FeverPicture @ TEDxAdelaide

Capturing information is the most important aspect of communicating. Charts, graphs and other tools are sometimes a little to formal and limited in what they can depict.

So when TEDxAdelaide, a place to introduce and discuss new ideas, needed to record their speakers talks, it was most probably very logical that FeverPicture play an important part in recording the days events. Especially so as FeverPicture has illustrated for TEDxAuckland.

FeverPicture, created by Gavin Blake, is an illustrative approach to telling stories, recording conversations and explaining complex systems.

The FeverPicture process:

And now a FeverPicture look at some of the TEDxAdelaide talks.

Science & Marketing - Byron Sharp | FeverPicture
Science has transformed every discipline it has touched. Hopefully it next touches Marketing.

Byron Sharp discusses the medieval foundations of marketing that persist today in the form of myths and untruths. Through science, as Sharps tells us, we can better understand marketing and why it works.

"Marketing material which was largely developed in the last century is incredibly medieval still." - Byron Sharp

A most common untruth in marketing, according to sharp, is that of loyalty, which marketers will accept as a theory of marketing and build new theories on top, such as the idea of cult brands. However, as shown in the above FeverPicture, Sharp demonstrates that the figures for so called "cult brands" do not add up.

"We are polygamists in our loyalty. We shuffle between the brands that we buy." - Byron Sharp

Marketing needs science, like science needs marketing.

Biomimicry - Nick Palousis | FeverPicture
There is a very good chance that the problems we will need to solve in the near future, already have solutions provided by Nature.

That's the message from Nick Palousis who spoke about the advantages of Biomimicry and how by adopting natures ingenious inventions we can create a more efficient and productive civilisation.

Sadly, we've been a bit slow to realise this and our engineering efforts have largely been reinventing a less then desirable wheel.

However there is hope. Work from Natures lab has already been identified or implemented in many man made products. If we want to solve our most difficult problems, we must turn to nature and live with her, not in spite of her.

Platypus Research - Frank Grutzner | FeverPicture
Originally thought to be a hoax, the Platypus continues to be described as the strangest animal in the world. Frank Grutzner waxed lyrical of the platypus past and explained why this little critter is stranger than we all thought.

"The first thing scientists in Europe were trying to do were break the beak off because they thought it was a colonial hoax" - Frank Grutzner

Franks most recent research does not help dispell this idea at all, which discovered the platypus has ten sex chromosomes, which is more than any other mammal. This discovery is amazing in it's self, but what was not expected is how it would affect our understanding of our selves and how we evolved.

"We thought birds and mammals had basically evolved their sex chromosome independently." - Frank Grutzner

On closer analysis of the Platypus sex chromosomes it was discovered that a gene found in birds, was also present in the Platypus DNA. This tells us that our assumptions on the evolution of sex chromosomes was wrong and suggests that a common ancestor of both birds and mammals shared the sex-determining gene DMRT1 before marsupials and placental mammals diverged and evolved their own sex chromosome system.

The weirdest animal in the world and perhaps a missing link.

The complete collection of FeverPictures are available on facebook. All podcasts are available through Mike Seyfang's blog.

TEDxAdelaide is still rolling on as video and art work are gradually being released, so stay tuned to facebook, twitter & the website to keep up with the latest.

Also check out the TEDxAdelaide artwork of James Fosdike who also created his own unique view of TEDxAdelaide.