I heard about this via Tom last year and was keen to check out their next event. Interesting South gathers a group of random “interesting” people and they get 5-8 minutes to talk about their interesting topic of choice in front of a paying audience. Here’s a quick review of what I thought of some of the speakers:
Anatomy of cool – Remo Giuffré. The host introduced him as the coolest guy he knows (or something like that), I thought, well he used to be cool. Remember he had the REMO boutique department store on Oxford Street, that later became Gowings and is now American Apparel. Remo sold quirky and classic items which were big in the early 90s. Remo General Store also had the coin operated black & white photo booth where my friends and I would regularly take silly photos. Anyway, the moral of the story was, a cool person can make an uncool thing cool, but an uncool person cannot become cool by wearing something that is cool – or something like that.
I also enjoyed the talk by:
Steve Maxwell – Stand up! Be counted! – He brought his own “soap box” aka milk crate.
Miles Merrill – Perform your own stories (reminded me of The Moth). He made everyone stand up and pretend they were a talking alien!
Patrick Hofmann’s – Away with words – Creating Icons and Images To Satisfy All Audiences. it was fascinating to see what children recognise as symbols for the telephone, save a file etc. Not the same thing we Gen X plus folk do!
Cale Bain – How improv can save the world. – Actually I’m getting confused about whether it was this one that reminded me of The Moth. This is what happens when you don’t completely geek out and take notes during the event. Not that it isn’t geeky enough, that I’m blogging about it afterwards.
We also received free snacks from Central Baking Depot and lots of bananas! As well as a Rhodia notebook and a pen. Overall, Interesting South 3 was a very interesting night and I really enjoyed it. It made me think about all those interesting (to me) things that I want to do…
