by Natalie Lloyd

TEDx Brighton

 

After the success of the inaugural TEDxBrighton in September 2011, there were concerns about whether the conference would secure for the following year.

Nevertheless, Greg Hadfield’s comment in an Argus article at the time left a glimmer of hope: “I’m sure it will somehow remain a highlight of Brighton’s creative and cultural calendar”.

And somehow it did. After hearing that the 2011 team leader, Tom Bailey, had not reapplied for the licence to run a TEDx event in Brighton, a team of eager volunteers came together in the rafters of local co-working space, The Skiff, to hatch out a plan that would see the event resurrected in 2012. The group wanted to uphold the great experience Tom had delivered, following his – and the community’s – desire to produce a larger event in 2012.

When local TEDster Marc Koska agreed to come on board, we were delighted to be able to do exactly that. We secured a great deal of in-kind sponsorship, booked the Corn Exchange and had a fantastic day of musing on the ideas and inspiration of 14 speakers, approaching an overall theme of ‘The Generation Gap’.

With an audience of 400 and a publicly open Ideas Lab, the event certainly built on its already strong foundations, but seemed to successfully retain the intimacy that allowed everyone to fire their own ideas around the synapses of our newly formed network.

TEDxBrighton 2012 was overwhelmingly well received and this year has already seen a non- stop influx of emails from potential speakers, volunteers and conversations from the Brighton and global community. As a volunteer-led team running a franchise event, it’s been really encouraging to know that there’s still a huge appetite for TEDxBrighton.

Following our recent round table, where we invited members of the public to join us online and in person at the new NixonMcInnes offices to discuss the potential theme for 2013, we’ve been busy digesting the conversations and starting the first steps towards the third installation of TEDxBrighton.

Public discussion is crucial to creating an event catered directly to the conversations its audience wants – so we’re looking forward to hosting more of these smaller, informal discussions throughout the lead up to the big day on October 25.

We’re also proud to be partnering with CityCamp Brighton to offer the TEDxBrighton Prize - a chance for someone with a great idea on how to improve our city to exhibit in our Ideas Lab; a space that will see more commissioned projects responding this year’s theme.

In 2012 these included Threshold Architectural Hub’s incredible house inside the Brighton Dome’s Founder’s Room, the People Who Do’s exploration of our relationship to the workplace across the ages and Small Batch Coffee Company’s siphon-station, offering tasters of coffee from around the world.

By growing the format we delivered last year, we’re aiming to cement TEDxBrighton as a permanent fixture in Brighton’s conference scene, but also to give the ownership of this event back to the community who drive it.

We’d love to hear your nominations for speakers, or get in touch if you run an organisation that would like to support us as a 2013 sponsor.

Join our conversations on our website at www.tedxbrighton.com or on Twitter @TEDxBrighton