About TEDx Berlin: first impressions

There are three subjects that come to my mind when I think of TEDx Berlin.
+ Future of the education
+ Sustainable business
+ Progress in science

www.tedxberlin.de/

First it needs to said that the whole conference was held in extraordinary place of Radialsystem. Really marvellous place. At the end of the conference it was mentioned that there are the plans to make this event broader. From now about 500 people to about 5.000. It’s difficult to imagine such a crowdy place. But I guess Berlin has such a potential.

The program of the conference was really extraordinary. It was obviously carefully planned. And my guess is that programme commite has enough energy and experience to do as good or even better job in the future. My best talk in general was a video talk from Sir Ken Robinson. I have been writing about his book: About the Ken Robinson’s book: The Element: A New View of Human Capacity. The talk where I was laughing the most was again a video talk from Sugata Mitra. And the most interesting talk in a business sense for me the talk from Matthias Kröner, the CEO of Fidor Bank AG. But let’s explain more about my impressions.

Future of the education
My guess is that education is the field that will change our future the most. Sir Ken Robinson is going to be one the most wanted government consultants for educational systems. And Mr. Mitra has shown how important it is to dare ourselves to experiment. Even on the low scale we can get surprisingly good results.

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution

http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

Sustainable business
In the country where I come from (Slovenia) I could not image a single one bank manager what even a bank CEO like Mr Kröner from the Fidor Bank. His talk was titled Nextbanking. If half of it what he said in his talk is true, then I am going to open my personal account in Germany at their bank. First I could never imagine there is one bank CEO with such a marketing orientation. And second: this guy actually was talking about social media like a real social media professional. Respect.

For me the quote of the day was: “Where in the Coca Cola’s balance sheets are local distributors?” Namelly, the question refers to the fact that in the developing countries Coca Cola is being distributed in the bottles and crates. By local people. On the bikes or whatever other vehicle. No shiiping to the end sales point from the Coca Cola is needed. Perfect, or? The ides Mr. Simon Berry is to use this channel to carry ‘social products’, such as oral rehydration salts to save children’s lives. Mr. Berry had this idea already at the end of the ’80s but he and his wife went pro on this project in the last year. Their project is called ColaLife and can be found ar www.colalife.org.

How the ColaLife Model works

Progress in science
Two talks I would like to mention. One is real since. And the other is playing with mobile phone in the name of science.

The first one is the theory of selfish brain. In short:
+ brain is selfish, and
+ it tends to allocate the most of the energy of the human to itself.
There is a lot more at the flash site: www.selfish-brain.org.

And the other is the short talk from Fabian Hemmert. He plays with mobile phone for his PHD at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories. Among other models he has shown how is it possible to send a real kiss over the mobile phone and how is it possible to feel the kiss on “the other side”. Future is here. He had a similar talk last year, they say it is very popular published ad ted.com:

Fabian Hemmert: The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/fabian_hemmert_the_shape_shifting_future_of_the_mobile_phone.html

And for the end what I wanted to say. We did not only listen. We were dancing with DanceDrDance. And we were even singing like a real choir with Simon Halsey, principal conductor of the Rundfunkchor Berlin. It was a great day.

• Tweet

Tags: Balance sheet, User experience, Workshops

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 20th, 2010 at 20:57 and is filed under Posts by date. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.