TEDxEQChCh

The other day I attended TEDxEQChCh, which, as said by it's curator Kaila Colbin, is possibly one of the clunkiest event acronyms/hashtags out there. Just try saying it. Despite the unfortunate name, a hugely inspiring conference was put together and executed without a hitch.

The theme of the day long event was Re-imagining Christchurch and was a fine mixture of international and local speakers meant to stimulate the minds of 700 future invested people. I went down there with a group of AFH Auckland members who seemed to act as Cameron Sinclair's personal entourage while he was present. I live tweeted throughout from the front row (I actually don't quite know how I got there... VIP much).

Above, the photo is of the MC explaining the picture behind him. The picture, which resembles 'Starry Nights' with the Christchurch cathedral, is made up of thousands of tweets about the Christchurch earthquake (possibly from the #eqnz hashtag). The artwork was donated to the cathedral for its future home.

Cameron Sinclair from Architecture for Humanity sharing his wealth of experience in urban recovery. Part pragmatic, part an aspiring goal, AFH has responded to just about every disaster to help communities.

Art Agnos and his rousing speech about the difficulties he faced as mayor after the San Francisco 1989 earthquake. A great character of courage, who put the city before his own political career. He ended his presentation with the attendees standing up and all making an oath to rebuild a better city. Very American but it's the sort of morale boost that perhaps NZ lacks in all its public endeavours.

All in all a great day with a plethora of different viewpoints for a better post-disaster city. It is important for a small country like ours to have such events - getting us to think about ideas that are beyond our reach and current vision is essential to rebuilding in a world class manner. Christchurch definitely deserves the best foot forward.