After receiving such fantastic feedback from our attendees, we are looking back on our first TEDxCrannTreesforIreland event; we was oversubscribed; we had a cutoff point of 100 but 128 applications to attend though we had conducted no paid advertising campaign! Our team decided it would be worthwhile to limit our first effort to 100 attendees so that we could build on this and learn from our experience for next time. There is a possibility that in Ireland, following one of the longest lockdown restrictions in the world during Covid-19 there will be a big interest in live events and we would welcome conducting such an event if appropriate next year, what do you think? Since our first conference was entirely virtual, including all speaker preparation and filming – very challenging work for the speakers, the team and Ewan with Rathdown Media who were running the event – hats off to all. Our connections through Plant-for-the-Planet mean we are globally co-operating and the reach of TED is such that it is a tree-mendous platform for the wood-wide web collaborators. Our project has also run 4 children’s climate conferences and the TEDx conference format may suit a trial “Tree Academy” ouTREEch incorporating some educational pieces especially relevant to our 300 treeplanting communities which include a diversity of profiles with a focus on disadvantage and on promoting positive mental health. Our charity; Crann Trees for Ireland!
Why TED?
TED has been my favourite go-to website since I first discovered it in its very early days through my husband’s friend, a gifted scientist (they are both scientists); as a teacher I regularly use TED talks in my work. It was the talk “Plant a Tiny Forest” by Shubendu Sharma that inspired me to take on such a project at my school. This initiative worked so well it lead me to step out of the classroom permanently and start a now nationwide project, “Easy Treesie” which as part of the world trillion tree campaign is working to plant a trillion trees this decade to bring down global heating by 1 degree. It has been such a tree-t to network with some of our country’s leading thinkers in ecosystem restoration. I have run 6 TEDx Circles to date and feel our team contribution to the drive to share our best practice here in environmental action has been valuable. Our feedback certainly confirms this; our talks have been very well received by our local community. Our UN Decade on Ecosystem restoration comes at a pivotal time for our planetarty health and our project can be adopted elsewhere with luck and TED’s blessing!
Easy Treesie 