Passengers on a Qantas flight heading to San Francisco arrived at their destination better educated after the airline hosted the world’s first TED Talk onboard. Four speakers including a robotics entrepreneur Marita Cheng. She spoke on board the Qantas flight QF73 from Sydney to San Francisco.
The talk took place live in the first class section of the plane, but was streamed to the rest of the plane via an audio system. Cheng chose to discuss her groundbreaking work with 2MAR robotics- she designs robots to assist people who live with disabilities. She won the Young Australian of the Year award in 2012 and has been internationally recognised as a representative for women in engineering, as the founder of Robogals.
Other speakers at the Ted Talk included tech speaker Jo Burston, experimental physicist Michael Biercuk and a business strategist, Jeremy Howard. The aeroplane was given new livery to celebrate the initiative which has been christened Ideas That Travel.
Qantas group executive, Olivia Wirth, said that the airline was ‘delighted’ to provide a ‘unique platform’ for people to share their stories. She said that she hoped that the talk would help Australians to ‘follow their dreams’.
The head of TEDxSydney said that the collaboration with Qantas was important to encourage people to collaborate ‘ideas and innovations’. She said that the significance of doing the talks on this flight was that San Francisco is a ‘stone’s throw’ away from Silicon Valley, the tech city of the world.
The TED talk will be available to watch online in due course.
Mr. Howard said that he was ‘mildly terrified’ to speak onboard but added that he was excited to ‘share his vision’ with fellow entrepreneurs. He added that he hoped the passengers on board would see the talk and think ‘wow, I could do that’.
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