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TEDx Workshop at TEDGLOBAL
I think most of us who have done our first TEDx event
-- mine on 10/10/10 was Rives at PSU --
remember that feeling we had, that sense of excitement
that boundless energy, and I definitely had that.
Then I went to work for Johnson & Johnson,
a company with an inspiring vision,
they make vital medicines that help people to be well,
medical devices, and yes, our famous baby products.
But I wanted to think, once I join J&J,
how could I bring TED into J&J?
How could I bring that same sense of excitement,
and so I started talking to people, you know.
'Have you heard of TED?'
'Do you know what this is?'
'Do you watch talks?'
We started just screening some talks,
and found that what we really wanted to do
was create this space for ideas,
this opportunity for people to come together,
to share their ideas, and to connect.
So we started by just doing a few small salon events
and ended up doing salons in six different countries
over the course of just a few months.
And there was a lot of genuine excitement around it.
Ken, one of our speakers, we found out,
had escaped from Colombia as a small child
and his main goal, his driving force in his life,
was that he wanted to create a telemedicine solution
for his family back in Colombia.
And so he shared that dream,
and then someone in the audience
who works for one of our Medical Device groups
connected with him,
and they are now working on an initiative
which is doing just that in Colombia and Turkey.
Or Sue, one of our speakers,
who just had a passion for gardening
and so she started a garden at her local site,
with some land right next door
and taught people how to create their own sustainable food
and now there are employee gardens
at a bunch of different sites.
And so we had a lot of this momentum and this energy
that helped us to do this global main event experience
which we did on 12/12/12,
kind of pulling off from some of the 10/10/10 experience,
where we actually had 700 people together
in New Jersey at the Liberty Science Centre
and then people in 39 different countries around the world
in sites from Cairo, Lima, Shanghai, Auckland
coming together and being part of that experience
we had over 2,000 J&J associates coming together.
Celia is a 66 year old woman who works for J&J.
She said, 'it wasn't the best day of my career,
it was the best day of my life.'
She was dancing with glow sticks,
and she was kind of going crazy.
And she works in R&D for us.
I don't know exactly what she does
but if she went to work the next day like that,
much more energised and engaged,
and she's working on the cure for some disease
like who knows where that is going to lead.
Or one of our speakers, Krishna,
who is working on an artificial pancreas,
with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation,
said that the preparation to go into his TED talk
to learn how to be succinct
and how to use story-telling
and put together a really quality presentation,
helped him make a pitch to JDRF
that has expanded their partnership
and increased the funding
and the potential impact
that they can make through that project.
And we get feedback from people, like
'I fell in love with J&J all over again',
and 'For the first time in years I was excited to go home
and talk to my kids about what I did at work today',
and 'We stayed up all night watching TED Talks',
and 'Now my daughter is learning how to programme
and she's creating this game',
and like all of these little secondary,
tertiary benefits that come out of it.
I think the lesson is that people really want to
engage, they want to connect,
they want to feel like they are part of something.
They want to have this genuine conversation, and this permission to share ideas.
And I think TEDx at corporations can be a great way to get people there.
Thanks. (Applause)