Was exactly what I felt happened in my first ever TEDx talk. As in, everything was quite a blur so the information were all moving too fast for my sailing-away brains to comprehend.
Flashback to a fortnight ago, I signed up for a TEDxAPUKL talk for a mere RM86 (or so. I am terrible with numbers) It was pretty cheap for a talk; even as I say so, I don’t actually have much money to splurge but I thought that this was worth throwing my money away to. It is equivalent to buying a hard-covered book and such a talk have promised the same amount of knowledge to gain.
So, win-win?
Well, yes. Sort of.
There were eleven talks that had happened in the span of five hours. By the end of it, my head was pounding and ready to explode from the sheer weight of information gained. Though, not all the information were any useful but as the saying goes, bad experience still comes with good lessons.
APUKL is an abbreviation for Asia Pacific University Kuala Lumpur. If that is any indication, the talk was actually hosted and planned by a group of (get this) students.
^ This bunch of students.
I was properly shocked, to be honest. TEDx talks have always had the reputation of being like, HUGE so I always assumed these talks would be organized by bigger committees. And these students apparently did everything on their own and it took them a year to make it happen. So, kudos to them!
The theme of the talk was “Ctrl + Alt + Del: Reset the Way You Think” which… was quite misleading. Me and my assuming self thought it was going to be filled with inspirational talks or mental/emotional-strengthening messages but I was more met with technological and very businessy-like sharing. They are not bad. Just not what I was looking forward to.
Most of the talks contained messages and lessons that funnily, has already been taught to me by the very company that I worked in. I know by now, it is starting to sound like I am preaching about my company but it is only the truth. I have learnt a lot, A LOT from when I started working in Kian. So, this entire workshop pretty much served as a reminder or a refresher to all the things that I have already learnt.
My favourite talk had to be from Ms. Khushboo Nangalia. She gave a short 15 minutes on The Undeniable Power of Business Storytelling. This is one of the major thing I learnt back in VUCA 2.0: Authentic Relationship but what was still a blur to me was HOW can we do great storytelling. The great news is Ms. Khushboo covered that exact aspect.
Below is the summary of how to make a great storytelling:
- Speak to people’s emotions.
- Establish a connection / common ground.
- Use the power of contrast (Compare two worlds & operate from empathy)
- Truth well told (You can tell the truth but HOW you tell the truth plays a huge role in making your story convincing)
Disclaimer: Knowing the above tips will not automatically grant you super storytelling powers. Sorry.
The other talk that I kinda like is from Mr. Terry Ghani. He is a self-proclaimed humanitariangelist (humanitarian + evangelist. He himself admitted that it is a made up word) who wants to help the youth of today to help the world now. His entire talk was really about youth empowerment and how the younger generations are the perfect solution to the many world’s messes. And that is where his organization called Humanity Inc. (I haven’t yet been able to find the website, unfortunately. Will update when I do) comes in. They will provide a platform plus support in which youths can freely and safely conjure ideas that will save the world. Ideas that may come to reality, too.
He was an all-round good speaker who gave an ounce of inspiration and a call-to-action for us to do something good for the world. And I may actually get off my arse to do something about it. We will see.
The rest of the other talks were okay. They all had strong or good core messages but they were lost in the technical or not-so-well-delivered presentations. Or maybe, they did not appeal to me just because they were not my cup of tea. But I dug deeper and jotted down their lessons for safekeeping. Who knows maybe one day it will come in handy 🙂
Yet another surprising element for the day was a wonderful performance by noelhasfeathers. Regrettably, I only knew her name as that.. But do check her out! She has a really amazing voice and amazing guitar-hand coordination. I would be head-over-heels in love with myself if I could just play a quarter of her skills. Really.
And lastly, the plus point of the day was that I could meet my cute as eff friend who I have not met in a while (we should have taken that wefie, damnit). It was great to see her and her bro again. I was even able to strike up a conversation with her brother even though I am socially awkward as heck. So, pats in the back! For myself. Sometimes, self-encouragement is key to success and happiness 😉
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Thanks again for reading up till this point!
Leaving you with my greatest learning;
To not be late is to respect the other person’s time.
Just My Stories. 