This year TED, an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about, set up TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self organised events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. TEDxTuttle was held in London last week and I was lucky enough to help out with it.

The theme of the event was Tomorrow’s World - and we had some great speakers for the day covering technology from the past and future, ecosystems and social systems.

First up was Maggie Philbin - the face of Tomorrow’s World, a BBC programme which ran for years looking at the latest in technology.

Using some pretty hilarious TV clips from years gone by, she showed just how difficult it can be to predict the future. Some classic examples of what they thought would be non-starters were CD’s in 1987, electric barcodes in shops (the BBC were concerned that the laser in the reader was so dangerous that they insisted on pre-recording it) and the Internet; which at the time they didn’t pick up on as being a real technological breakthrough at all. Check out the Tomorrow’s World archives which were only released recently – there are some real corkers!

Rachel Armstrong then gave fascinating insight into the work she is doing with protocells, which can create new living architectures. Our buildings currently make up about 40% of our carbon footprint and Rachel believes we can create buildings which become part of the living environment - to the point where even Venice could potentially be rescued by forming an artificial limestone-like reef to hold it up.

Mat Morrison of Porter Novelli gave very interesting insight into the work he has been doing around social media and social systems. He explained how social media is in fact, a way of filtering information - we use our social relationships to make decisions about what to read now - it’s not so much about the headline - it’s more about who sent it to you. Although we are generally rather homophilous - preferring to keep in our own niches and speak to others in our tribe than branch out to new groups. 

Of the TED videos that were shown, Pattie Maes’ SixthSense video about a device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment is a must watch for everyone.

It was a great event with Ben Walker performing his infamous “Twitter Song” which aptly sums up the Tuttleness of this TEDx event.

Also check out Janet's other report backs:

• Mashup
• Being Digital
• Measurement Camp
• Real Time Branding