Fran went to TedX!

Last weekend I took a chance when registering my interest in the ballot for TEDx Wellington this year. With limited tickets and speakers not confirmed, I figured I had a chance to go to something I didn’t know anything about, and emerge inspired. Which I did! I’m not ‘the researcher’ in our company or my family. I go to the movies, countries and restaurants prefering to know nothing, or very little, about what I’m about to experience, so this approach was right up my alley.

It appealed to me that you could only buy one ticket at a time. So with my business partner and friend on the slopes of Queenstown's amazing winter wonderland, it was me, on my own popping along to TedX Welly - knowing noone else who was going.

I left my sick children and hubby, post an amazing previous day attending Beervana, in our cosy house with no plans for the day, and walked over Mt Vic to Te Auaha just before the rain set in.

Like most events in Wellington, TEDx didn’t disappoint me. Nor did I clock watch or wonder when the talks would wrap up and I could go home to my slippers and Sunday night TV. When I arrived there was a fab red carpet laden with TEDx helpers popping different colour wrist bands on the attendees, each representing a way to get into the theatre i.e. by the stairs, lift, or some other stairs and corridors.

Tedx Welly was MC’d by Bop and Sarah, from Coliberate an organisation dedicated to upgrading the mental health capability of our nation, through practical courses in mental health, first aid and wellness. Veterans of presenting at a previous Tedx, they were a supportive glue between the speakers and audience and ran the event really smoothly and in a fun and engaging way.

All of this year’s presenters had a valid and relevant story to tell. This is an area I can definitely improve on. Publicly speaking in front of a captive audience and being filmed for worldwide consumption, I was impressed by how well they all handled the gravity of what they were doing. They were telling 100 people, and anyone who fancied watching around the globe, their ideas, their passion - their purpose. Daunting much? They all nailed it.

I was super impressed when Jase Te Patu, M3 Mindfulness for Children spoke. Jase spoke of his passion for his people, especially our little people. Jase’s vision is to create mindful children - calm, happy, robust, resilient, present and grateful. Mentally healthy humans! He also incorporates Maori stories into this process, for which as a parent, I’m grateful having learnt very little in my time at school 30 years ago. Hearing from someone so in touch with his reinga, feelings, and using his aroha nui, love, to help our little people in NZ heal their hearts and calm their worries, was absolutely authentic and grounding. This is someone using their mana for good, which is something I endeavour to do in my profession. This is someone using his experience and love to help all people ground themselves and feel calm.

Jase recently worked with my daughter’s classes at Hataitai School.,I put two and two together during his talk, and realised Jase was the ‘Jase’ they would come home talking about ‘Jase came for mindfulness today, it was really great to see him again Mum - he’s so cool’.

We also heard from Ged Finch, a local PhD Candidate at Vic Uni Wellington, about championing a waste free building industry. 50% of all NZ waste is building materials. As a nation, many of our building projects are still using toxic materials, or products that contain them. They’re not recyclable, they’re poisonous and also not designed to last. Normally I’d shy away from architectural conversations due to my lack of knowledge of this industry, but this wasn’t about clean green buildings with aesthetic lines. Ged spoke of cold hard facts and practical solutions, in the form of a super clever alternative he and his peers have created - X-Frame. A repurposable kit to create, rebuild and share space in the form of houses and extensions. Such a super clever, logical and easy to comprehend solution. Having managed and completed 3 house renovations (about 500 square metres of materials being ripped out and replaced), which is skips and skips of waste … I felt concerned (mild statement) about what I sent to the tip and what I replaced it with. Definitely keen to use some of my powers to help spread that message here in NZ and try something new next time we get the sledge hammer out.

Another speaker who really stuck with me was Dr. Monica Saini, Breast radiologist & CMO Volpara Solutions. Clearly being a human, knowing other humans with breasts and chests, some of whom have lost them or their lives to cancer, this was relevant to me. Monica uplifted her family and life to move here to work with Volpara Solutions to help develop technology to improve identification of early stage breast cancer by providing the right information to the clinicians about who could benefit from supplemental screening based on their VolparaDensity score. Having dense, or fibroglandular, breasts is a benign condition affecting as many as 40 to 50 percent of middle-aged women. This matters in screening, because dense breast glands appear cloudy in mammograms, obscuring tumors. Breast density isn’t a term, at 40, I’d heard of or considered being ‘a thing’. Knowing that a company here in NZ is focussed on solving this global issue, gives me hope.

Every speaker at the event was polished, prepared and handled their nerves exceptionally well. Their passion came through and, as hoped, I left the event feeling inspired, more educated and excited about what comes next - for them and myself with new ideas and passion to do it.

I will attend as many TEDx events in Welly and NZ as I can, drop Netflix a bit for some video content and I hope to connect with some of these speakers to offer my help to get their message into the right hands to help make change happen.