Theme: Shift

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDxNorthernSydneyInstitute presents Shift, an event featuring brilliant speakers, inspirational videos and mind-blowing conversation.

At our event, TEDTalk videos and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. Our goal is to bring together bright minds to give talks that are idea focused, to foster learning, innovation and wonder – and provide conversations that matter.

Shift is about pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo, embracing the new and always moving forward. Change can be radical or it can be microscopic, but each small step forward is a Shift. A Shift can reframe our perception of what is possible and move us closer to transforming our ideas into reality.

The future is always just around the corner. A world full of exciting new possibilities and adventure is out there. It’s up to us to shape what happens next.

213 Pacific Highway
St Leonards, New South Wales, 2065
Australia

Alexx Stuart

With a community size surpassing 60,000, Alexx has spent the last five years committed to educating, enlightening and empowering people around real food and shifting to non-toxics across Australia and online. Alexx knows people and the challenges we face as individuals and populations in making the changes we very much need to make to get us healthier – both us and the planet. She believes that the key to our success in making and sticking to change is developing curiosity and conscious consumer skills. What’s actually in everything we buy so readily these days? It doesn’t take long to realise that most of us have not given an awful lot of thought to what’s in the ‘stuff’ we put on and in us, past ‘liking it’ or ‘not liking it’. Where did our critical thinking go and why should we care?

Alice Williamson

Dr Alice Williamson is a research chemist, lecturer and science communicator based at the University of Sydney. Originally from the North West of England, Alice completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she worked with colleagues to develop two new reactions. Alice moved to Australia to take up a position as the principal synthetic chemist for the Open Source Malaria (OSM) consortium. OSM is pioneering open source drug discovery and are trying to prove science is better and more efficient when all data and results are shared. The team won’t patent any of their findings and publish all their work online in real time so anyone can access the research. Alice makes new medicines in the lab, helps to coordinate the international team and encourages people to join the project. She sets up unusual collaborations with high school students and undergraduates, who have made new drugs designed to kill the malaria parasite.

Ben Levi

As an experienced entrepreneur, Ben is obsessed with creating experience and products that consumers love. He has co-founded two successful companies: Code Camp, a service that teaches kids to create their own apps and develop an entrepreneurial mindset and RentingSmart, an online landlord software. In addition to his entrepreneurial ventures, Ben has his own Gelato Messina flavour, and even has his own Angry Birds level! But Ben’s true passion is to leverage technology to help shape the next generation of learners.

Chris Stephen

Chris has degrees in Science (Physics and Mathematics), Economics and Law from Sydney University and has been granted six patents for inventions relating to customised book formats to make it easier for people to read. Chris is both an entrepreneur and innovator in the literacy field. He has a personal passion for helping people learn to read more easily after an illness. One of Chris’s most recent roles has been as the co-developer of Readable English. It involved 10 years of studying relevant scientific disciplines to develop a systematic approach to reading and language learning which optimises each aspect of the learning process. He also is co-author of a book and an ebook which describe the science behind Readable English. English is a notoriously difficult language to learn to read and Readable English aims to take the struggle and stress out of the process.

Danny Fiorentini

Originally from the United States, Danny has a Masters in International Studies from the University of Sydney, where his research thesis focused on how the impact of the Internet disrupts human thinking and collaboration. A CEO of a technology startup by trade, Danny pursues a personal interest in how the Internet is shaping human evolution and is currently working on his first tentatively titled book, “How The Internet Saved Your Life, The Universe and Everything”. At Sydney’s VIVID Festival, Danny recently debated the impact of A.I. and why the ‘rise of robots’ may not, in fact, be mutually exclusive of our own reality. Based on the very real possibility that there is another life form on another planet that is at least 1000 years more advanced than we are (let alone millions of years), posing a ‘simulated reality’ theory, that we may be some sort of advanced AI simulation or experiment, may not be as out there as it seems.

David Bartolo

David holds qualifications in Interaction Design, Engineering, Communications, Education, eLearning and TEFL, and has worked in digital media for over 20 years, as an educator and producer of content. He is passionate about the use of appropriate technologies in education to enhance the learning experience, and has been awarded several awards in his field, including: a NSW Premiers Logitech New and Emerging Technologies Scholarship, Sydney University’s Postgraduate Design Computing Prize, and a NSW Quality Teaching Award. David teaches digital media at TAFE NSW – Northern Sydney Institute and has lectured at UTS, Sydney University, Canberra University and COFA, as well as taught ethics in primary school. He develops online interactive products, and most recently has been working on an online logging project as part of the Community Plumbing Challenge (CPC) in South Africa, in collaboration with Healthabitat and the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials.

Ed Halmagyi

You may know Ed best as the cooking presenter on Network 7’s Better Homes and Gardens but he is also a passionate and engaging speaker whose energy and stories are infectious. For more than ten years Ed has appeared on and hosted a variety of television radio programs, and has been published in newspapers, magazines and books. He has become one of Australia’s best loved media personalities, TV chefs and food authors. Professionally, Ed has more than twenty years of experience cooking in some of the world’s best restaurants, both in Australia and overseas. As well as a familiar face on our televisions, he is a best-selling author of numerous cooking books and a popular radio personality. His tips and tricks for transforming restaurant food into recipes that can be prepared at home have created millions of culinary moments for everyday Australians.

Fiona Kerr

Dr. Fiona Kerr is a prominent thought leader in the fields of social cognitive neuroscience (SCN) and human connectivity. She combines an industry professor role at Adelaide University in Neural and Systems Complexity, with public speaking and consulting to companies, industry and governments on how leaders build better brains and businesses, artificial intelligence and the neurophysiological impact of humans interfacing with both humans and technologies. Fiona advises a number of Australia’s largest companies on how leaders can build better brains and create organisations that flourish, and has spent time with a number of fascinating organisations including the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil. Fiona will teach us how part of understanding and valuing the dynamics of human interaction is knowing when it offers advantages over the technology-based interaction which is becoming pervasive in human society. She will ask, what is getting in the way, and how do we ensure we connect?

George Raftopoulos

Sydney based artist George Raftopoulos is best known for his fierce cryptic expressions exploring history, memory and cultural lineage. To capture a fleetingly hot sensation; to preserve the electrifying jolt of a single moment in amber; to catapult a timeless past into the visceral present so that it can be felt by another human being. These are George’s great quests as an artist. It’s not enough for him to ‘show’ us what he has seen in his travels. George wants us to ‘experience’ what he has experienced. ‘It’s like I’m trying to extract the truth and the pure essence,’ he says. Paradoxically, his creative process relies on erosion. George doesn’t record the things he sees. He doesn’t sketch or take photographs. To fully remember a moment, George abandons the experience to the corrosive sands of time and memory. To communicate his experiences, he has to recreate them for himself which explains the urgency and speed of his brush work.

Isabella Augimeri

Falling In Love at a Coffee Shop by Landon Pigg

Judith Friedlander

Judith is the founder of the not-for-profit organisation, FoodFaith, an initiative that emerged from her PhD research at the University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures. FoodFaith aims to forge connections between different faiths and cultures by celebrating food customs and practices and by drawing on shared wisdoms about food, farming, cooking and sustainability. As a journalist who has worked for over 25 years with a number of Australia’s leading newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian and a number of influential current affairs television programs, Judy is only too aware how bad news can overwhelm the good and allow us to lose sight of the positive around us.

Marty Wilson

Marty has spoken to over 500,000 people since he was dared into his first stand-up comedy gig in 1997. In his first 12 months, Marty won Australian Comic of the Year, appeared on the Footy Show, and was invited to the UK to become a full time stand-up comedian. He returned home in 2007, a bestselling author and a powerful keynote speaker. On the way to creating his eleven (and counting) books, including the bestselling What I Wish I Knew series, Marty has interviewed over a thousand inspirational people regarding their tips for success in life. His wide variety of interviewees include: footy coach Wayne Bennett, a Buddhist Nun who works with prisoners on death row, comic Anh Do, a mother of eleven children, a 911 survivor, and chef Maggie Beer.

Melissa Maltby

Noah Coleman

Noah Coleman is a 16 year old musician who can play a variety of instruments. He mainly writes solo songs on guitar with him singing the vocal parts. Recently he has begun to record and master his own songs and has begun uploading them to Soundcloud under the name The Isms.

Rachael Buzio

Rachael is a bicycle advocate, lover of the sea and sun, and most at home in the bush, She is passionate about protecting and rehabilitating our natural environments. After completing a marine science degree in 2011, and years of working in project management, she decided she wanted to get her hands dirty and focus her efforts on directly caring for the land. Rachael re-trained at the Northern Sydney Institute in conservation and land management and now works full time doing ecological restoration with Dragonfly Environmental. Her goal is to share the wonders of our natural environment and pursue the conversation about living a life that decreases our impact on the planet. She’s keen to meet and work with people who share this passion for a better outcome for biodiversity.

Vicki Condon

Through her role as founder and CEO of Raise Foundation, Vicki is committed to impacting adolescent wellbeing in Australia. With a wide range of education, skills and experience working with young people and leading an organisation for social purpose, Vicki has grown Raise from scratch to a large registered charity with a team of 52 staff, and a portfolio of 68 mentoring programs supporting thousands of young Australians across NSW, Victoria and Queensland. Founding and managing Raise is part of Vicki’s lifelong ambition to make a significant contribution to the wellbeing of youth, and she works hard to ensure the mentoring programs delivered by Raise positively inspire thousands of mentees (and mentors) in Australia.