Hacking the Red Circle

Shelly Govila is one of those super-energetic, passionate TEDsters you’d just love to have on your team. Her team at TEDxWanChai loves her energy as well. She’s very involved in the region, having traveled to TEDxSingapore, TEDxShanghai, and TEDxWeekend (for Organizers). You’ll love getting to know Shelly and will discover new ideas you will want to put to use on your show.

Originally from India, she moved to Hong Kong and first was involved in a University TEDx. In 2014 she ran marketing for Wanchai. There’s a lot of TED in her adopted town, three TEDx events in Hong Kong, Wanchai, Hong Kong and Mongkok.

She says they have a divide and conquer system, not all the team works on all the events. They do six events a year, which can burn out a single group.

We talked at length about their Open Mike night and how tricky it is to pull speakers from the x-patriate community. The ambiance and vibrant nightlife of a music store/bar, with 300 people as the Jury helps them find some exciting ideas and presenters. Everyone gets a rating card and picks 3 to 5 speakers.

Kara DeFrias is a force of nature. She's been involved with TEDx since 2010, having worked at TEDxSanDiego and produced TEDxIntuit. She has many years experience producing big events, including the Oscars, the Emmys, and the Halftime show at the Superbowl, working with Sting, No Doubt, and Shania Twain. Wow.

She brings that level of experience to everything she does including recently being the Director of Experience Design in the Obama White House. From 2010-2016 she worked on TEDx projects until she was tapped to work with VP Biden on the Cancer Moonshot Project.

We talked at length about producing an internal TEDx program at Intuit and what it was like working with TEDxSanDiego. While there she was profiled as a TEDInnovation for her description of how they got 1.2 million social media impressions during the 2013 event. Click to read her top ten tips for creating a social media strategy for your event.

Here's a fact you may not know. Kara created the show run-down worksheet (Excel spreadsheet) used by the majority of TEDx events. This is the item-by-item description of what happens during each minute of the show. This attention to detail is a lasting legacy she's given to the TEDx community.

Arthur Zards is the organizer of TEDxNaperville and has been innovating with his team since 2009. He watched TED DVDs he'd borrow from friends who attended in Monterey. Since then, he's done two TED talks, been to 20 events, and last year hosted an Adventure with 350 of his 750 attendees participating.

Arthur loves sharing. He is just back from TEDGlobal and asked to take some Hacking The Red Circle flyers with him to encourage other organizers to join us. Thanks. His Engagement Project which is an open source collection of ideas for engaging audiences is an excellent example of sharing ideas with other organizers.

He's got a fantastic well of energy that comes across during this conversation. He's also very motivated by creativity and building community. He suggests thinking about the experiential side of your event makes it unique in the community and can reframe what the audience thinks of as a typical TED talk.

Mike Lundgren is a nine-year veteran of TEDxKC (Kansas City), having produced almost 40 events. His 2017 event sold out in four minutes. They enjoy one of the most spectacular venues for a TEDx, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. They entertain and inspire 3,000 people and have over 30 different activities for attendees at the massive afterparty.

Mike says they have amassed over 900 volunteers, with 70 who are super active on any given event. They have an intense focus on the user experience, thinking about before, during and after as touch points to pay attention to. Even in the fantastic venue of a performing arts center, no seat is more than 100 feet from the stage.

I love how Mike self-identifies as a 'DJ of ideas.' He also suggests they have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to creative input. His company VML has been the original sponsor and is one of the top Marketing firms in the region. They solve branding and communication problems for clients and pour all of that energy into TEDxKC each year. No wonder they sell out in four minutes.

Remo Giuffre, the original licensee of TEDxSydney, has the envious position of curating one of the most widely respected TEDx events in the world. TEDx organizers who've been on the show in the past say it's the single event they'd love to attend.

Remo was at one of the original TED events in Kobe, Japan and is celebrating his 25th year as a TEDster. In 2010 he produced one of the first TEDx events and has since gone on to create an extremely high-end event with state of the art production values. He will be the first to tell you it's all about the team and delegating everything.

He's doubled the size of the event since moving from the Sydney Opera House to 4,200 attendees. They do so much innovation; I don't want to spoil the surprises by writing about them; you'll want to listen to this episode a couple of times. I've gotten several incredible ideas from this conversation as I expect you will too.

Remo says working on TEDxSydney is a rite of passage for the team, and now, seven years since they started, team members have gone on to do some amazing work, using skills learned at TEDxSydney.

Craig Fifer has a great job. He runs the team that manages the Green Room at TEDxMidAtlantic. Now, you're thinking, how hard can that be? Well, he's three floors away from the stage, has to make sure 49 people make it to the stage, on time, and needs a team of volunteers to help. He loves it so much; he's going into his sixth year on the team.

I met Craig at TEDfest and was amazed when he told me what he did at TEDxMidAtlantic. I'd heard how amazing the event was and here was a chance to get a behind the scene glimpse into the event. His day job is as the Director of Communications and Information for the City of Alexandria, and each year, he volunteers his time to manage this critical part of an expansive puzzle. You can learn more about TEDxMidAtlantic from our interview with Dave Troy, the organizer.

Craig says his real job is to make sure the speakers are the best versions of themselves when they hit the red circle. Funny enough, the second biggest job is to ensure that they find the stage. Remember, the green room is three floors away.

Gavin Blake is a visual scribe, a graphic illustrator, and a significant value-add to over 50 TEDx events around the world. His ability to synthesize a talk, in real time, and convert the ideas into an image is impressive. He's been doing this work for 17 years when he started scribing floor-to-ceiling whiteboards at Ernst and Young.

We were introduced to Gavin by the lovely folks at TEDxCanberra and soon learned he's recently worked with TEDxSydney, and if you follow him on Twitter, you can keep track of where he's at on any given weekend.

He's figured out a workflow that lets him stay at his home in Australia, and listen to live streams of TEDx events. He draws what he hears, passes the image off to his ink and painter collaborator, who then gives it to someone on the team who pushes the image out to social media. The TEDx speaker then has a published image that reflects their talk within 30-minutes of them finishing. His work has boosted lives stream participation by calling attention to the talks through innovative visuals.

For the last 18 months, Penelope Misquitta has been the Organizer and Curator of the internal TEDx events at Johnson & Johnson. TEDxJNJ is a part of the Ambassador Leadership program inside HR in the company. This program was originally started by Steve Garguilo, who has been on this podcast

Penelope is the epitome of a TEDx organizer. She's passionate about ideas, has an endless source of energy and is ever-present on the TEDx Organizers Facebook group, encouraging and offering help.

She started working at J&J in the Singapore office and enjoyed her first TEDx on 12/12/12 at the company. She heard about the event from a candy bar a colleague gave her with a link to the internal TEDx platform.

Internal TEDx events are a way for companies to inspire their employees and a voice to ideas within the enterprize. J&J was one of the first corporations to host an internal TEDx. There is an event most weeks on the many J&J campuses around the world.

David Troy has been producing TEDxMidAtlantic with his co-organizer Nate Mook since 2009. That's eight years of experience which is evident in this episode. David said that working on TEDx adds a lot of value to his life. His talk on TED.com has been seen over 1.3M times. He's been asked to speak globally, including a talk at TEDxIstanbul.

As a host, he loves working with the speakers and helps curate with Nate, and together they craft an event that he likens to a concept album, with a narrative flow that covers the two-day event. He says the theme puts a frame around the current zeitgeist represented by the speakers.

TEDxMidAtlantic is a Level 2 show. This year's theme is Superpowers, which is one this podcast's favorite topics. Over the years the team has grown to 275, with 50 active on any given event and 25 on the core group.

Jacqueline Oliveira is a teacher, coach, and TEDx speaker. She spoke at TEDxCesena in 2016 and has some tips for organizers. She's an expert at cross-cultural communications, which helped her, as an American, present at a TEDx in Italy. She talks about how to read audiences, how build trust across cultures.

As an educator, she has used TED, and TEDx talks extensively in the classroom. She's particularly fond of Susan Cain's talk because of her 'genuine voice'. She appreciated the help she got from the coaches on the flow of her talk and their guidance on selecting the title.

For speakers, she recommends a Rehearsal Ritual that included deep breathing, memorizing your talk while exercising (She swims and paced the transitions between themes as she counted laps), and visualization.