The Johannesburg X-factor? TEDxJohannesburg brings Ubuntu to life. The poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm has long been an inspiration for man and was treated as a guideline for behaviour in my household whilst growing up. I have however seldom seen all the virtues in one place at one time – until recently. The twenty speakers all spoke in the spirit of TED with “Ideas Worth Spreading” but the most moving thing for me was the obvious demonstration of the virtues outlined in Rudyard Kipling’s prose and the move towards putting Ubuntu into action. Most South African’s are familiar with the Zulu word Ubuntu which translates as ‘humanity towards others’. Ubuntu revolves around the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation and teaches us that everything is interconnected and that when you do well, it multiplies and benefits the whole of humanity. Many of the stories told in first person at TEDxJohannesburg clearly showed individuals doing the things spoken about in the poem - trusting themselves when there was doubt and making allowance for their doubting, yet daring to dream but not losing the common touch and not doing things for themselves but touching others in the process. We learnt about the enormous role earthworms play with their ability to create, sanitise and fertilise soil; the lap-desk; the “menstrual cup”, an alternative to sanitary towels; dung beetles and how if insects disappeared, the environment would collapse. There was the panty project, the broccoli project, the water project and Biomimicry where nature-inspires innovation. It was a gathering of just a few of Africa’s leading thinkers and doers and listening to the diverse range of ideas brings home the realisation that we are people with creativity and extraordinary talents and a powerful ability to connect to one another. TEDxJohannesburg was the beginning of what I hope will become a large local community of different people, from all walks of life, who all have the same purpose – to quote TED “to seek a deeper understanding of the world, and hope to turn that understanding into a better future for us all” in South Africa we call it Ubuntu and it runs deep in our veins.