Speaker & Performer Curation Round-up | A Record Breaking Year

What a deluge of talent! Thank you to everyone who took the time to apply.

This year the volume of applications set a new record ever received at TEDxWellington coming in at just under 230! 

It took our brilliant curation team nearly 6 hours to go through them all the evening after deadline closed. It’s a mammoth, detail oriented task, but an enjoyable one when the applications are all so excellent.

Around 30 people have been selected for interview and contacted to progress their application (everyone check your spam folders please!).

If you haven’t heard from us this doesn’t mean your idea wasn’t great, it simply means there was an ENORMOUS amount of tough competition. 

Overall, 97% of applications were for speakers, not artists or performers – for such a creative city this was surprising. Creativity was apparent however, across so many applications, in clever and unusual solutions to complex problems. Wellington is a diverse city, and this was reflected – across age, gender, ability, cultural background and ethnicity amongst those who applied.

Each year common themes emerge from the collective consciousness. And fittingly for this particular year, we saw a huge growth of applications based around mental health, resilience, wellness and self-governance. This makes sense – in a chaotic world often the one thing we have any control over, is ourselves.

There were a number of incredible stories from people who have learned to thrive in difficult situations and those who have overcome significant challenges to achieve their full potential. Other common themes centred around Leadership, Conservation, Housing, Organisational Development, and Adaptability during Covid. We have another difficult task ahead of us, interviewing applicants before we make a decision on the final line up (which will be announced at our next community TEDxWellingtonSalon event in February 2021).

We know some of you missed the deadline, but don’t feel too bad – there will be another time. We’re sorry we couldn’t take applications unless they came via our online form, nor could we accept them after deadline (a few of you tried it, and we celebrate that boldness). We love to see people come back strong so don’t let this be the only time you give it a go! We hope to see you in May 2021 as supporting attendees.

The Marketing team are thrilled with the level of engagement we’ve received over the last 6 weeks (along with the Community Teams efforts which obviously had an impact – read update 1 & update 2). With no shortage of efforts in creative copywriting, graphic design and cross-platform outreach, this record-setting achievement has inspired our teams and reminded us just how significant our TEDxWellington community is. We’re excited to continue championing next year’s event as the largest we’ve ever held (and possibly the largest TEDx in 2021 as Covid19 continues to prevent mass events across the globe). We welcome and invite suggestions, connections and efforts to help promote TEDxWellington 2021, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

TEDxWellington is powered by the community, for the community, so thanks again to all who shared your stories and ideas via the applications and for making our job deliciously tough!