TEDxWellington 2024 Event Review | Taking the Leap

Reflections on the resurrection of Aotearoa’s capital TEDx event

Above: A behind-the-scenes look at the event with the event organisers, speakers, volunteers and conference goers.
MASSIVE big ups to Fountainhead Productions who kindly produced this documentary for us.

Rebooting an annual TEDxWellington experience for the capital

On Saturday, April 13th, TEDxWellington made a bold return after a 5-year hiatus. Not since our 2019 event, right before the deep disruptions wrought by the global pandemic had we been able to put on a full-scale stage experience for the city. With much joy and celebration, it is now back.

Wellington is too brimming with talent, creativity, and incredible potential TEDx talks not to hold  a regular event. It was our absolute pleasure to be able to raise this phoenix from the ashes after a protracted period of downtime for the events sector.

Held at the beautiful Rutherford House in partnership with Victoria University, 11 amazing speakers took the stage to share their ideas worth spreading, all of which you can now find on YouTube and are also embedded further down this post.

This post captures an extensive visual history of the event, the elements that built it, and the people behind it. Want to get straight to the source of the photos and videos? You can see our full image gallery here and all our TEDxWellington speakers YouTube videos here. Please also like, subscribe, and stay tuned for updates on our social channels: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Mailchimp.

Above: Timelapse of TEDxWellington 2024 stage setup at Rutherford House April 13th.
HUGE thanks to the incredible professional photography work of Chris Holloman who took this timelapse.

Taking the Leap

This year’s theme “Take the Leap” was about venturing into new space; exploring our collective journey into the unknown. The motivation behind it was about the courage to change, the drive to innovate, and the bond of community that propels us forward to try new things. Learn more by looking at our theme essay to understand more about the rationale behind the selection and design of the theme.

A big day out! Interactive activities, social experiences, collective creativity

“Loved it! Was such a good experience, had lots to think about after
and was just really good to be in a room with like-minded people
wanting to push their boundaries and get inspired.”

– Quote from Conference Attendee

The day had not just two blocks of speakers, but included an extended lunch break, a range  of interactive activities, marketplace vendors, and a speaker panel on creativity. The packed day of activity had something for everyone and provided a rich variety of experiences to choose from.

It takes a village to raise a TEDxWellington

We have to acknowledge our wonderful sponsors who made this year’s event happen. It  is this cohort of like-minded businesses and community organisations giving their time, money and resources that enables the capital city’s TEDx event to be possible. Be sure to take note of them and consider becoming a sponsor yourself in the future!

Fusing speakers, activities, and exquisitely creative kiwi products

2024 also saw us hosting an entire marketplace of beautiful, quintessentially New Zealand arts, crafts, products, emerging innovations and creative companies. This constituted our ‘Marketplace’ that ran during the break between speaker blocks.

The range of delicious artisanal foods, beverages, stunning artworks, pottery and jewelry, technology and leadership enterprises, was amazing. The talent on display was a real reflection of Wellington and its ability to punch above its weight in harboring, nurturing and sharing its creativity.

Many of the vendors also actively created interactive experiences around their own offerings; including workshops on making your own jewelry, cutting-edge software for designing your own house, competitions giveaways, and promotions.

For a full list of all the contributors to the marketplace, please find them all here and check out their websites!

Community outreach: big tent philosophy, big reach, big heart

Every event includes a herculean Community Outreach initiative, which essentially involves a dedicated team contacting as many relevant organisations and initials as possible to encourage and invite them to be involved in TEDxWellington. Each event cycle includes:

• Invitations to apply to speak or to nominate someone else to apply to speak
• Advocating for our Call for Speakers and sharing information about how to do this across organisational comms channels
• Offering the opportunity to support the event as a sponsor, marketplace vendor, event partner or creative collaborator
• Driving awareness of ticket sales and encouraging organisations to attend

This year saw our BIGGEST EVER community outreach effort with a dedicated team of 8  volunteers. The outreach metrics achieved were pretty impressive – the following are just some of the contact points made across different Wellington organisations the team was able to achieve:

Wellington Embassies	47
Wellington Ethnic Communities	23
Wellington GLAM Sector Organisations	80
Wellington Government Networks	24
Wellington Influencers	58
Wellington Local businesses and brands	90
Wellington Networking Organisations	3
Wellington Schools	25
Wellington Science Communities	18
Wellington Start-Up Hubs	2
Wellington Theatres	2
Wellington Universities	11
Wellington Consulting Companies	11
Wellington Game Development Businesses	5
Wellington IT & Software	61
Wellington Online Learning	15
Wellington Software-as-a-Service Companies	12

Building on a history of positive statistics

Ultimately these stats add to an otherwise massive legacy of TEDxWellington reach metrics. Over the years we have built up tens of thousands of followers, activated almost 100 public speakers, attracted millions of views, collaborated with hundreds of volunteers and local businesses, to name just a few stats. We are enormously proud of sustaining and building on the legacy we inherited from the incredible organiser who built TEDxWellington before handing it off to us, DK.

A cinematic experience to complement the stage

As an overflow theater experience, we created an ‘on-site watch party’, utilising Rutherford House’s second lecture theater to conduct a livestream of the whole event. The theater was steeped in beautiful mood lighting implemented by the exceptional Hype Entertainment, creating an intimate and private environment to recline, relax, and enjoy the show in. This reduced ticket price option also came with an endless supply of popcorn!

TEDxWellington Core Organising Team

Affectionately named the ‘Trifecta’, Tania, Ciaran and Alex constitute the current three main organisers who collaborate each year on executing the event. Their leadership model (read below) is inspired by Te Ao Māori philosophies of governance such as kaitiakitanga and each year they rotate and elevate each other into different leadership roles.

Ciaran Jack

Ciaran, a multimedia and marketing guru celebrated Wellington-wide for his cutting-edge creativity and communications skills, held the essential role of Head of Communications. This included the full scope of the events’ visual identity and public relations: including developing the brand, social media campaign, street campaign, liaising with journalists and publications, and designing all of the events’ collateral from shirts to posters, Canva, and slide designs. Ciaran was also essential in facilitating some of the event’s key partnerships and strategies to put on an event in a difficult time for the city economically. Thanks to Ciaran, TEDxWellington came back strong, refreshed, with a revitalised look, feel, and community of supporters.

Tania Marie Smith

Tania is the beating heart of TEDxWellington, having played a critical role in rebooting and forming the new event platform. As the Event Strategist for TEDxWellington, as well as the Head of Curation & Coaching, she had her work cut out for her in this event; being across practically every aspect of the event logistics, relationships, design and implementation. Managing the speakers, speaker coaches, and the intensive 5-week coaching programme was on its own an epic undertaking, which led to the incredible cohort of speakers the event enjoyed in 2024. Tania also led the creation of TEDxWellington overarching Strategic Planning, a comprehensive framework for the long-term sustainability of the event logistics and governance. As the facilitator of forming the teams’ Kaupapa and Accessibility Strategy, Tania has played an essential role in leading the event into a bright new space, full of possibility, morale and confidence, with a strong sense of identity and cohesion.

Alex Matthews

Alex was this year’s Licensee, responsible for the delivery of the event and bringing together the communities of people to pull it off. A long-term contributor to TEDxWellington, he has been volunteering for the event since 2014 and has enjoyed several different roles in facilitating the event; from Community Outreach Manager to Interactions Designer and Photographer in past events. This year, Alex took the leadership mantle as someone who qualified for the license to resurrect a sustainable leadership platform for bringing TEDxWellington back to the city. He also managed the Community Outreach team, was Stage Manager, and managed day-to-day event planning logistics.

The volunteer community that made the event possible

TEDxWellington like any TEDX event of course relies on the engagement and goodwill of the community to be possible. This year, our hearts were filled with warmth to see so many wonderful people stand up and volunteer to be involved.

Incredibly, we achieved the biggest volunteer effort to date, with over 70 volunteers across 12 different workstreams / teams. This included a contingent of volunteers from Victoria University, who rose to the challenge of advocating amongst their student body for volunteering.

We were also extremely fortunate  to partner with this year’s Management 303 Course under the leadership of Karen Smith, allowing us to recruit student volunteers from the course. In exchange, TEDxWellington contributed content to this year’s course; immersing students in a real-world event organising learning experience. The commitment in this year’s effort to community service and actively mucking-in to do something important was outstanding and underpinned the entire spirit of the event.

See: 2024 Volunteers Hall of Fame

Special thanks goes out to Joshua Paterson and Gemma Zust who each stepped up into the roles of Volunteer Manager. Their leadership of the wider volunteer team and logistics was absolutely essential in not only allowing the event to go smoothly but also facilitating a positive experience for the volunteers themselves.

The vast majority of volunteers who signed up have also said they’d love to volunteer again for the next event. This metric is the lifeblood of the continuity of the event; empowering us to grow the community stronger in successive years, developing more institutional knowledge and know-how as we rebuild a new volunteer workforce around the new organising team.

TEDxWellington volunteers in the thick of it.
An enormous, heartfelt thank you to Sambath Ouch for his professional photography services in capturing so many elements of the day.

Volunteers Post-Event Survey

We received over 100 expressions of interest to volunteer for TEDxWellington 2024 and as a result, over 70 volunteers were involved in the success of TEDxWellington 2024. This included volunteers who have previously been involved in an event like TEDxWellington (half of the volunteers), students at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington and those participating in the Management 303 Course.

The overall volunteer experience was extremely positive with most of the volunteers who responded to the survey rating their overall volunteering experience a 4 out of 5. Additionally, volunteers indicated that their expectations were either met or went beyond their expectations. Some of the positive feedback about the volunteer experience included how there was clear communication, great organization, and how the event was “led by a professional team who were inclusive and allowed volunteers to play a role and have a voice.

Volunteer Experience Quotes

“Got new friends, learn new things’
“I’m keen to be a part of next years event.”
“felt the right balance of work to enjoyment of the event on the day”
“I understood myself a bit more, I am confident to talk with people when I have enough knowledge about the topic or experience.”
“the overall coordination and presentation, making good connections with others, and it was overall a very positive and inspiring experience to be a part of.”

While there were areas to improve in the volunteers’ feedback, most volunteers felt they had most of the information they needed prior to the event and that they would highly recommend volunteering to others with 87.5% (14/16 respondents) of volunteers wanting to volunteer again next year.

For a full look at our volunteers this year and overall team profile, please check out of 2024 Volunteers Hall of Fame!

Take the Leap theme: Implicitly motivated by the drive to stimulate people’s aspirations and personal growth

Sustainable Leadership Model / Kaitiakitanga

This year also saw another radical change in our operational model, towards what we hope will achieve greater long-term sustainability in being able to put on regular events. This is our ‘stewardship’ model that sees the leadership of the event rotate and constantly promote the emergence of new leaders and volunteers. Each event, the TEDxWellington License now rotates between the core organisers. This is intended to:

• Prevent burnout of the Licensee
• Empower an annual event strategy (rather than every second year)
• Build Wellington’s capacity for event organising
• Invest in the professional development of our volunteers
• Provide opportunities for fresh thinking, diversity, and creativity

Based on our values, Kaitiakitanga is also essential because:

No one person should own a TEDx event.. The position comes with great social responsibility and the power to elevate others. Stewardship allows us all to take our turn, do our best, and allow for new talent to grow, in the true spirit of TEDx.

Victoria University: We love you!

Pulling off the event in an otherwise difficult time for the city economically would not have been possible without Victoria University. Their courageous leadership in seeing the alignment with TEDxWellington and actively putting their venues, infrastructure, staff, energy, and time into making it happen with us was just phenomenal. Victoria University has been a part, in some way or another, in practically every TEDxWellington going back to the beginning. However, this was the first time they took on such an active role as our anchor partner and we can’t thank you enough. We look forward to building on the partnership further into future years and seeing what other incredible experiences we can put on for Wellington.

MC Mastery: Jesse & Karena

A special thank you to Jesse Pirini and Karena Brown, our two MCs who did a remarkable job of carrying the event with humor, gravitas, sensitivity and fun. You were the glue that wove the whole event together with your welcoming nature and warm stage chemistry.

Filling our hearts and bellies

We were also nourished by the scrumptious catering of The Lab – a longtime supporter and partner to TEDxWellington. The Lab has consistently been there providing nutritious, abundant catering whenever we’ve needed it. Thank you to The Lab!

A year to remember, an event to celebrate

In reflection, we feel as though the resurrection of TEDxWellington has gone extremely well. We have a new volunteer army ready to activate for future events, a community of innovative organisations, education providers, companies and social groups around us willing and energised to put on future events.

The talks this year however were the real prize from the day – the true and previous gift  that should be celebrated. In the end, it is about the speakers; their ideas they generously and graciously share with us and bring to the world stage.

Heading into future events, we know there are many more awesome people and ideas waiting to be discovered and take the TEDxWellington stage. Could that person be you?

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So with that said, please enjoy our 11 speakers from this year – put the kettle on, put your feet up, and give this year’s TEDxWellington talks a good watch!

In her journey through academic competitions, 16-year-old Telesia Tanoa’i confronts the weight of her own expectations and the toll it takes on her mental well-being. As she navigates through numerous disappointments, Telesia discovers a transformative realisation: by prioritising purpose over perfection, she finds the resilience to persist and grow. Telesia’s story is a testament to the power of purpose in overcoming setbacks and finding fulfillment amidst challenges.

We care about the ocean, but do we care enough? Most of us don’t get to experience what lives below the surface and changes go unnoticed until it is too late. We can connect to the ocean in different ways, even virtually, and everyone can become an Ocean Champion. In this talk, Dr. Nicole Miller takes us on a journey under the sea to discover the magic world of underwater forests. Hear why these ecosystems are threatened by our actions, what community groups do to save kelp forests and what you can do to create positive change.

Dr Shelley Brunskill-Matson shares her own poignant and very personal experience of suicide loss as a child, alongside the findings of her PhD research which have the potential to transform the way that grieving children, are cared for and supported. Shelley’s research explored the care and support experiences of children aged 6 to 13 years, following the suicide of someone close to them. Having asked the children what they experienced as helpful, unhelpful and ‘ideal’ care and support, her research findings provide new knowledge to inform both practice and policy. The findings highlight the critical role of mattering in care and support for children, and of uniqueness, agency and emotional safety, as key features of mattering. In sharing her PhD research findings, Shelley acknowledges her three academic supervisors: Dr. Kathy Nelson, Dr Chris Bowden and Dr. Lynne Russell.

3D Printing is a powerful technology that will change the world. in recent years it has reached new heights, becoming more accessible and affordable than ever. However, there are many  people who see 3D printing as being too technical and difficult to learn. In this talk, Jesse gives insight around the true potential of 3D printing with real-world examples of what it can do in the hands of everyday people. From educators to young people and even retirees, 3D printing is ready is now easier to learn than it has ever been before.

At the age of 16, Rachel was told she had Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that causes ulcers in the digestive tract. By 28, her medication was no longer working. She was losing the Game of Crohn’s. She underwent major surgeries to have a stoma formed, which left her with a bag on her stomach. While about 100,000 people in the US alone have this surgery each year, there are still huge stigmas around stomas. But as she found out, her semicolon enabled freedom and confidence she never thought was possible.

Jake explores how the built environment profoundly impacts our mental health and emotional wellbeing. Through personal anecdotes and reflective questions, he illustrates how cities shape our experiences and memories, and how urban elements evoke deep, often unexpected emotions. By recalling his own experiences, Jake invites the audience to reflect on their meaningful moments in public spaces and how the design of these spaces influences our feelings of connection and belonging. Jake delves into the rising epidemic of loneliness and isolation, emphasizing the role that well-designed social infrastructure can play in mitigating these issues. Drawing on data and research, he highlights the importance of creating urban environments that foster social interaction and connection. Whether through vibrant workplaces, community parks, or interactive public spaces, the built environment has the power to enhance our quality of life, acting as a social fabric that binds us together. Join him in understanding how thoughtful urban design can transform our cities into places where everyone can thrive.

With global shortages in healthcare, mental health, and teaching, countries across the world must invest in training a homegrown workforce. But New Zealand is struggling to train and retain people in its essential services. Professionals are retiring or migrating and students are dropping out of training at alarming rates. Meanwhile, the public is left waiting days, weeks, or months for treatment, care, and support services. To qualify as a nurse, midwife, teacher, social worker, or mental health professional, students complete hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of compulsory unpaid placements. The associated financial hardship is known as ‘placement poverty’. Paid training could improve equity in access to applied learning programs. It could help diversify the workforce and ensure trainees can live with dignity. This is a global call to action to enable sustainable workforce growth, accessible services, and thriving communities.

In this heartfelt stage performance Apera Woodfine shares his love of Te Reo Māori and encourages all New Zealanders to be brave, unafraid, and welcome in trying to improve their Te Reo pronunciation. With over a decade of experience producing and performing music internationally and background of Te Reo Māori immersion, Aotearoa based kaiwaiata Āpera Woodfine extends a warm invitation to cast away fears of mispronouncing our Māori place names and brings to the table a fun and innovative approach to pronunciation through the magic of music. This is a stage version of a previous TEDxWellington Studio video, Uplifting Indigenous Language Through Music. (see below).

The TEDx talk by Greig Brebner, founder of BLUNT, addresses the critical issue of overconsumption and its dire consequences on our planet. He proposes a solution focused on shifting consumer behaviour, and he shares insights from his own experience with BLUNT umbrellas. Brebner explores how mindful consumption and the demand for better products can lead to a healthier relationship with our possessions and a more sustainable future.

We need safe places to do the dangerous things required to make the world we dream of. Ash Holwell explores their transformative and innovative experiments in reimagining land and space use to make places safe. Through inspiring anecdotes and groundbreaking initiatives, Ash demonstrates how sharing space is at the heart of thriving communities. By boldly and practically addressing the historical disempowerment caused by land exclusion, their work is charting a new vision for the future of how we treat space as a powerful tool of enablement for all.

Don’t Try This at Home is a talk about how a generation of young people fell deep into the trend of replicating common experiences done outside, in the comfort of their own homes. These are the same youth who were often warned with the tagline ‘Don’t Try This At Home’, but instead used it to find inspiration. It’s that inspiration that has driven innovative thinkers to solve a  lot of problems we’ve experienced outside, by making them accessible indoors. Kii, who created a tool that was later used as ‘therapy at home’, dives into how comfortable we have become with this trend, and how it can limit the next generation too. His story starts in his humble rural town, Kaitaia, and expands to unpack a global phenomenon we’ve all succumbed to.

Want even more?!?!

Check out our previous years event reviews!

• Taking Chances – 2019 Event Review
• What’s Your Perspective? – 2017 Event Review
• Creating Gender Parity – 2017 Event Review
• TEDxScottBase Watch Party – 2017 Event Review
• The Story of Trust – 2016 Event Review
• Connecting Hearts and Minds – 2014 Event Review