the material we needed to meet the objectives of our study from the word go.
The three of us at Macquarie University at 9am for the whole-day event. A notification on the ticket had requested everyone to arrive no later than 9.30am so as to enable the event to begin on time. The events were scheduled to be held at the Macquarie Theatre on Building W2.4A, with full capacity audience of 500 people. In addition, some 40 volunteers and a team of 20 promoters were in attendance. We secured our seating positions somewhere in the middle of the auditorium, which gave us a vantage point to follow every bit of the proceedings.
The program was quite elaborate, split into four broad sessions with tea and lunch breaks in between. The first session was scheduled from 9.30am to 11am. The first order of the day was introduction and Welcome to Country. The event director, Mr. Lucas Berullier did the honors and welcomed all foreigners in attendance to Australia, Macquarie University, and the TEDx event for what he termed “Australia’s herb of knowledge and incubator for great ideas.” The director received a warm round of applause from the entire auditorium when he delighted in the fact that, since its inception in 2011, TEDx events had successfully grown almost 300% annually and a total of 500 tickets this year together with an online audience of approximately 100,000 viewers. Probably this was our first hint to the TEDx’s multiculturalism or ability to bring together peoples of different cultures.
Mr. Berullier then got down to the real business by introducing the theme of this year’s TEDx event: FUTUREPROOF. He brought the audience’s attention to the fact that we currently live in a world obsessed with short-term fixes which we perceive as ‘good enough.’ He challenged us to imagine a world in which people deliberately tailored solutions with the future in mind; if organizations pursued a ‘future proofing’ policy designed to minimize all potential negative consequences. He wondered if we could have seen the infamous 2008-9 Global Financial Crisis at the horizon had we ‘future-proofed.’ Similarly, would we have averted the current environmental problems or a world presently challenged by two conflicting phenomena of food shortage and food wastage in different quarters of the world? Before handing the floor to the first performer, Mr. Berullier challenged us to ask ourselves of the possibility to seize opportunities whenever they arise while protecting our future simultaneously.
The first performance was by Emrys Quin, a Australian young poet, playwright and prose writer based in Sydney. He recited his hilarious and insightful futureproof prose passage. The first guest speaker on stage was Allan Pease, famously known as ‘Mr. Body Language”, who invited a few people in the audience on stage for funny demonstrations to drive his point home about futureproofing. Daniel Elison then recounted an motivational personal account and challenged us to imagine a world in which we are all the “true authors of our choices”. Jodie Sangster, originally from the UK before moving to Australia and then to the US, then gave us all a lesson in data and the reason “we need to make sure we embrace it and are not scared by it”. Ians Lyons was next on stage and demonstrated to us some interesting futureproof drone technology. To cap the first session, we were entertained by the beautiful voice of Emma Louis Birdsall, the star from Channel 9’s The Voice, which left us with some goose bumps. At 11am, we proceeded for the a 30 minutes’ tea break where we had coffee, muffins and fruits in the courtyard before experiencing some amazing student artwork from different nationalities in the entrance hall.
Methodology
The research methodology we chose to employ for our study was observation and face-to-face interviews. As we took part in the TedxMacquireUniversity event, we were keen to observe the interactions of other participants. Our objective here was to observe the different communication conventions of the participants in terms their different speech styles and response behaviors. However, feedbacks to our research questions would be enabled by face-to-face interviews with the participants. We adopted the conversational form of interview in both the individual and group interviews we conducted outside the theatre. While the interviews with the rest of the audience would be impromptu, our interviews with the TEDx director, one guest speaker and one performer were secured beforehand. During all interviews, each of the three of us would have a specific role: ‘A’ would pose the questions; ‘F’ would take notes; while ‘T’ would record the interview with the help of a voice recorder. Respondents would be informed beforehand of the objective of the study and required to give verbal consent (to be voice recorded). A consenting respondent would then first be asked to state their nationality or ethnicity which would be taken to represent their cultures and used to map their intercultural communication at the TEDx event. We agreed to sample a total of 30 respondents of the 500 people in attendance.
We used the greater part of the half hour first tea break to conduct interviews with members of the audience. Of the 6 participants we managed to interview, we sought their opinion on how the TEDx event was intercultural and how it helped to bring people of different backgrounds together. One respondent, originally from the UK, said the TedxMacquireUniversity event “enabled her to meet different people and get an idea or two about their cultural beliefs in a social setting.” Her Australian friend expressed her belief that engaging with culturally different people at the TEDx event would improve her attitude about others. The event, she reckoned, positively contributed to her openness, curiosity and to overcome her prejudices about others. Yet another respondent from China was upbeat in the intercultural of the TEDx event saying that “this event improves my intercultural skills in that I learn the communication styles of other communities especially their non-verbal techniques.” A French participant we were privileged to interview lauded the event as the place for improving one’s cultural awareness – “TEDx enables different guys from different places to develop respect for otherness, understand different people and communicate with others without criticizing or denigrating them.”
At 11.30am or thereabouts, we were summoned in for the start of Session 2. The professional magic performer Max Rendall opened this session with his repertoire of tricks, sleights and gimmicks that left the audience laughing their lungs out. He gave us a practical lesson about how anything in life worth having never comes easy by hammering a nail into his face. Then Daniel P. Harrison, an oceanographer, took over with a thought-provoking talk on fish sustainability. In all honesty, the most interesting presentation of the day was by John Stinton with his “Luck is just a 4 letters Word” speech. Known for creating events, facilitation sessions and design shops that bring people together to share ideas and inspire progress and 2012 winner of “Stella Fella” award and ambassador for anti-human trafficking, Stinton pulled a first one by proposing to his girlfriend on stage! The bride and a few in the audience were moved to tears, including T.
https://www.facebook.com/TEDxMacquarieUniversity
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1251/2738
https://www.tedxmacquarieuniversity.com/about/
https://www.tedxmacquarieuniversity.com/program-2013/
