Sandbox

TEDxVolcano: When a “Why not” turns into a “Hell yeah”

April 20th, 2010 by Sandbox

A team lead by Sandbox member, founder of Assetmap, and co-editor at change.org, Nathaniel Whittemore, has made conference history. Born out of the reasoning that most of the high-profile delegates of Skoll’s Social Entrepreneurship Forum and the TEDx Conference in Cambridge would be stranded in London, Nathaniel and his team turned Eyjafjallajökull’s ash into a historic event yesterday Sunday April 18th in London.

Within 36 hours, Nathaniel pitched the idea to TED and The Hub (who cooperated greatly, particularly TED’s June Cohen), and partnered with TEDx London and the Sandbox Network and its cofounder in London, Christian Busch, to make it happen. Nathaniel: “When we realized that we would literally have zero resources to make this happen, we got in touch with the Sandbox Network, who gave an enthusiastic “Why not” and spent the last two days drilling the phones for absolutely everything we needed […] and together, the “why not” turned into a “hell yeah” […] that’s the idea of bringing the right people together to make great ideas happen”.

From Jeff Skoll (Founder of Ebay and the Skoll Foundation) and Chris Fralic (First Capital), to Larry Brilliant (Former Head Google.org) and Matthew Bishop (US business editor The Economist), they all spontaneously agreed to join the event, which was attended by over 150 selected guests, and 200 more on the waiting lists. It was livestreamed allover the globe, with over 3000 hits during the event and 9000 so far on the recorded version.
Highlights of the event were Jeff Skoll’s “Ode to the Volcano”, including his announcement that “we wanted to keep our friends here after Skoll. Do you know how hard it is to fake a volcano. Damn the volcano, let’s have a ball”. This was complemented by Matthew Bishops great “parable” about Goldman Sachs, which supposedly in the local Islandic dialect is pronounced “Eyjafjallajökull”.

Besides inspiring speeches and music performance by Sushella Raman, the event produced a high number of interesting quotes that have been twittered throughout the last days. Peter Greenberg, CBS Correspondent, will be remembered for his great tagline: “How many people are stranded [in London]. You’re screwed. So, what’s the best thing to do when you’re caught in a trap. Eat the cheese!” Read more about the best quotes of the evening on Ryan Allis’ Blog.

This underscores the amazing opportunities that arise from crisis: within shorter and shorter time-frames, young people make things happen that traditionally takes weeks to organize. Sandbox is committed to supporting and leading passionate change makers as they continue making “unreasonable” ideas come to life.

Further information about the event can be found on TED, the Skoll Foundation, and Techcrunch.

For further information, please contact:

Christian Busch (London)
christian.busch [at] sandbox-network [dot] com
+447932057971
.