Dear All,
On Saturday (2010-03-13) I made a presentation at TEDxMelbourne. The
TED talk opportunity was great fun, albeit challenging, as it was
streamed live to the internet.
Discussions after the talk were intense. Feedback has been positive,
including this lovely thought from an audience member that I found on
Twitter:
'Thank you for speaking you are a true inspiration'.
Another audience member wrote (see this in context at http://www.stickylearning.com.au/stickylearning/2010/03/tedxmelbourne.html
):
Pat Naughtin, who runs a consultancy called Metrication Matters, spoke
about the costs and benefits of metrication, or the lack thereof! A
one person said afterwards, he didn't imagine that he'd ever be
interested in a topic such as this, but the really enjoyed it! A fair
point I reckon! Pat is a very good speaker, throwing in a good dose of
dry humour along the way. The key point of his talk was that where
people don't use metric measurements (mainly the US!) thee are huge
financial and other costs associated with this, examples quote
included deaths in medical errors, some due to confusion over non-
metric measures. The key point I think though is that Pat's talk was
about simplicity and communicating this clearly and unambiguously. He
showed a slide with 199 words/measures that have been used to describe
energy during climate change debates in recent times. How can anyone
be expected to really understand science when people trying to explain
it use so many different words and measures to try to describe
something. It becomes impossible to really understand. Science must
use simpler statistics if they hope to clearly understand climate
science!
Here is an unedited, rather jerky, streamed version of the talk that I
gave: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5396402
It starts a bit slowly but (wow) listen to the buzz that follows. With
questions and group discussion, it goes for about 44 minutes but you
can fast forward over the group discussion to get to some more
questions and answers a few minutes from the end.. A smooth, high
quality, fully edited version (down to 18 minutes) with PowerPoint
slides will be available around the end of June – I'll let you know
when and where you can find it.
If you don't have time to watch the video, Gary Brown is planning to
have a summary of this talk in the next edition of Metric Today. Gary
is the editor of metric Today and he watched the live streaming in
the USA of my talk as it presented it in Melbourne.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
