TEDx Orenda, a kind of counter-conference, examined education in the widest possible terms.

“Orenda is a Huron Indian word,” says Drew Buddie, a teacher at a secondary school in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and the event’s organiser. “It means the opposite of fate. Things don’t have to turn out the way they have to, we can help influence them. I thought that was a perfect description of what our ethos is all about.”

The programme is as unorthodox as the name suggests. On the bill: Pat Kane, a musician and writer; two London cabbies who twitter; a pair of economists who study “collapsonomics”; and a social media expert from Sky News.

Rickmansworth
United Kingdom

Bill Thompson

Our compere, Bill Thompson is a technology writer best known for his weekly column in the Technology section of BBC News Online, his appearances on Digital Planet and a radio show on the BBC World Service. He was a correspondent for the Big Byte on BBC Radio. He began to write for The Guardian in 1990, and in 1994 went to work there, setting up the paper's website. He left in 1996 to work as a freelance writer and consultant.

Pat Kane

Pat is a musician (with Hue And Cry), a writer , a consultant, a theorist and an activist. Pat's magnificent book 'The Play Ethic - a manifesto for a different way of living' is a book 'no one who works, or has ever worked, can afford to be without'.

Alfie Dennen

Alfie is described in his Wikipedia entry as a creative technologist, artist, and founder of several prominent websites based around around mobile blogging. He co-founded Moblog which received prominence when The service gained prominence in 2005 when Eliot Ward uploaded a photo to the site from one of the London Underground bombings. The Arts Council recently announced that that Dennen's Bus.Tops project was Shortlisted for the London award in the Artists Taking The Lead Public Art competition. The project was awarded £500,000 to create a new work of public art in London.

James Proud

James is an 18-year old entrepreneur and founder of recent web startup - GigLocator.com. An assured and confident speaker beyond his years, James has won competitions for young entrepreneurs and is very highly thought of amongst those 'in the know'.

Caroline Bosher

A Special Agent on a mission to transform businesses through exceptional branding and connections. Caroline has a passion for infiltrating high calibre networks, uncovering remarkable customer experiences, and working with her team to co-ordinate all components required to create strong brand attraction. Working in London, Sydney and New York she 'cross-pollinates' ideas across industries, cultures and entrepreneurs to ensure her clients stand out from the crowd and build their tribe of raving fans.

Lily Evans

Lilly is an internationally known business transformation consultant, change expert, strategic management and marketing adviser, lecturer, mentor and coach to tomorrow’s leaders of today’s companies.

Lee Cox

Lee is a London cab driver and one of the founders of the Twitter-based London cab booking service @Tweetalondoncab. In order to become a licenced cab driver in London, Lee and his cohorts have to spend over 3000 hours over a 4 year period learning 'The Knowledge'. Yet this is a skill that would, in schools be seen as trivial and worthy of no qualifications. Thuis do we value the right things in edcuation?

Dougald Hine

Dugald works with ideas - exploring and developing them, and collaborating to put them into practice. This involves writing, speaking, bringing people together from different worlds to find common narratives, then helping to steer the ideas that come out of those conversations into reality. In 2006, he co-founded School of Everything: a Web 2.0 startup that makes it really easy to find people near you to teach or learn with in your local area. The site won a New Statesman New Media Award and a Prime Minister's Catalyst Award in 2008, and was an Official Honoree in the 2009 Webby Awards. He is still involved in School of Everything, but now spends most of my time on other projects. These currently include: Space Makers - an online and offline network, connecting people involved in creating collaborative spaces, including co-working, hack labs, arts spaces, social centres and temporary use of empty shops The Dark Mountain Project - a new literary movement for an age of global disruption.

Maz Nadjm

Maz Nadjm is responsible for Sky Portal’s social media strategy and implementation. The Sky Portal has over 1 billion monthly page impressions and many millions of unique visitors. Maz works closely with each Sky site, providing on-going technology and strategy assessment within the context of the competitive landscape and Site needs. In addition to his role at Sky, Maz has launched the Times Online commenting system. Prior to Sky, Maz co-founded Rareface and InfieldParking.com, a social networking site and growing online community of NASCAR racing fans in commercial partnership with its most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Maz is a mentor for start ups, video blogger for Sky News TechTalk, founder of www.Mazi.TV and CozyTweetup.com.

Hadley Beeman

In her role as Associate at FutureGov Consultancy and CIO at MacArthur Energy, Hadley designs and delivers social networking/collaboration technology in the UK public sector.

Sara Haq

Artist, videographer, curator.

Howard Rheingold

Howard kindly made a special introductory video for TEDxOrenda. In 1985, Howard became involved in the WELL, a computer conferencing system. Howard started writing about life in my virtual community and ended up with a book about the cultural and political implications of a new communications medium, The Virtual Community(1993). He was credited with inventing the term "virtual community." He had the privilege of serving as the editor of The Whole Earth review and editor in chief of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog (1994). In 1994, he was one of the principal architects and the first Executive Editor of HotWired. He quit after launch, because he wanted something more like a jam session than a magazine. In 1996, he founded and, with the help of a crew of 15, launched Electric Minds. Electric Minds was named one of the ten best web sites of 1996 by Time magazine and was acquired by Durand Communications in 1997. Since the late 1990s, he's cat-herded a consultancy for virtual community building. His 2002 book, Smart Mobs, was acclaimed as a prescient forecast of the always-on era. The weblog associated with the book has become one of the top 200 of the 8 million blogs tracked by Technorati, and won Utne Magazine's Independent Press Award in 2003.