Tuesday, April 03, 2012

My time at TEDx-Maastricht

#TEDxMaastricht  I had so much fun this week attending and giving a presentation at TEDx-Maastricht in Holland.  Many of you have enjoyed watching presentations on TED and its TEDx spin-offs around the world.  Those are great, but it is even more fun to be there in person and have a chance to interact with other presenters and with people in the audience.

In a post below, I presented a link to my favorite talk, by Bart Knols, about innovative ways to interfere with the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.  Here, I offer you my own talk.

Marije Elderenbosch, a local writer, was engaged to write blog posts about the presentations, and you can find her entry about mine here.  She did a great job in real time, posting the summary within a very short time after the talk.  Also, someone named Wilg drew the little cartoon shown above to characterize the main themes of the talk.

Regular readers will not be surprised that I relied heavily on soccer coaching themes to deliver a message about the learning process -- especially, acceptance of mistakes and near-misses -- needed to reduce the amount of harm caused in hospitals.

You get 8 minutes for these talks.  That is not a lot of time, especially if, like me, you are used to speeches lasting 40 minutes or more.  You really have to extract the essence of your message and make it interesting to a highly diverse audience.

I was proud to wear the orange jersey of the Dutch national soccer team while on stage.  At least, that way, I could be sure that the local fans would like at least some part of my talk!

Thanks to Lucien Engelen, Corine Jansen, the other organizers and sponsors, the dozens of volunteers, and the engaged audience on site and watching on simulcasts who made TEDx-Maastricht a success.

Here's the video of my talk.  I hope you like it.  I welcome comments.  If you cannot see the video, click here.

4 comments:

Amy said...

One thought: Where you say that the girl remembered 14 years later about the comment you made about being a great defender, you say "you never know when a kind word will make a difference"--but here's the thing--I think you under-credit yourself here. I don't think it was the kindness that mattered--most people know how to do that--I think it was the re-framing--much harder. You helped her see a mistake as part of a pattern of good, aggressive defending behavior, not counter to it.

Anonymous said...

Excellent talk and the analogies are great. I understand that the orthopedic surgeon you describe suffered enough after he realized the error but is your suggestion not to impose any repercussions at all? Can we be sure that it will not lead to slopiness?

Annemiek said...

I'm so happy to see culture moving to learning from mistakes, instead of the punitive it used to be. There is still a long way to go, but it is a start.
So true about the kind words. I also agree with above comment; a kind word could also have been "you tried, next time better", but you turned it in a learning experience.

Revolution Vaporizer said...

I don't think it was the goodness that mattered--most individuals know how to do that--I think it was the re-framing--much more complicated. You assisted her see an error as aspect of a design of excellent, competitive protecting conduct.