The Ogilvy PR Experience

Rebecca Booth: Sitting down to write this blog is ironically one of the most daunting tasks I’ll carry out for Ogilvy PR, despite finishing my internship a week ago! How does one sum up all of the amazing experiences, invaluable guidance and insurmountable kindness, patience and friendship that was gifted to me by my colleagues at Howorth in just a few short paragraphs? Let’s see if I can do this justice.

Each day of my internship at Howorth was different, which meant I was always learning new skills, interacting with different people, and being presented new opportunities. I was so fortunate to be surrounded by such creative and experienced professionals on a daily basis.

For me, the aspect of my internship at Ogilvy PR of which has made a lasting impression on me, is the radiant culture. It is built on hard work, support, but also creativity and a lot of fun.

During my (all too short) month at Howorth I was given the reign to write press releases, by-lines, draft case studies, client profiles, create media lists, conduct volumes of research and attend brainstorms among many other activities. I even found myself writing personalised travel guides for people that were going on holidays to places I’d been!

I was fortunate enough to attend several learning seminars and presentations given by people from the wider Ogilvy PR group, which provided a fantastic overview of other ventures, achievements and creativity from across the board. I participated in brainstorms with Social@Ogilvy digital analysts, who were kind enough to put time aside out of their busy schedules to chat with me.

My advice for prospective Ogilvy PR interns (without giving away too many of my secrets):

• Be proactive
• Be memorable
• Think outside the box

Thank you to all the brilliant professionals that I had the privilege of working alongside. It’s only been a week and I miss it terribly. This internship has given me the confidence to aspire to greatness and drives me to do my best every single day. I hope one day, to ooze the same professional zeal, playful creativity, and cupcake baking skills that I was lucky enough to sample on more than one occasion.

I hope this blog has done the Ogilvy PR experience justice; in reality, it’s all of this and more. Like anything in life, it is what you make of it. An internship at Ogilvy PR is no exception.

Big dogs, yes. Old dogs, definitely not.

Six of the STW Network’s most influential and entertaining people speak to the Young Turks about their past, present and future.

The conversation as to who would write a wrap of the Young Turks, Big Dogs panel discussion on Wednesday evening coincidently took place around my desk an hour before it was due to commence. No hands immediately went up. Not even my own. In fact, I tried my hardest to keep my head down and avoid the conversation as to not get assigned the job.

It’s not that I didn’t have the time or that I don’t enjoy writing. The honest truth is, I couldn’t think of anything more intimidating than composing a creative piece reporting back on the past, present and future careers of – as we were most fervently reminded over the course of the evening – the most creative and celebrated minds in our industry.

As luck would have it however, my name was thrown amidst the conversation, unwilling eye contact was made and ten minutes later I was begrudgingly heading down to the conference clad with pen and paper to take notes for my impending piece.

Five minutes into the panel discussion, I was more stressed than ever – and we were merely being introduced to the Panel: Brett Howlett, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy Australia; Anouk Darling, CEO, Moon Communications; Gerry Cyron, Head of Brand Planning; Ogilvy Australia, Jonathan Pease, Managing Partner and Executive Ideas Director, Tongue; Brian Giesen, Director, Social@Ogilvy; and Kieran Moore, Chief Executive Officer, Ogilvy Public Relations, Australia.

As I listened, phrases such as “won countless Effies”; “recognised and awarded in Cannes”; and – my favourite – “Kieran Moore, one of Australia’s top ten most influential women in media in 2011”, were flanked by mentions of the most recognisable brands names in the world. Throwing a quick glance over my shoulder I could see that awe had been slapped across the faces of the other thirty or so other Young Turks in the room. To us there was no doubt: here before us sat a panel of media heroes.

The ‘Big Dogs’, who had literally been placed on pedestals before us, kicked off the discussion with a simple question: who inspires you most? The collective answer could possibly have been a world first to have self-made billionaire Warren Buffett, Advertising legend Dan Wieden, renown blogger Leo Babauta and charitable investment banker Richard Blum named in the same sentence. Although it turns out they have a lot in common. Entrepreneurial to the core, each leader was renowned for their innovation, creativity and ability to look beyond the bottom dollar to contribute their influence and talent to better society. By the time film director Quentin Tarantino and film producer Ridley Scott had rounded off the list for their “awesome story telling” ability to “stuff as many ideas into an hour and a half as possible on no budget”; I realised that my head was slightly nodding in agreement. After all, what are PR and advertising professionals if not storytellers?

By the second question: What was your first role in the industry, my head was shaking in disbelief. It came as –perhaps too much – of a surprise that such successful careers stemmed from humble beginnings. At Jonathan Pease’s answer, I literally dropped my pen. “My first job was actually in dispatch,” said Jonathan, a man credited for helping to bring Australia’s Next Top Model to my lounge room and not for distributing packages from a corporate mail room. “It was the kind of job where just turning up some days was a challenge,” he said with a laugh. To a room of Young Turks, this was top quality reassurance that we are on the right track.

By the third question: what were the biggest mistakes you ever made, it was clear that here before us sat not only the most influential people in the industry, but possibly the most entertaining. I found it necessary to remind myself that the following comments came from the same group of people responsible for launching one of Australia’s most recognisable budget airlines, the Share-a-Coke Campaign and for the first use of foursquare and a blog in commercial campaigns.

“Oh man there’s just been so many” was followed up with “I forgot to make sure my phone was on mute before going on a full rant about certain people’s incompetencies during a conference call” and “there was this one time when I accidently CC’d a client into a group email that complained about how difficult they were.”

After wiping away my tears of laughter, I wrote the following as a key learning on my note pad: it is fine, if not expected to make mistakes. “You will learn more from your failures than your successes,” summarised Anouk Darling. “You will mess up a lot but learn through your adversity, keep putting yourself out there and stay hungry.”

Suddenly, the pedestal didn’t seem so high. It is not that by admitting their faults, the panel leaders had suddenly sunk to my level. It was that I had subconsciously sat up straighter in my own chair, as I sponged in what the panel had to say. Including this pearl from Gerry Cyron: “Your career and, actually life in general is just like Angry Birds. You see your target, take aim and you throw everything you have at it. If you miss, you just readjust and try again.” As easy as it is to laugh off the mistakes of others and hope they don’t happen to you; success only comes to those who seek success out and keep evolving their tactics in order to reach it.

“While this industry used to be about knowledge, now it is about the willingness to evolve and the drive to become an expert,” said Anouk. Put your hand up for everything, come up with another creative idea every time one gets shot down and love your work beyond the dollar sign.

The biggest surprise of all came with one of the most standard questions asked in a work environment: Where do you see yourself in five years? “Geez, I have no idea,” was the resounding response from the panel. The catalyst for such uncertainty can be attributed to technology which is causing everything to shift and change at such a rapid rate that the panel experts such as Brian Giesen believe that speed is the key to remain competitive in media moving forward. Media agencies will also need to be smart and come forward with big ideas, not big numbers of staff to win new business in the future.

“Technology is set to blow our minds and for that reason, I see the industry moving to a hub and spoke approach,” said Kieran Moore. “It is a commercial imperative for media groups to work together and integrate their offering or they will get left behind.”

This blog piece is testament to the insight and inspiration provided by the six media experts on the Young Turks ‘Big Dog’ panel. From now on, I will not stress about making mistakes, I will strive to keep evolving and most importantly, I will put my hand up first.

Key quotes:

“Do not confuse the ‘alpha’ with the ‘leader’. Leadership is not a popularity contest.”

“Be confident, but not so much that you become a [censored word].”

“It’s imperative to have a tight plan in life, but to live it as loosely as possible.”

“The great distinction between creative people and non-creative people is that the former will always come back with another idea.”

“You never know what your clients are thinking so don’t take shortcuts.”

“Listen to that little voice inside your head and never be compromised.”

“When negotiating, silence can be powerful.”

“The biggest pitfall is taking yourself too seriously.”

“Look to learn more from your failures than from your successes.”

“Love your work beyond the dollar sign.”

Recommended reading list:

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche (1992)

The Art of War, Sun Tzu

Life’s a Pitch, Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity

Blue Ocean Strategy, Professor W. Chan Kim and Professor Renee Mauborgne

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell.
Imagine, Jonah Lehrer

Suggested reading:

Good old fairy-tale stories (namely, The Jungle Book)

Anything written by Charles Bukowski

Anything the Harvard Business Review suggests

NOTE: If you’ve ticked all these boxes, Anouk Darling’s personal reading list is available. Alternatively, turn on the television

Aunty Van’s wacko filter for wunderkinder

Ever been struck by a great idea, but kept it quiet, just in case it sounds more wacko than wonder-child? After 10 years around the traps at Ogilvy PR and 14 in the PR business, I’ll share a secret: wonder-child is overrated.

But for those that err on the side of better safe than sorry, let me give you a quick filter for the big idea that you can implement between brain and mouth.

Last week I attended a MasterClass at ci2011 with famous physician, inventor and author of 82 books, Dr Edward de Bono. He took us through some concepts from his books ‘Think! Before It’s Too Late’ and ‘Six Thinking Hats’, but for me the most compelling part was the last 30 minutes of each session when he answered audience questions and entered into general discourse on the role of creativity within an organisation.

 Creativity often gets a bad rap. Corporate clients might sponsor the arts, but get a whiff of it in the boardroom and it takes a brave leader to grab it by the horns and see how they can apply it to their business.

 A key differentiator de Bono applies is creativity versus ‘crazy-tivity’.

Creativity is creating something new. According to de Bono, all valuable creative ideas will be logical in hindsight and have obvious benefits. In fact, when you are using creativity to create something new for an organisation, it’s often referred to as innovation.

Crazy-tivity has its place – in the realms of fantasy and entertainment – but it’s not the valuable business tool PR peeps need to employ in their bag of tricks.

 So getting back to this checklist between brain and mouth.

 This is not a de Bono list – it’s Aunty Van’s interpretation of de Bono – so take or leave it depending on where you think I sit on the scale of wacko to wunderkind.

 Before you make your suggestion, answer the following questions:

1. With hindsight, is your idea logical?
2. Does your idea have the potential to deliver obvious benefits?
3. If so, list two-three benefits that would support your idea.
4. What’s your gut saying? Is it a winner? Intuition doesn’t give you creative ideas, but it does help you judge the ideas you come up with. Trust yourself when you think you’re on a winner.

 Now I’m not saying you need to do this with every single idea. In some brainstorming environments it’s perfectly OK to switch the dial to wacko – in fact de Bono’s ‘Random Word’ tools might be considered in this category.

 But if you have time for the filter – run your idea through it – and it might help you articulate your thinking a little better.

 Dr de Bono has a number of ‘deliberate thinking techniques’ that I’m just starting to learn about. He’s number one on my reading list right now, so if you want to borrow a copy, go to www.bookdepository.co.uk .

He signed my copies so you can all PO! (BTW, that last comment was a de Bono in-joke … read his latest work and you’ll get it.)

‘Digitalising Aunty’ – Mark Scott’s vision for the ABC

Australia’s ABC, affectionately known as ‘Aunty’, is often regarded as an institution that is slow to embrace innovations and technologies –almost a relic of bygone times.  Aunty has a certain old school feel about her, whether it be the familiar faces of its presenters or its consistent programming. However, in reality, a more fitting name for the ABC of today would reflect that the ABC has broken down barriers ahead of its commercial cohorts.

Last month, about 150 guests crammed into a small room at the UTS Aerial Function Centre to hear Mark Scott, the managing director of the ABC, outline how the ABC was responding in the era of digital information, as part of the UTSpotlight series for the university’s alumni.

Scott reflected on a time when the ability of audiences and readers to quench their news thirst was at the mercy of the country’s news editors and newsagents. For example, if your newsagent wanted to, he could sell you a nine day-old copy of the New York Times; if you made it home in time, you would watch Richard Morecroft read the news, and if the head of news at Fairfax thought you might be interested, you could read an article from The Washington Post.

However, times have changed and while many see the ABC’s charter, structure and funding to be constraints holding it back, Scott believes innovation loves constraints and he’s taken these constraints by the horns. His view is the ABC should be more innovative, more relevant and more responsive to Australians than any other network.

Since taking the helm in 2006, Scott has expanded its services and the ABC now provides news, information, entertainment and other content across an expanding array of platforms: four television channels; digital radio channels to complement the four national and 60 local services; an elaborate online operation and customised material for mobile and other new media devices.

It’s fair to say the ABC is leading the digital charge. Its iView product, developed on a typical ABC budget of ‘as little as possible’, was the first to unlock audiences from their nightly 7pm social contracts with newsreaders to view their news. It meant they could view the news, and their favourite TV shows, at any time, from anywhere using the device of their choosing – iPhone, iPad or iMac. The ABC has realised the importance of digital and online in helping it to engage and maintain its audience.

Even the stalwart ‘old school’ bastions of the ABC have moved into the digital age – Four Corners has a Facebook page to interact with its audience, and Q&A regularly generates more than 30, 000 tweets in a single hour. The ABC has revolutionised the content Australians are seeing on their screens, centering it around them and what they have to say.

According to Scott, the role of the ABC is no longer that of a news teller but as a news host — a place where people can tell their own news and stories. The ABC is about Australian content and stories, stories for Australians by Australians. It provides a platform that allows them to do so. And where better than in their own world – online.

Guest post by Dorea Lau (@dorealau)

Big headlines, slow news

Part 3: John Bell on getting the timing right to launch your social media strategy

When John Bell, head of the global 360° Digital Influence team – Ogilvy’s global social media marketing and communications practice, was in Sydney in June, Ogilvy PR’s Heather Jacobs caught up with him to talk about social media.

Following is the final post in a three-part series on how brands can get started in social media, measure its impact, how Australia compares to the rest of the world when it comes to social media and the challenge of finding social media experts who also understand marketing and communications.

Q: How do brands know they are ready to go to market with their social media program?

John Bell: In markets where social media hasn’t necessarily created a huge momentum, and Australia might be this way, the biggest challenge for communications and marketing professionals is timing. When do I get involved? When does it become essential that I do something?  When will my involvement and investment in social media be critical to my business compared to what I’m investing in now?

Those who have benefitted the most from social media are those who haven’t started too early, but early enough to get experience with it and start to understand inside their organisation how to manage their social network presence to be of the greatest benefit and create more two-way conversations between customers and stakeholders. It’s not like you can study up on it and then one day pull the trigger.

Research by The McKenzie Institute found that 20 per cent of brands using social media for marketing communication purposes across the enterprise are reaping 80 per cent of the benefit which leaves a lot of brands scratching their head and saying, “Does this do anything?”

I think that 20 per cent are the brands with the most experience and the most resources and commitment to social media. It’s the minority of brands right now who are applying social media to their business and feel confident and understand how it’s positively impacting them. I think this year in many markets, Australia included, we’re going to see brands that have been dabbling, start to get truly committed.

Question: How does Australia compare to some of the other markets you have experienced?

John Bell: The adoption curve has been tremendous with the growth in brands using social media for professional reasons skyrocketing. For a relatively small country of twenty million people, connectivity is fairly strong, there a lot of the conditions for marketplace readiness, including the growing use of smartphones, and strong levels of broadband connectivity, although I’ve heard there are some issues about the speed of the broadband. There’s a lot of experimentation occurring in Australia right now and I see a lot of companies hungry to move from experimentation to meaningful operationalizing. How can we get more out of it?

Question: This joke was doing the rounds on Twitter recently: “My boss found me asleep under my desk and was going to fire me, but I said I was planking so he made me vice president of social media”. Are jokes like this a reflection of the reputation that anyone can be an expert in social media?

John Bell: That’s probably happened all too often with companies investing some kind of key token staff hires for people who showed an aptitude in this space. They then realise they have no marketing communication skills, and can do nothing besides introducing them to Foursquare, etc.

Now a lot of brands are looking for people with the right blend of serious marketing communication skills and expertise in social media.

The next generation does come in with an advantage because of their intuitive personal knowledge of the space, but to expect them to go launch a multinational social media based marketing program a day after graduation is not realistic.

Part 2: John Bell on the challenges of measuring social media

When John Bell, head of the global 360° Digital Influence team – Ogilvy’s global social media marketing and communications practice, was in Sydney in June, Ogilvy PR’s Heather Jacobs caught up with him to talk about social media.

Following is part two of a three-part series on how brands can get started in social media, measure its impact, how Australia compares to the rest of the world when it comes to social media and the challenge of finding social media experts who also understand marketing and communications.

Question: There isn’t a global standard for measuring social media. Is there a push towards this and what are some of the challenges in measuring the impact?

John Bell: Everyone wants a standard measurement model that all their colleagues and peers will rely on. I predict that will happen, or a series of standards will emerge, over the next 10-20 years, but right now we just have to take it upon ourselves to measure impact for what’s good for the brand.

Question: What are some of the ways marketers are already using the measure the impact, such as engagement?

John Bell: Brand marketers are measuring engagement, but there’s no way to understand the ROI of engagement. It’s based on factors such as time spent, number of interactions, anything that’s indicative of me doing something with the brand, even something superficial such as “liking” it on Facebook or commenting on a post, or watching a video.

These actions are all indicative of some greater level of involvement and if you believe traditional sales funnel mechanisms, saying that people are aware of your brand means you now have them more involved and engaged.

A smaller number of that audience is now considering if the product suits their needs, whether they will buy it and a smaller number still will go ahead and buy it. That degree of engagement is useful to understand: are people engaged or not? So you can look on the Facebook admin wall and get a number of metrics or interaction metrics that are helpful.

The other trend is that a lot brands are putting value on the volume and quality of ‘word-of-mouth’. What are people saying about the brand? Are they being positive or negative? Are they associating the brand with what the brand wants? For example, are people associating Ford vehicles with fuel efficiency? Ford is trying very hard to make some of the most fuel efficient cars in the world, and emphasises that in all of its communications and is this reflected in the conversations online?

What a few of us are trying to do is to prove what we intuitively believe to be true – that the greater the volume of talk, and the greater the positive share of voice in the marketplace for a particular brand is indicative of preference for that brand over its competitors. And depending on what they are saying, of course, it could indicate intent to purchase.

Question: What if people are using social media to complain about a brand? How can brands deal with negative comments online?

John Bell: What’s interesting about negative comments is that there’s been an unintentional effect of brands developing social customer care outlets online. Twitter handles are meant to grab your attention if you’ve got something going wrong. If I were a cable service, Time Warner Cable, for example, the Twitter handles of other cable providers are meant to capture people who are complaining or having problems and take them into service, get them to customer care and get their problem solved.

Because it’s through Twitter, in this example, they are doing it and quite publicly, so they are getting a marketing side effect in that people are thinking, ‘Time Warner is listening to us, that’s good’.

The problem there is that we have trained consumers that if they have a problem with a product or service the first protocol is to complain about it to their friends online because that’s when the brand will step in and come to their aid.

It’s an interesting problem. I don’t think we, as marketers yet understand what — if anything –  we can do to both serve the customer service needs that are happening in the public space but not encourage more of them.

Part 1: John Bell: Moving beyond the experimentation phase of social media

When John Bell, head of the global 360° Digital Influence team – Ogilvy’s global social media marketing and communications practice, was in Sydney in June, Ogilvy PR’s Heather Jacobs caught up with him to talk about social media.

Based in Washington DC, Bell heads up the global team of Digital Influence Strategists integrating the power of social media – social networks, blogs, Web 2.0 applications – with digital marketing to produce measureable results. He’s developed strategy and executed award-winning programs for clients including Ford, Lenovo, Unilever, BP and American Express.

Following is a three-part series on how brands can get started in social media, measure its impact, how Australia compares to the rest of the world when it comes to social media and the challenge of finding social media experts who also understand marketing and communications.

Part 1: Moving beyond the experimentation phase

Question: You have a theory that brands are moving through what you call ‘the experimentation stage’ in social media? Can you explain this?

John Bell: The enterprise adoption curve shows there’s a path brands typically move along. It starts with phase zero, where people are nervous and full of anticipation, and shifts into the listening stage where brands want to know what people are saying about them online.

From there it moves onto the experimentation stage, where brands try things in social media – implement programs, encourage various regions around the world to try different things and allow entrepreneurial drive within the company to push forward experiments.

Pretty soon brands find that this approach doesn’t produce a significant business result so they want to get efficiencies or ‘operationalize’ their approach to social media.

This is largely trying to take all the experiments and align them with a business purpose, trying to manage the brand online so there’s isn’t 25 different Facebook pages. Instead, there’s one voice for the brand online that is purposeful, not simply whatever the person who did the feed decided on.

There’s a measurement model around everything that’s done so they can learn from their efforts, see what’s having a business impact, what’s creating customer value, what’s helping them build brand reputation and what’s helping them sell product through social media.

Beyond this is the promised land of full integration where social media becomes a part of everyone’s job delivering greater efficiency, greater customer value, and building good culture. I’m not sure if there are too many examples of that yet.

Q: Which companies are close to getting there?

John Bell: A company in the middle of operationalizing is Ogilvy client IBM, which has a long history of applying social media internally – and is an Ogilvy client. Unilever and Proctor & Gamble really started with social media as an external marketing communications discipline.

Q: Is there a sense that a company will think, ‘We’d better open a Twitter account and Facebook page to build up people to like them and once they get negative feedback or aren’t seeing immediate business results, they’ll think it’s not worth it.

John Bell: A lot of brands reactively get involved in social media and then realise, “Now what?” Along the way to getting reactively involved, they probably haven’t built the best foundation or put thought into their conversation calendar and the online space they are going to engage with people in.

They probably haven’t thought too hard about roles and responsibilities in the organisation and goals for those people.  They’ll wake up one morning after pulling the trigger on a Facebook program and blog program and say, “Is this all there is? Is this all I get?”

You would expect them to pull out, but hopefully in most cases, they then say there must be a better way.

We can’t leave social media. We all intuitively believe it has promise for our business – if nothing else a competitive colleague insists it’s the next big thing.

So brands try to find guidance from people who talk about social media as a business driven discipline as opposed to a fluffy “get in the conversation” type-way. Hopefully they find us. We’re trying to play that role for our clients because we understand social media has tremendous potential to drive sales and impact business. But only when you marry it with the best of marketing communications discipline do you get that.

People overestimate how social media has inverted the world. I think the impact is tremendous: it will transform us, make us better marketers, better product and service developers, but it hasn’t completely rewritten the old rules from marketing communications. They remain relevant today.

The obvious starting point is for brands to deliver some authentic value to their customers. We can’t just message people because we want them to understand something and then do it a dozen times to beat them over the head. We have to try and earn their attention and involvement by figuring out what they want from our brand.

TEDX Sydney: a crash course in ideas

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to be ‘accepted’ to be in the audience at the TEDX Sydney conference where I got a crash course in what some of Australia’s smartest, most entertaining and intelligent people — and the odd flying trapeze artists — are up to.

As part of Alan Jones’ social media team, my tweets formed part of a live Twitter feed on screens in the foyer of Redfern’s CarriageWorks where a crowd had gathered on LoveSacs. As word spread via social media that you could watch the event ‘live’ at the venue along with the 800 ‘chosen ones’ granted a seat in the auditorium, more people turned up and the tweet feed exploded.

Hundreds more watched the live stream on YouTube or listened to it on Radio National and Jones re-tweeted the best comments.

My top 10 moments of the day were:

1. When Mango, the blue and yellow macaw  flew on-stage as bird whisperer Josh Cook called him.

2. Biomedical animator Drew Berry – who has won an award for being a ‘Genius’ – showing computer graphics of DNA moving through the body and malaria infiltrating a baby’s vital organs after a bite from a malaria-infected mosquito.

3. The radical idea that taking time out and being bored helps the brain re-set itself. We don’t need to be connected 24/7. That’s what Genevieve Bell said and Intel is a client.

4. Geneticist Richard Cotton’s idea that sometime in the next two decades we’ll start carrying our gene sequence around in our phones. When a couple want to start a family they can compare genomes and a database will tell them if they have mutations that can cause diseases.

5. Richard Gill’s infectious enthusiasm for song that had us clapping along and the idea that every child deserves a great music teacher.

6. Astronomer Bryan Gaensler’s revelation that Australia has developed a telescope that can take pictures of the sky wider and deeper than we have ever seen, taking us back to the Big Bang.

7. Inventor Saul Griffith’s idea of wind turbines that soar like kites and harness strong winds to generate electricity. And his suggestion we ditch the monorail for ziplines and rollercoasters.

8. Shaun Tan’s Oscar-winning ‘The Lost Thing’, which was particularly magical  accompanied by the original score performed by Michael Yezerski.

9. The discovery that Daniel Johns is rather attractive. Especially when he sings. Even if he did split up Silverchair and spends most of his time at the Ivy pool bar.

10. And just as I was exhausTED* and couldn’t take another genius Paul Kelly was on hand to sing a song and tell a yarn.

*Pun stolen from the Chaser’s Craig Reucassel wrap-up.

By the way, TEDX Sydney is an offshoot of TED (Technology Entertainment and Design), the annual conference in Long Beach California featuring 50 speakers who give an 18-minute talk on ‘Ideas worth spreading’.

Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

To be one of the 1000 people in the US audience you need to be “a leader in your field and can make a strong contribution to the TED community through your energy, influence and connections to change the world”. And have a spare $6000. Applications for TED 2012 in California have already closed.

Call it elitist, but a whole community has built up around the conference globally with 500 local events similar to TEDX Sydney held around the world each year and the online TED talks attracting more than 290 million views.

The Sydney license is held by Remo Giuffre, who runs REMO, and thanks to his merry team of volunteers it’s free to attend, but you still have to apply for a seat in the main theatre.

TEDX Sydney: Were the ideas worth spreading?

The first people Ogilvy PR’s Heather Jacobs ran into a TEDX Sydney were a team from Ogilvy & Mather. So, she roped American Express creative director Simon Bloomfield into writing up a piece for the website on his experience.

The second annual TEDx Sydney has come and gone (or the 3rd if you count the one not organized by Remo), and a few days later I sit pondering what I found of it.

There’s no doubt it was a brilliantly organised, thoroughly fascinating, and somewhat overwhelming day in the Carriageworks surrounds, but there’s been one thing gnawing away at me: I didn’t walk away from it as inspired to do something as I did after attending TEDx Sydney 2010.

Was I the cynical old hand, compared to the many starry-eyed TEDx virgins in attendance? Or was it something else?

I’ll be honest and say things didn’t start well when everyone bar the back two rows (containing the designated “blogging community”) were asked to switch off all electrical devices. How were we supposed to spread the ideas if we couldn’t take note of them? (#tweettweet?) I confess I didn’t turn my iPad off but felt conspicuous when I did try to jot something down.

But I don’t think that was the main problem.

Try as I might, five days later I can’t really recall hearing any big ideas that were really worth spreading. At 2010’s event, Rachel Botsman delivered her first presentation on Collaborative Consumption, and whether you were into it or not, it was an idea that has well and truly spread from that point to all corners of the world.

Sure there were plenty of ideas that made sense – Katherine Samaras’ presentation on obesity certainly was that. But if parts of the US are already looking at it – read here about Arizona’s plans to tax the obese – then it’s hardly revolutionary.

And there were ideas I certainly agreed with – I went home and told my wife I wanted to take my girls out of ballet and get them into an instrumental music program thanks to Richard Gill’s speech. But after two years of end of year concerts that look like someone’s trying to herd cats – it was hardly going to require a big push. (Question is will screeching cats be any better?)

There were loads of interesting people doing loads of interesting things – Drew Berry the biomedical animator; Josh Cook the bird behaviourist; Bryan Gaensler the astronomer; Johanna Featherstone the poetry advocate (yep, not sure what that means, but she was cool) … the list could go on. Everyone was really interesting to listen to.

But I reckon other than Saul Griffith – who wanted to (re)spread the idea that the future should be awesome (robot shark submarines, anyone?); and Genevieve Bell, who told me it was OK to be bored every once in a while (and revived my faith in big corporations like Intel at the same time), there was no one else that really got me thinking.

Except I did think that the upcoming Daniel Johns/Josh Wakely collaboration was likely to end in disaster. But boy can he sing.

Yes, I loved the day, and yes I’ll be clamouring for a ticket again next year (providing this post doesn’t put me on the outer with the organisers), but I just hope third time round I walk out burning to make a difference somewhere.

Then it’s up to me spread something.

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