My Learnings from TEDxUQ
What is TEDx?
TEDx programs are independent programs aimed at uncovering new ideas and are held across 170 countries, with more than 3000 events held annually. You can read more here.
What is TEDxUQ?
TEDxUQ is the TEDx program organised by The University of Queensland. Find out more here.
I attended TEDxUQ yesterday, 19 August 2023; it was my first time attending a TEDx program and my first time back on UQ’s campus this year. So, I woke up excited and arranged my bag with my notebook, water bottle, wallet, and all that good stuff that should be in my bag.
I left the house at 8:20 AM. It was a 30-minute drive, and registration began at 9:00 AM. However, I wanted 10 minutes extra to help navigate campus and allow for delays while I travel.
I got into the Advanced Engineering Building on campus in time to scan my registration QR code, pick up my name tag, have some hot chocolate and meet new people, some of whom became my seat-mates for the entire program and maybe new friends. We bonded and talked about Uni, sustainability, mental health, managing schoolwork and balancing school-life balance. I was happy to share that I took a break from university this year, so they understand they were not in this alone.
The TEDxUQ program, which also happened to be its 10th anniversary, began with a bang. Professor Daniel Franks started with the importance of Minerals in our world — minerals are essential to our lives. He delved into why we need minerals and how it is present in our daily activities, from the eggs and table salt in our brekkie. Minerals matter to sustainable development goals and should be included in the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals — because minerals matter to our world. We must change the conversations around minerals — as we all create mineral demands through human consumption.
Up next was the amazing Jodi Ferrari, who shared that art can enrich our hearts differently. The key to unlocking curiosity while looking at an artwork is to take our child’s mindset to art exhibitions and museums to understand better what an artist has created. She said, “Art can transform us physically, emotionally and socially”.
Then Associate Professor Gilbert Price, a senior lecturer in Palaeontology at UQ, shared how human behaviour and climate change have affected the evolution and emergence of our current planet’s ecosystem and the disappearance of some wildlife in Australia. It was so phenomenal that he even had an actual fossil of some Diprotodon called Frank — it was cool.
The first session ended with Professor Nancy Pachana taking us through ageism which begins with lookism, how we lose 7.5 years of our life because of this stereotype. 1 in 2 people globally hold moderately to severely ageist attitudes. Ageism affects everyone. However, it’s more profound in the second half of life. UQ is one of the first age-friendly higher institutions in the Southern Hemisphere. She encouraged us to support breaking the mould by acting to create a world for all ages and people everywhere. She shared a new approach to living as the traditional learn, work, retire, and then die was not so great. This new system is a mix of learning, working, caring, some semi-retirement, and then retiring.
We had lunch after the first session, which concluded with an amazing dance performance by the South Pacific Islander Association. The dance was rhythmic, joyful, you know, all-round amazing.
While on lunch, I played some games with the provided white paper all around the program venue like this one and had another cup of hot chocolate. Hot chocolate is to me what coffee is to most.
The second session began with Dr Kathy Ellem & Donna Best sharing a soulful story about people with intellectual disability and their time at Chaliinor Center, now on the University of Southern Queensland, Ipswich campus. The happenings in that place were dire. Not to leave you hopeless, though, Donna shined her light on her advocacy journey through the last 40 years and how she and her team have advocated even up to the parliament level. It was a breath of fresh air; it was a wholesome session for me because I have worked in the disability sector before and am still in the health space, so I understood the story from a carer’s perspective.
There was a short and educative video by Professor Sara Donicar on how to waste less on vacation. The video highlights the monetary and environmental impact of daily hotel cleaning and how guests were happy to split the cost saving from forgoing room cleaning. It is a clever strategy that more hotels should try, as guests reported satisfaction with their drink vouchers from the cost split.
The second speech from the session was given by Dr Chris Rinke, whom I had spoken to alongside one of his researchers Enfeng Li, briefly before the start of the program, as his research interest excites me. It’s about the increase in plastic production and how his research team has discovered that Superworms, which are not worms but — Darkling beetle larvae (Zophobas Morio), which have amazing gut bacteria that allow them to munch on polymers and give out monomers. However, to replicate this on a larger scale, some cost-intensive research is needed, and this would use AI to tweak and replicate the enzymes in the super worms to break down plastics biologically. This bio-recycling method is better for the environment than the current mechanical and chemical recycling being used for 13% of plastic waste in Australia, about 10% in America and about 40% in Europe.
Unfortunately, it is cheaper to produce plastics than to recycle, and as you can see, our recycling is not at its best. Research has found microplastics in our food products, animals and even humans, as most of the plastics produced are being used for an average of six months and mostly end up in landfills. As you can see, we have got to act quickly. This session made me imagine our future if we recycled right.
Well, this video on Music therapy in Palliative Care for children came up a UQ alum Maggie James performed it; it was quite emotional for me. I might have dropped a tear or two, so I have no footage of the video or anytime at that moment. I was in the zone.
To light up the atmosphere, the UQ Music Flute Quintet performed, initially with the flutes and then with poems; it was very resonant and quirky at the same time. I loved it.
Then Dr Claudia Benham shared an impactful side of climate change and how it affects our emotions. She shared how this past month of July 2023 was the hottest recorded. The impacts of climate change go beyond the environment as it affects us physically, emotionally and otherwise. We had to close our eyes and envision our favourite place in nature with our favourite people and how that would affect us if we lost it. Picture that for a moment and hold on to that. Your guess is as good as mine, but that didn’t feel right; I hope that spurs you to do right by nature today.
The second session ended with a remarkable story by Sharlene Allsopp, it spurs us to tell our story ourselves. It was an amazing ‘aha’ moment of what we miss out on when we don’t tell our stories. Imagine the stories we could tell if we all wrote our stories ourselves. I will leave that with you to think upon and ponder, and hopefully, you’d begin to write your story and that of your people.
We had our afternoon tea, the third session began a little later than scheduled and my phone battery went flat as Dr Brendan Walker-Munro shared on privacy laws in Australia and how it was lax compared to the European Union. We all like to keep certain pieces of information away from the public as we want to share and control what others know. However, privacy laws don’t always agree with our idea of privacy. He likened it to art — we can’t quite describe it, but we know what we like, which is apt. It was enlightening as I don’t have all the answers despite having some cybersecurity certifications. I learnt something new from a legal standpoint for privacy; I also liked his reference to a beach which made the session breezy.
So I have no pictures from this session as I was blessed to have just plugged in my phone to one of my seat-mates power banks – note to self get a power bank.
Huda, the goddess, then came on stage and mesmerised us with a vibrant three-part poetry on her home country Sudan, people who look after others and a spontaneous one she made out of words from the audience. It was an agreeable, emotional and expressive delivery; her performance transported me to the poetry events I have attended back home in Nigeria. She was magnificent. She has the good vibe check. I had to take pictures after the event with her.
Rainasyia Zafira came on afterwards and shared about youth-led organisations and their funding challenges. She talked about how the youths understand the problems of the youth best, and it made sense for us to have access to the financing for our issues despite challenges which include language barriers in some cases. She also shared how her organisation is supporting youths in the application process for funding and supporting them through the entire process.
The TEDxUQ program concluded with Dr Stan Steindi sharing on compassion, on how it is sometimes easier to give and receive compassion from others than to give that same compassion to ourselves. Still, we mostly fail to provide self-compassion, sometimes associating it with self-pity. Compassion is a powerful psychological aid; we should always give ourselves as we give and receive from others.
Overall it was an informative program as I had to learn, unlearn and relearn in every session, performance and video sharing. The MCs did an awesome job managing time and ensuring we finished at the scheduled close for the main event. I doff my art to the sign language interpreters. I had my eyes on them for a good part of the event as I picked up one or two things in Auslan from the Wednesday mummy and baby sessions I attended last year.
Afterwards, we headed to the post-event, where we had crackers, cheese, Tim-tams, lamingtons, and grapes, and for drinks, we had soda, Redbull and beer. While at that, we were serenaded by UQ voices, their bio on Instagram says they are an amateur choir, but I beg to differ. They were glorious and fantastic. If I could sing half as well as they did, I would be on my way to the Grammys. They sang amazing songs, the first was an Indigenous Australian song, followed by a Spanish song, and they concluded with Speechless, which was opposite to what the day had been. (Not my joke)
We had to head out eventually, so I said my goodbyes to my two new friends, and we cracked on how one of them had two assignments due in 10 days which I said was 11 days, so she had an extra day to not worry about. It was fun and engaging, and I am grateful to all the volunteers, speakers, performers, and co-attendees, especially my two seat-mates who made Saturday engaging and put the dot on the I of ideas worth sharing — TEDx.
You’ll wonder if I would attend another TEDx program, definitely a big ‘YES’, maybe even as a speaker someday.
Originally published on Aug 20, 2023.