Mick Ebeling is the 2-time SXSW Innovator of the Year and was named one of Advertising Age’s Top 50 Most Creative People and is the recipient of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award. Keynote Speaker Mick Ebeling is a force who believes that nothing is impossible and through his standing ovation speeches to a virtual Who’s Who of the Fortune 500, he shares real-life stories of those who have inspired him to continue his breakthrough projects–all in the service of inspiring others and making positive change.
With a unique positivity and purposeful energy displayed by few keynote speakers today, Mick Ebeling teaches audiences that no challenge is too big or too small. His attitude and drive to succeed is infectious, and his heartwarming stories using slides and video of those he’s helped will have your attendees on their feet asking for more. Here’s how:
Mick is a solution-maker. His high-energy keynote begins as he introduces us to his purpose in life: Mick tackles the challenges of one single person and then he scales his results to help many people. His buzzwords seem to resonate well with meeting attendees: Innovate, Change, Technology, Help, Recognize, Solution, Change, Limitless, Possible, Commit, Results. With a goal of changing the world by Committing First, Then Figuring it Out, Mick and his team of like-minded innovators set out to solve the unsolvable and turn the formerly impossible into possible. Mick calls this “”Technology for the Sake of Humanity,”” and it requires finding ways that technology can help the world and accomplish a fundamental human and social need.
Mick believes in the idea of Help One, Help Many and introduces audiences to an aspiring street artist who had been stricken with ALS. As Mick shares the story of the archaic way that this young man’s family had to communicate with him (blinks of his eyes to a hand-held letter chart), Mick knew he had to commit first, then find a way to make this artist’s life easier. You’re now introduced to Mick’s team of hackers, inventors, programmers, doctors and the sleepless nights it took to create The Eye Writer: a pair of glasses that enabled the artist to use his eye movements to not only communicate with ease, but to create new art. And when they hear the results of The Eye Writer and how The Power of Story worked such that Time Magazine awarded Mick with The Top 50 Inventions of 2010, your audience will no doubt be inspired to creatively help others as well.
But Mick is hardly done inspiring your audience to find The Impossible in life and make it Possible. As Mick states, “”everything possible today at one point was Impossible.”” With the use of remarkable video and slides from a venture halfway around the world, Mick then introduces your audience to Daniel, a young man with no arms whom he met in a remote village of war-torn Sudan. Daniel is one of 50,000 amputees left in the wake of the bloodiest war Africa has ever known. In a vow to help, Mick and his team traveled to Sudan armed with 3D printers and the knowledge of how to make prosthetic arms and legs for those affected by this tragedy. As Mick brings the story of Daniel to life, we cheer when we hear that this 4-month long adventure ended with not only Daniel using his new arms to feed himself for the first time since the blast, but how Mick’s team taught the townspeople to use the printers they left behind to continue this relief effort.
Mick will then challenge your audience to Find Their Daniel in a quest to help one, then help many. The standing ovation that follows is tremendously well deserved.
Signings of Mick’s bestseller Not Impossible: The Art and Joy of Doing What Couldn’t Be Done are an important add-on to each of Mick Ebeling’s keynote speeches, and the valued keepsake acts as a constant reminder of the importance of changing the lives of others.
