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I attend a lot of conferences, workshops and courses throughout the year, some of which are pretty poor, some good and many that are great. One thing that always fascinates me is the way workshop leaders or the key note speaker talks to you as a listener and member of a particular community e.g. education. There are certain individuals who have a tremendous skill for communicating with others; getting them to listen to their message and walk away talking about it. I am in awe of great communicators. A good talk always inspires me to push myself to improve the way I present, the methods I use to communicate with my audience.

Here follows a series of talks that I love for various reasons. This will be regularly updated so do check back often. Make yourself comfortable and get ready to be inspired!

Ben Dunlap on a passionate life (Mr. Teszler)

This is a real gem. Dunlap talks about Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian holocaust survivor, an immigrant to the UK then USA, an inventor and entrepreneur within the textile industry. Teszler story takes an amazing turn towards the end when we hear about his adventures in South Carolina when the Ku Klux Klan re-surfaced in the 1950s.  This talk, this story, is a wonderful example of heroism, passion and most importantly, human dedication to life.

Chris Abani on Stories of Africa

Chris Abani was first imprisoned after publishing his first novel as a 16 year old about a fictitious Nigerian coup. He was later imprisoned again by the Nigerian government. Chris Abani turned his experiences into poems and stories. Please visit his personal website for more details about his books. This talk deals with many issues and Abani shows us how seemingly simple stories can be truly magnificient. This talk is complex, moving, horrific, funny and conscious. Enjoy.

Tim Brown on Creativity and Play

Tim Brown is the CEO of IDEO the innovative design company. This talk deals with many ideas that companies can use to re-focus and push themselves to become more imaginative. As a teacher, I find this talk especially inspiring  because the creative ideas put forward by Brown can easily be adapted for the classroom like the 30 Circle Test (scroll down the page to download this worksheet).

Clay Shirky on how social media can make history

The world we live in today shows “…the largest increase in expressive capability in human history”, according to Shirky.  He explains the significance of new and emerging technologies such as Social Media and demonstrates clearly that the way we communicate with each other has changed immensely. Clay Shirky gives the example of the Sichuan earthquake where the BBC found out about the terrible event via Twitter.com and that the last time China had had an earthquake by such magnitude it took more than three months before the the Chinese government released details about the event. Shirky also emphasises the point that new tools such as Twitter and FaceBook help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). This is a must-watch talk. If you like his talk on TED.com then do not hesitate to buy his book which is equally fascinating: Here Comes Everybody: how change happens when people come together . In a similar vein, Charles Leadbeater has also examined the way we communicate and collaborate nowadays in his brilliant book We Think: not mass production, mass innovation.

Charles Leadbeater: We Think

I will not mention too much about this video clip as it speaks for itself. If you like this, you’ll love his book.