TEDxCanberra 2018: Unmissable ideas worth spreading

Posted on 28 August, 2018

TEDxCanberra is back on September 8, promising another inspiring showcase of local talent.

This year’s line-up of speakers and performers is centred around the theme of ‘Divergence’, looking at solutions beyond the norm, breaking patterns and challenging assumptions. It’s about the need to think, see and act differently.

The showcase celebrates the diversity of Canberra in terms of occupations, interests, age and cultural diversity. Women make up the majority of speakers, filling 57% of the spots whilst three of the four performances are all-female acts ranging from comedy to dance.

Each act promises to communicate an idea worth spreading, encouraging us to think out of the box about all facets of life from portraiture to the prison system, scabies to climate change.

Canberra favourites Mickey Sulit and Chris Ryan will take the stage, as well as more of Canberra’s most unique performing acts.

When it comes to the speakers, we’re excited to hear from Tasneem Memon, an entrepreneur, businesswoman and academic, who has spent 12 years working on an algorithm that focuses on cognitive bias mitigation in decision systems, through cognitive computing. Her talk will discuss how biased human minds are the key to unbiased artificial intelligence systems, providing a great opportunity to touch up on your knowledge of cognitive computing, behaviour mining and gamification.

Shanna Whan, who strives to harness her social media platform, ‘Sober in the Country’, to effect real change against Australia’s casual alcoholism culture, will be another highlight of the day. She also looks at how addiction is treated in rural areas with the aim of securing funding and national visibility to reach Australia’s most isolated and vulnerable communities.

Catherine Rickwood is CEO of Three Sisters Group and academic as well as a leading expert on the topic of longer lifespans. Her talk will address the topical issues of ageing populations and societal understandings of age and getting older.

Erin-Claire Barrow, an artist and illustrator whose creative practice directs a change in the narratives of fairytales to reflect modern understandings of art, social justice issues and feminism, will discuss whether traditional fairytales hold relevance today.

Megan Gilmour is the founder of MissingSchool, an organisation that offers support for children whose illness inhibits attendance at school. Megan will discuss the company’s work as they aim at connecting these kids to their classrooms, teachers and peers using technology.

Gemma Thomson creatively combines traditional methods with modern science to creative holistic solutions to real-life problems. She aims to challenge everyday assumptions whilst advocating for more logical solutions to everyday problems like, as she’ll discuss in her talk, dealing with dog poo.

TedxCanberra is happening September 8 at the Canberra Theatre Centre. Tickets are available until August 31.