What takes 250 of my hours over eight months and count­less other vol­un­teer hours, about $20,000, a team of 12, a 3-​​camera film crew, a national mon­u­ment, a fair bit of missed sleep, a heap of run­ning around, 18 pre­sen­ters and nearly 300 atten­dees from all over the East­ern states?

The answer is TEDx­Can­berra.

And for this year, it’s done.

When I first pro­posed the idea via email and Twit­ter to a few friends and acquain­tances from the Can­berra web, tech, social inno­va­tion and pub­lic sec­tor com­mu­ni­ties, I fig­ured we’d man­age. I really didn’t have any clue what it would take, nor how absolutely ful­fill­ing bring­ing TEDx­Can­berra to life would be.

More than enough peo­ple have spo­ken about the talks, and how good they were, so I’m not going to dis­cuss them. Suf­fice it to say, I think TEDx­Can­berra punched above its weight (thanks, Pete Williams) in attract­ing a daz­zling array of Australia’s most inspir­ing and inter­est­ing peo­ple to present. I’m not sure quite how we man­aged it, but we did and I’m glad for it. I just won­der what we’re going to have to do in 2011 to top the lineup we had this year.

So, let me talk about the peo­ple. Because with­out peo­ple, ded­i­cated peo­ple, events like TEDx­Can­berra don’t happen.

The core team for TEDx­Can­berra have become some of my best friends and most val­ued col­leagues. These are peo­ple I would trust with any­thing, because I know they’ll deliver. They’re incred­i­ble, beau­ti­ful peo­ple whose com­mit­ment to my crazy idea brought about a day that I think was one of the best big ideas events Can­berra has seen. Yes, I’m biased, but I’m con­vinced I’m right (Ash Donaldson’s talk notwithstanding).

So, to my crew — Alli, Han­nah, Clare, Lozz, Michael, Gavin, Nat and Ruth — I say thank you. You guys have helped me ful­fil a dream.

To the on the day vol­un­teers and to our sup­port­ers, par­tic­u­larly the NLA, thank you.

And to those that spoke and attended, thank you too. With­out you, there is no TEDxCanberra.

I can’t wait to do it all again in 2011!