I was fortunate enough to be involved with the TedX Johannesburg event from close to its inception. A large part of this was in watching a rather remarkable woman in Alicia-Thomas Woolf.

Alicia has always been a women that acknowledges those that give back, and I think it's only appropriate to acknowledge the amount of effort that she went into, in a completely voluntary state in order to put together a production that made me feel not only proudly South African, also proudly human. In fact I don't recall being in a room packed full of individuals as eager to give back to their various communities, across divergent background, despite race, gender or education as I did yesterday.

My own company, Telamenta, in which Alicia is strongly involved, has always taken a large involvement in community give back. I had always written this off to the fact that we're a bunch of geeks, that were welcomed into the age of digital enlightenment through open source software (OSS), an intrinsically communal development. Yesterday these, I know realise cynical, blinkers were lifted To see individuals from incredibly colourful backgrounds, from nursing to technology, from biology to biomimicry (to alchemy) showing the fundamentally human trait of caring.

I strongly suggest those that want to give back read through Ivo Vegter's Live Blog of the event.

My small 2c is simply to say Alicia, well done, it was an idea that was worth spreading and you use just the butter knife for the job.