Ideas and innovation webcasts

What are the humanities worth?

A recent audit of Australian universities revealed an alarming weakness in the quality of humanities and social sciences research. This is symptomatic of a wider malaise in the state of Australian arts and culture. Join philosopher and best-selling author John Armstrong, Senior Advisor to the Vice Chancellor at the University of Melbourne, as he calls for radical reform to the way humanities and social sciences are valued and advanced. Drawing from his essay in Griffith REVIEW 31: Ways of Seeing, John will discuss how we can learn from literature, philosophy and the creative imagination to find new approaches to complex, urgent twenty-first century problems.

Speaker: John Armstrong
When: Thu 24 Feb 2011 6.30 pm
Where: slq Auditorium 1, level 2
State Library of Queensland

Duration: 1:10:10 hours

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The psychology of happiness

Why are some people naturally happy and optimistic? Are some people just born happy? University of Queensland Professor Bill von Hippel and Kari Sutton from The Happiness Institute and CEO of Invest in Wellbeing discuss how levels of happiness are affected by people's general character and events in their lives. Explore strategies for improving your happiness and what can you do to make yourself a happier person.

Speakers: Professor Bill von Hippel and Kari Sutton

When:  Wed 9 March 2011
Where: slq Auditorium 1, level 2, State Library of Queensland
Duration: 1:16:45 hours

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Sustainable supper

Moving into the next decade, Australia faces the serious issue of food security. Whether it be drought and climate change affecting production, the export of crops to impoverished countries, or foreign investors buying our valuable land, it is impossible to exactly match local food production with regional demand. Australians no longer have the assurance that their produce will be fresh, local and reasonably priced.Proposed solutions range from genetic engineering and food innovations, to vertical farming and urban fringe farms. So what is the best way to ensure our families are fed, economy kept strong and quality of life maintained? How urgently do we need an answer and how are we preparing the next generation to deal with these issues?

Join Geoff Wilson, President of the Green Infrastructure Network Australia and Director (Australia) of the World Green Infrastructure Network, with permaculture gardener Tim Lang in conversation with Professor Geoff Lawrence from the Global Change Institute, as they tackle the issue of food security on a global basis, and explore the prospect of fresher and healthier urban food in Brisbane.

Part of the IDEAS 2011 program.

Speakers:  Geoff Wilson, Tim Lang and Geoff Lawrence
Duration:  1:17:49 minutes
Date:  Wed 6 April 2011

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Harnessing heat: The future of geothermal energy in Australia

Energy is, and will always be, the largest business on Earth. This industry is constantly undergoing major changes as the world deals with climate change, pollution and the need for renewable energy.

According to Director of the Queensland Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, Professor Hal Gurgenci, Geothermal energy is Australia’s answer: “Geothermal energy is an important clean energy source for the future of Australia which will enable us to generate base load electricity – the minimum amount required to meet demand – without burning fossil fuels or using nuclear reactors.”

Australia has unique advantages in its continental crust in developing large scale enhanced geothermal systems to replace coal-fire electricity. So how is this energy harnessed, what are its limitations, and what will it cost us, both environmentally and economically?

Join Ecospecifier’s Mike Duggan in conversation with Professor Hal Gurgenci and Geodynamics’ Chief Scientist Dr Doone Wyborn, as they discuss how geothermal energy works, how it affects our daily living, its advantages over other sources of energy, and the future of geothermal energy in Australia.

Part of the IDEAS 2011 program.

Speaker: Mike Duggan, Professor Hal Gurgenci and Dr Doone Wyborn
When:  Wed 4 May, 2011. 6.00pm
Where: slq Auditorium 1, level 2, State Library of Queensland
Duration: 1:13:30 hours

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These ideas will change your world

What brave new worlds can we look forward to? How will our ageing population change our priorities and habits? What options will we find for eliminating malnutrition in developing nations? Or obesity in our own?

After a decade of investment in encouraging Queenslanders from all walks of life and all areas of interest to work, play and live smarter, what progress have we made in creating a state of ideas and innovation? “Intelligent Queensland’ ought not be only a government priority, but a business, industry and community priority.

Join speakers as they take a look at ideas that will change your world.

Lauren Anderson from Collaborative Consumption – an emerging movement where old ideas of swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting are given a new lease of life.

Ben Hamley from Hello Sunday Morning and Smart Artz, focuses on social media and how it is changing the way we communicate, share, learn and adapt, inspire others and find inspiration ourselves.

Rolf Kuelsen from Transitions Towns – a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction.

Craig Rispin from Future Trends Group – Business futurist and innovation expert. Craig discusses how technology, social change and commercial imperatives are all driving new ways to work.

Part of the Positive Futures series presented by State Library and The Brisbane Institute.

Speaker: Lauren Anderson, Ben Hamley and Rolf Kuelsen
When:  Tues 27 September 2011, 6.30pm - 7.30pm
Where: slq Auditorium 2, level 2, State Library of Queensland
Duration: 1:03:42 hours

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Come the Revolution

Listen to a fascinating insider’s account of journalism and politics, as viewed through the eyes of someone who’s seen it all!

Journalist Alex Mitchell began his career in the cut-throat world of Sydney tabloids, and graduated to Fleet Street as an investigative reporter taking part in the exposure of Soviet double agent Kim Philby. Giving up his job to become editor of Britain’s Trotskyist daily, he entered a world of class struggle politics and national liberation movements. With fellow revolutionary Vanessa Redgrave, he travelled the US and the Middle East, meeting Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi.

In Alex’s recently released memoir, Come the Revolution, he gives an enthralling account of life in newspapers, where he was unafraid to ask hard questions about the world and himself.

Join Alex as he and fellow journalist, Matthew Condon (Editor, The Courier-Mail QWeekend), share a conversation on media and politics that is compelling, exciting and rich with insights.

When: Tue 13 Dec 2011, 6:00 pm - 07:30 pm
Where: slq Auditorium 1, level 2

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Reforming women

A century of reforming women offers inspiration to contemporary women who work to change the way we regard social and cultural issues.  Join our panel of successful Queensland women from the fields of law, politics, social welfare, medicine and the arts as they discuss how issues have evolved since the days of the suffragettes and subsequent waves of feminists, and the real priorities for reforming women in the 21st century.

Speakers:  Davida Allen, Dr. Cherrell Hirst AO, Zoe Rathus & Elizabeth Jamison
Duration:  1:03:08 minutes
Date:  23 October 2008

 

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Digital strategies for libraries in the 21st century

Join New Zealand based commentator and thinker, Paul Reynolds as he discusses information access, cultural and technological change in the 21st century, and the challenges for libraries and library professionals.

Duration:  1:38:30 minutes
Date:  25 October 2007

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Deepen the conversation with Sue Gardner, Wikimedia

Ranked as one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes magazine and one of only two women running a top-10 website, Sue Gardner comes to SLQ to share her vision as Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia.

Formerly senior director of CBC.ca, the web platform of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Sue Gardner now leads the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. which operates numerous online collaborative wiki projects, and supports a community of roughly 100,000 active volunteer contributors.

Wikipedia alone contains more than 23 million volunteer-authored articles in over 280 languages, and is used by more than 476 million people every month, making it the number five most-popular website in the world.

Dubbed the Librarian to the World, and one of Huffington Post’s top 10 "media game changers of the year" in 2009, don’t miss this special opportunity to hear more about Sue Gardner’s promise to bring the sum of all human knowledge to all the people of the world.

When: Wed 13 Feb 2013, 6:00 pm - 07:30 pm
Venue: slq Auditorium 1, level 2

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