I have been to a couple of TED events now and organized a couple of TEDx events, with some help.

I even spoke at the last TEDxDubai event.

But I have never been as excited about a TED event as I am about TEDxAbuDhabiU, really.

It isn’t the speakers that have me so excited, although they are very cool people.

• Aisha Al Busaidy
• Ahmed Arshi
• Alia Yunis
• Dan Stuart
• Ghassan Al Katheri
• Jacqueline Ghose
• Jonathan Ali Khan
• Laurel Moore
• Magnus Nystedt
• Omar Samr
• Sarah Mavrinac
• Sumayyah Al Suwaidi

What has me so excited is the team that has pulled this event together and the 100% authentic teamwork that has taken place.

This is an impressive team.

This team came together around the idea of TEDx it is that simple.

It is refreshing to meet and work with people who have one agenda, ignite the passion of the Abu Dhabi community with the love of sharing ideas as inspired by TED.

It is the can do, ego free environment that has me excited and counting down the days until TEDxAbuDhabiU.

We spend our days sitting in relatively well furnished buildings dispensing the building blocks of information to the generation that is going to fix the mess we have made.

But as a rule we academics do very little when it comes to actually practicing what we teach!

Do we get beyond a dusty journal when it comes to sharing what we are doing with the greater community?

Do we take our ideas to the street or only to obscure conferences?

Do we even practice what it is we are teaching?

The sad and sorry truth is not usually.

Sure there are exceptions to the rule and so far an between that you can probably name the culprits who are breaking the pattern on one hand.

That is the sad thing about the evolution of modern academia, we are not asked to actually get out there and do.

PUT UP OR SHUT UP!

I live by that mantra.

I teach communication by day at Zayed University and by night I am a broadcast journalist on Dubai Eye 103.8FM.

My hope is that my students see, well hear, me not only teaching ideas but putting them into practice.

This year I was offered a rare opportunity to put my classroom exercises to the ultimate test, I also teach public speaking and presentation courses, to present at TEDxDubai.

Giorgio Ungania and Natascia Radice, the curators of TEDxDubai, presented me with the ultimate challenge do what I do in the classroom to a critical public audience and in only 18 minutes.

Put up or shut up in the real.

I agonized over my presentation.

Hours were invested in formatting the story and practicing the pitch, because my talk was a pitch to think about ideas.

And I will confess here and now I was more nervous than I have ever been, mostly because several of my students volunteered at TEDxDubai and made a point of telling me that it was their turn to grade me!

Well, I am here to report that the talk happened.

The story worked and I think people took home a nugget or 2.

You be the judge.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/19470467[/vimeo]

One thing is for sure what I did was exactly what I teach my students and a shining example of putting up and eventually leaving the stage!

I find it amazing how many events there are globally and wonder if I can plan a vacation or year sabbatical attending TEDx events, writing, filming, blogging and creating the ultimate learning resource? Think of it as the resources for the degree of tomorrow, today!

Of course I need to get Zayed University to buy in or a patron.

TEDxDubai rored onto the TEDx scene in 2009 setting the benchmark  for the mega TEDx event. Giorgio Ungania and Natascia Radice took TEDxDubai to the next level of intrigue this year with Reboot.

What I love about TED and TEDx events is the manner in which they provoke us to stretch out imagination and comfort with ideas.

TEDxDubai is not just a conference but the prototype of the new university, really!

Short multi-sensory presentations.

Idea rich conversations.

Idealism.

Optimism.

Space to converse.

So what am I taking about?

Take the opening of TEDxDubai this year and the UAE national anthem.

This was the ultimate mash-up and the prelude to a day of idea exercises, exactly what a university education is suppose to be!

Check out the opening show.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/18938206[/vimeo]

My goal is to teach every class in the spring term with this level of engagement!

TEDxDubai in its 1st incarnation was an amazing achievement. A team of 5 with 10,000 Dirhams cash managed to ignite the imagination of Dubai bringing together 1000 participants and a stellar cast of speakers. And the whole thing was done with no conference experience!

My second TEDx experience was as a speaker not an organizer. Swapping hats, from event organizer to event speaker, I saw TEDx from a whole different perspective and enjoyed the experience in a different way.

My 3rd TEDx experience came with TEDxDubaiWomen for this event I was an administrative facilitator, more of a coordinator, putting in place a framework for a group of Dubai University students to create a local event.

3 TEDx events and a TED under my belt I think I can talk with some clarity.

The more I think about TEDx the more I have come to realize that it is not size or glitze and glam that makes it work.

Although it is easy to get caught up in the show, I know I have been there.

TEDx is about community and I am sorry but I really do think some (many) people are forgetting that.And I have been one of those people!

TEDx is about bringing the TED idea home to your local haunt.

TED is about ideas first and foremost.

TEDx is about local ideas being showcased to a local audience because all too often those local ideas are lost in the noise of the global.

Oh and TED does the global very with a huge budget, watch the videos to see what I am talking about.

From my perspective the local community might be your workplace or your school or your sports group even.

I think TEDx needs to be as much about exposing and exploring ideas as provoking people to act on them, locally and immediatly.

My biggest regret about my TEDx experiences is that more people have not been provoked in some way.

Maybe the TEDx idea needs to be re-imagined?

I think TEDxSamsung might be an example for future TEDx events, at the least ones I will be involved in.

Organizer Inyhuk Song loves seeing the effect the event is having on Samsung employees and on company culture saying, “TED changed my life, and TED changed Samsung too. Nowdays, TEDxSamsung is changing Samsung’s employees culture,  from top-bottom hierarchical strict organization style to bottom-up internal motivation leading style.”

In December, Song and his team hatched a plan to flashmob the R & D Center building during lunch, dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”:

The result was playful and unexpected — at one point, a man in a suit on the phone puts his phone away and happily jumps into the fray.

Song says, “People believe company is just for working place, but now, our employees sometimes tell me, it has changed. This place may have some fantastic possibilities, we feel we can anything together. In point of company culture, it is big progress!”

Look at what they did.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7XEkSeP9j8[/youtube]

Every company doesn’t have to do a flashmob but the idea of creating a TEDx like event in every Dubai company with LOCAL speakers, maybe in house speakers that are presenting TED style could have a dramatic change effect on the way we do everything!

TEDx= short, high impact, localized, community, events, by the community

Imagine your TEDx, now do one even if it is a like-TEDx event, just start!

Why? More often than not it is a wonderful clearinghouse for ideas that, like TED, make you sit back and scratch your head.

But don’t confuse things TED and BoingBoing are very different types of sites.

I stumbled upon this today on BoingBoing and like the Uniform Project talk at TEDxDubai the question I had was what could I do and record for a year?

This particular YouTube video is cool and makes me wonder what we can do and record.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XofUu6hv8U[/youtube]

What can you do? Ready to start? I am going to try doing a piece of advice a day. Not that this is a visual activity BUT maybe I can video it.

Your turn, and lets start!

I have never been this excited about an event.

This is a community driven and community created TEDx experience.

You can expect to be amazed.

So far in Dubai we have 5 female speakers who will rock the stage as we talk about “re-imagining” the role of women int he UAE.

TEDx events are suppose to be about community and this event, actually 2 events one Dubai and another in Abu Dhabi, are about just that the UAE community.

And the bonus? After the live event we go to a stream from TEDWomen in Washington DC.

This is an event for women and men it is all about embracing the community today for tomorrow!

The event will also be streamed live for those who want to watch on an iPhone!

3pm to 7:30 pm December 8th any stereotypes you have of women in the UAE will be recast!

tedxdubaiwomen@gmail.com if you are interested in attending.

Just tell us why you would like to join us.

Leo Laporte made a wonderful daring presentation to TEDxDubai.

The media is changing but are we ready?

Do we believe the media environment is really changing?

Call our media environment converging, diverging, clouding,WEB2.0 but the reality is a whole new playing field is before us like it or not.

The problem is we media educators need to put our past on the shelf and go boldly where nobody has gone before!

The problem is it is easier said than done.

Leo Laporte spoke at TEDxDubai 2009 and offered an invitation to UAE media educators and students, all of us really, to go boldly into the media environment where we have never gone before.

Leo Laporte’s invitation, dare, to embrace the new media environment.

What will you do?

I had the pleasure of meeting Ian Gilbert about a year ago.

I instantly knew that Ian had a story to tell and many people with ear plugs in need to listen and hard!

We have a global education crisis today because bureaucrats, CFO’s (chief failure officers), accountants and academic leadership in general has failed to do what needs to be done!

Maybe we all need to listen a bit closer to what Ian Gilbert is saying?

And maybe those education leaders who are failing our youth need to either stand up to the challenge or step aside!

Ian Gilbert Live at TEDxDubai 2009.

We live conflict, we spectate conflict and we speculate on it.

Yet, we spend far too little time thinking about why we are in conflict.

And we spend even less time acting on the small things to ease if not eliminate the conflict outright.

The greatest problem facing us as we confront conflict is perception!

How we perceive ourselves and how we perceive others is a huge issue that only grows as we work through the conflict resolution process.

But there is hope!

At this years TEDxDubai Jamil Abu-Wardeh talked about modern Arabic stand-up comedy and how this simple tool might be the start to rebooting how we think about conflict!

Give the talk a listen and you will hear what I am talking about.

TEDx Dubai was all about igniting the passion in people to not only talk about issues but to actually get out there and do something about it.

Five people, all with full time jobs that are not related to conference organization, pulled off the impossible as far as I am concerned and I am proud to have been part of it!

TEDx Dubai was not about money, in fact it cost each of the organizers money, out of our pockets to put this conference on.

TEDx Dubai was about giving the community permission to start to DREAM-DO-BE the change in your own corner of the world.

I am happy to say that while many people did not get it, they are asking when all the video will be available, they are asking when the next event will happen, they are asking about a follow up.

TEDx Dubai was and is not about Giorgio and me pushing and pulling people to do things it is about you saying , MY TURN!

While many people are still stuck in the old economy thinking of what is physically in it for me there are many who have embraced the TED and TEDxDubai idea.

This email arrived a few days ago.

hello james

a fellow Dubai TEDxer has made some drastic changes to her life because of TEDx and i though i tell you about it her names is Gaby Feile she is German you might know her from the great blog she wrote about TEDx right after the conference, she just quit her job in the  Monarch hotel Dubai because for her she just couldn’t relate to it after TEDx and he farewell party was yesterday she had a garage sale for her furniture and gave all the money for Masarat and her 8 days academy and she is leaving soon to spain to work with an NGO that help children by the way she is not the only person who i heard about who did some thing similar of thinking of it

im thinking of starting TED night at the shelter either to show TED videos each night a certain theme of life stream other TEDx conferences my question is how can i know about upcoming TEDx conferences i tried searching online i couldn’t find much about them?

So, what is the take home here?

Go out and do that one thing this week that is going to change the way someone thinks about anything, just make it something you care about!