What I Learned at TEDx

The first thing I learned at TEDx Philly is that I’m not very interesting and that our
business objectives seem pretty shallow in the grand scheme of things.

While I’m proud of what we offer to our clients and honestly feel we are positively
impacting businesses and personal growth for clients and employees as well,
attending an event like TEDx allows you to peel back the superficiality of what’s
really happening in our city.

I learned about Stanford Thompson, who is the Director of Tune Up Philly. Tune
Up Philly is a program developed by the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra to nurture
urban children in challenging social and economic conditions by keeping them
engaged in music. The program was adopted from El Sistema, a project developed
Jose Antonio Abreu in 1974 in Venezuela, which has changed the lives of millions of
children by improvement in social conditions.

While Tune Up Philly just started this Fall, it’s inspirational because of the possibility
it offers to children, and impressive that it's run by Thompson, who at only 23 seems
to be as charismatic, selfless and driven as they come. And his talk at the event concluded with an impressive performance from some of his students, which truly helped to display the complete picture of Tune Up Philly and their mission.

I learned about Simon Hauger, the former teacher who is the director of West Philly's Hybrid
X Team. The club’s mission is to build a vehicle that utilizes existing technology to
achieve ultra low carbon emissions and ultra high fuel efficiency, without sacrificing
drivablity, style and safety. Hauger has run the program for 13 years and has
achieved national attention (even a shout out from President Obama) by beating
some of the most prestigious programs, colleges (MIT among others), and start
ups in the country with his vision and his high school student’s efforts. He has not
only put Philadelphia on the map, but is providing progressive, through provoking
solutions that will help our planet, and is helping students believe in themselves by
providing them with an inspiring and educational environment.

I learned from Bob at RJ Metrics (via Eric Shmidt from Google) that “every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.” Which is roughly 5 exabytes of data... so I also learned what an exabyte is. That stat sounds like it’s going to help justify our Discovery process for clients...

I learned quite a bit more from the other speakers at TEDx Philly, including how much I need to work on my own presentation skills, but most importantly learned how far a good idea and unstoppable individual passion can impact dramatic change.

Now I’m going to go find a children’s organization to volunteer for so I can feel a little better about myself...