TEDxDAR: Semi-final reflections

Never make a promise on your blog. Your colleagues are likely to gang up on you and demand that you actually fulfill it whilst enumerating the various lapses in logic that you suffered during the TED event. Don't they know accountability is for public officials, not ye Average Josephine? Here, then, are a few final thoughts on TEDxDAR.*

Undeniably a fantastic event, and one that has initiated the kind of conversational exchange I am sure we would all like to see more of. I understand that the Organizing Team is looking to do this on a regular basis so I suspect that frequency is not going to be the problem. The obvious question becomes how do we expand the dialogue to become more inclusive? There is the matter of increasing access: physically through good marketing and choosing amenable venues which can accommodate larger numbers, and intellectually by offering the event in Kiswahili as well as English.

On the flip side, is this an elitist event? Without a doubt, and in the best sense of the word. Yet registration to attend TEDxDAR was FREE. FREE talks, FREE food, FREE goodies. It doesn't get better than that, does it? Sure enough the event was oversubscribed, yet people DID NOT SHOW UP thereby blocking attendance on the part of people who wanted to come (or claimed they wanted to come, since even they didn't show up after tickets were freed up). I am not sure what this says about us. Sometimes I wonder where our collective head is at.

That's it from me. I'll be updating as I get my hands on TEDxDAR info or goodies from time to time. Cheers, and thanks to everyone who attended TEDxDAR, supported it, organized it and in any way shape or form continues to work for a smarter, better vision of our future. Let's keep thinking, talking, doing.

*I hope you guys are happy. Now will you delurk and shift the discussion to the blogosphere?