I Finally Sat in the Room Where Ideas Change Everything. Here's What TEDx Brisbane Taught Me

There's a memory I've carried for years.

I was around 20 years old when I saw a photo of my cousin, as a child, on a TEDx stage. I remember stopping and staring at it, feeling something I couldn't quite name at the time. 

Awe, maybe. A kind of quiet wonder. 

That's incredible. 

That's a person who had something so worth saying that they stood up in front of the world and said it.

I didn't know then that moment would plant a seed in me that would take years to grow.

From Screen to Seat - TEDx Brisbane

For most of my life, TED talks were something I watched late at night, on long flights, on lunch breaks when I needed to feel like the world was bigger than whatever was in front of me. 

I grew up on them. Ideas from strangers who became teachers. Voices that reached through a screen and rearranged something inside me.

Then, about two years ago, I made a decision.

I wanted to share my own ideas with the world. 

I committed to publishing a book. and A few months ago, I signed up for a 12-month public speaking course , devoted to get better and really learning it. Not just presenting, not just "getting through it," but truly mastering the craft of standing in front of people and saying something that matters, something that will saty in this world forever.

And once I made that decision, going to a live TEDx event stopped being a dream on a bucket list and started feeling like something I owed myself.

So when TEDx Brisbane 2026 came around, I applied to sit in that room, and I got it. The opportunity to buy a ticket and enjoy 7 hours of TED.

Walking In

There's something you can't get from a screen: the feeling of a room.

Three hundred people. All there for the same reason- to listen, to learn, to be moved, to be challenged. Some of them want to be speakers themselves one day, or already are. Some are simply hungry to be reminded that the world is full of people doing extraordinary things with ordinary lives.

That energy, and the conversations throughout that venue, was lifting and energising.

And after years of seeing TED talks as inspiring, I have started to see them as something more complex than that. I realised a TED talk is an ART, and I was at the opening exhibition.

Because, like great art, every talk takes something invisible. An idea, a feeling, an insight, and makes it tangible. Makes it land in your body, not just your head. 

The best talks don't just inform you. They alter you. 

You walk out a slightly different person than the one who walked in. That's what art does. And that is exactly what happened to me on this day.

Ten Ideas That Will Stay With Me Forever

Kate Fisher opened the day and set the tone for everything that followed. Her talk on blood donation advocacy, through her initiative Milkshakes for Marley, stopped the room. She told the story of sitting beside her four-year-old daughter's hospital bed, given 10 minutes to say goodbye, because blood supplies had run low and treatment had been delayed. Marley survived. She is now 10. Kate's reminder was quietly devastating: one in three of us will need blood in our lifetime, and only one in 30 eligible people donate. The difference isn't compassion. It's visibility. Kate is changing that.

For me, as someone who cannot donate blood, it hit hard. I felt useless. But this talk reminded me that this is the way I can contribute, by sharing. And so here I am, sharing.

Dr. Abbas Shafiee brought science into the room and made it feel like poetry. His team built the world's first vascularised human skin organoid, a living, three-dimensional model of skin complete with blood vessels, immune cells, and neural structures. The breakthrough came when they stopped trying to force skin into existence and started recreating the conditions that allow it to build itself. "The future of medicine will not be about domination. It will be about partnership."

For me, this resonated directly with how we lead and manage people. It is not about controlling our teams, it is about partnering with them. And that is the rule of nature, not just skin. This talk was just another reminder of that.

Bill Ovenden made the whole room laugh and then made us all quietly reconsider everything. Using a fitted bed sheet as his entry point, he made a compelling case that most behaviour failures are not motivation problems , they are design problems. "Sometimes the change you're looking for doesn't require more willpower. It requires better design."

For me, this is a concept that changed my life a few years ago. With my new journal coming out soon "Life by Design" this talk showed me how something as simple as folding a fitted sheet becomes complicated when the design isn't there to make it easy. Life, too, can be a lot easier if we design it intentionally rather than live by default.

Fleur McMadden introduced me to two words I had never heard put together before: the Business Exit Gap. Her core argument is that most entrepreneurs, and mainly females, pour years of their life into building a business but never think about how to exit it well. And yet the exit is the moment a business becomes truly valuable, transferable, and life-changing. We are taught to start. We are taught to scale. But almost nobody teaches us to think about the end from day one. "Success is not just revenue. Success is option."

For me, this is something I have experienced firsthand. As you learn to grow your company, almost no one helps you define what success really looks like and how an exit plan can support that success. It is all about growth, because that is the metric most providers use to prove their work is valuable. If you are reading this and you do not have a business exit plan, DM me and I will send you a 3-page resource that will help.

Dr. Lotti Tajouri had me looking at my phone differently before he had finished his first minute. As a molecular biologist, he has spent years researching what is living on our mobile phones, and the answer is alarming. Our phones are, in his words, a biological hazard we carry everywhere: a "third hand" that never gets washed, taken into hospitals, surgical theatres, and across international borders carrying microbes that bypass quarantine entirely. His message was urgent, practical, and one I genuinely could not un-hear.

For me, it was also a masterclass in delivery. He used humour to make a signtific topic genuinely engaging and he absolutely got me to think about my phone differently.

Professor Heather Anderson reframed a topic dear to my heart. Community radio, is not a niche cultural project. It is democratic infrastructure. It is where minority ideas are protected long enough to become mainstream truths. Marriage equality didn't start in parliament. It started in conversations often on community radio where people were allowed to tell their stories before those stories were considered safe or profitable. "Mainstream media follows public opinion. Community radio helps create it."

For me, community radio has played a significant role in my own life. It gives me one hour a week of being with my community, listening to songs and topics from my homeland, in my mother tongue, and feeling at home in my home. I am sure that is the same feeling for any community group that gathers around a shared radio show, culture, or belief. These stations bring people together for a conversation, and I am so grateful we have that diversity here in Australia.

Santiago Velasquez who is blind and shared the red dot with his support dog, missed his university exam because three buses passed him without stopping, despite his guide dog, his raised book number card, and a call to the transport department the day before. His response was not bitterness. It was engineering. He built an app that lets travellers digitally hail public transport in advance, already live across Melbourne. Santiago reminded the room that lived experience is one of the most powerful design tools that exists.

For me, it was a reminder that a long list of solutions is not necessarily the right or complete answer for the user. Sometimes a simple solution solves the real problem. In my book, I cover the four pillars for making sure we don't miss anything in the problem-to-solution fit. This talk reminded me, again, how important it is to speak to the user, not just the buyer.

Molly McCluskey showed me that a building can be a diplomatic act. Her work on architectural diplomacy, how sustainable embassies communicate national values and lead on climate, made me look differently at every structure I have walked past since. Australia's Washington embassy is the only building in the world holding both Green Star and LEED Gold certifications. I didn't know that before. 

For me, it connected to something deeper, that how we show up in the world, as people and as nations, communicates our values before we ever say a word. A building is a statement. A choice of materials is a message. What we create reflects who we are. And that is true whether you are a country designing an embassy or an individual deciding how to show up in your community.

Nicole Dyson made me rethink everything I believed about education. She argued that we've built schools that train students to succeed in certainty then judge them when they struggle in uncertainty. Her solution is not more resilience training. It's teaching agility, the ability to adapt while still in motion. "The safest place for a young person to fail is not out there. It's in here, with a teacher brave enough to step back and let their students step up."

For me, this landed as a parent. I always thought resilience was the most important thing I could teach my children, the ability to get back up. and 2 years ago I moved to agility as my own life experiance proved me that is a far more importent skill, that shattered my world views too. Resilience is what we need after a crisis, when things are already hard. But when we learn how to pivot and adapt in real time, life becomes a lot more fluid and a lot less painful. That is what I want for my kids, and it is aligned with my over all message to the world.

Jordy Luke the closing act, Jordy walked onto that stage in colour and light and told us about a lifetime spent trying to follow an instruction manual handed to them the moment they were born. Non-binary, born in Mexico, raised across Latin America, former senior US government public health leader, now CEO of House of Transcendence, a nonprofit building affordable housing for LGBTQ+ people and named the 2025 Elton John AIDS Foundation Style Icon. Jordy asked a question I keep returning to: "Who gets to decide?" who gets to decide who we are? only myself!

What I Took Home

I have met TED speakers before. Each time, what strikes me is not just their story, though the stories are extraordinary, it is the will. The will to take what they know, what they have lived, what they have built, and share it with the world. Not for applause. But because they believe their idea can make things better. And they are right.

That is what filled that room in Brisbane.

Three hundred people who believe that ideas matter. That one story, told well, at the right moment, can change the trajectory of a life, maybe many lives. 

I walked in as someone who has always loved TED from a distance.

I walked out knowing that the distance is closing, and I am now part of a community.

If you've ever watched a TED talk and felt something shift inside you go find a live event. Sit in the room. Feel the energy of three hundred people leaning in together. It is worth every moment. 

And one last thing: when people ask me what my favourite TED talk is, we almost always reach for the same names, the ones that went viral, the ones with millions of views, the ones that have been around the longest. But I want to encourage you to look for the recent ones. The ideas that are being spoken right now, in rooms just like this one. Because the most powerful talk you will ever watch might not be the most famous one. It might be the one nobody has discovered yet.

What is a TED talk that has stayed with you? I would love to know in the comments.