TEDxTaipei + MaD@HK … is it clear?
Alert: this is a long post (and very interesting!). Try to find a quiet moment to read it in detail.
Maybe because of the distance, maybe because of new experiences, maybe because of the age… :) we’re looking for changes. Driven by the will of learning new things, to start new projects or finally define which way to go… the last two weekends, I assisted (with Albert) to two conferences events: one in Taipei and the other in Hong Kong.
Even if programs, speakers and public were quite different from one event to the other, the main subjects in both were about self-discovering, sharing ideas and knowledge, working for a better world. Above all, start to change our society and our environment from a social, sustainable and innovative perspective, trying to dismiss the idea that benefit is only economic or business success.
In both events the big issue (except in some speeches) was: happiness, sustainability, creativity and innovation, all in a personal and labour framework. In words from the organizers: “Change starts with you”.
The first conferences we went was TEDxTaipei, small version of TED Talks, originally from United States and which have been successful all around the world to widespread ideas and new projects. In this 3rd edition 9 big questions were asked to participants “9 big hopes” concerning happiness, sustainability, culture and innovation. The management and the development of the event were very professional (any technical or organizational error). It was hold at Huashan 1914
Creative Park, kind of old factory rebuilt in a new cultural area for exhibitions, concerts and space for artists, in the middle of Taipei.
Due to its relation with TED events, our expectations were quite high and sincerely they weren’t fulfilled until the second part of the day. In the morning, some speeches were to focused on Taiwanese and aboriginal culture, to think about the dilemma of preserving antique cultures or to let them develop. Apart from a choir of young girls with awesome voices, the other sessions were no so interesting. A couple of them we liked:
- Richard Kelly, from IDEO, who stressed the importance of Asia now and in the future (young people above all and just think that more than 60% of the world’s population live in Asia). We got a little afraid just thinking if Chinese, apart from producing stuff, they start to think, design and being creative! (you already saw what they do with dogs).
- A Taiwanese town planning director from a small city near Taipei (Yilan), who organizes projects with young architects using local resources and improving environment, with no need to live in a big city.You can see the presentation at Slideshare
- As it was a small format, during lunch time we bumped into one of the speakers, Nathan Shedroff, who later on would talk about… I still don’t know what exactly he talked about! Sometimes it is difficult to follow what speakers explain, even if they are experts and convinced about their work, they don’t communicate the message clearly because they know too much about their subject.
- Mary Lou Jepson and John Ryan, a married couple, in two different speeches, introduced us the importance about how to improve technology to simplify its use and how to put it into practice in those regions where is more needed. We can discover better uses and realize that phones are not only to play Angry Birds!
- Amazing aerial images from the geography of the island, from a Taiwanesewho took the opportunity to denounce environment destruction in Taiwan.
In the course of the day the event was getting better.
With no doubt the stars were a Taiwanese and a Belgian:
- Mr. Candle,a young Taiwanese who surprised the public since he reached the stage. Very encouraging. “Just do what your heart says and you will be happy”, and this is how he travel around the island in a special way ;) Don’t miss the video!
- Gunter Pauli, promoter of the “blue economy”. In a direct, impressive and funny way he kept the attention of everybody and made us think about how to improve our planet, or to preserve it, with new resources and techniques not yet in use (as for example, studying the beats of a whale to get energy). To have an idea watch the following video:
He also insists on the importance of education of the youngest ones and even their teachers: it is not about teach them to memorize mathematics formulas, but to let them think and discover new things by themselves. Keep asking questions! - And to end up with this marathon session of ideas and thoughts, Swami Veda Bharati, Master Buddhist from India, made us relax in a mass meditation session. On his 78, that was his last public intervention before he retires to the mountains for meditation for couple of years.
In short, we had a nice time but some of the ideas were not so unknown for us, so we went home a little bit disappointed (but not unhappy). You will probably have a chance to watch the talks in few months either at the TED website or via YouTube
More pics can be found at the Flickr album
…and as this was not enough, the following weekend we jumped to Hong Kong in order to attend MaD Asia 2011
MaD Asia 2011 targets a younger audience (16-30), so from time to time we felt being a little bit “mature”. The intention of MaD is to motivate the people attending the conference to start making changes (personal, economic, social, ecologic, etc.) on their own local environment. MaD Asia 2011 was massive with more than 1200 people attending.
Because of the target audience, the format of MaD is very dynamic and promoted the interaction among the madees (the attendees to MaD): exchange tickets for the workshops at the Exchange Square, exchange objects that you do not use, participate in pillow fights and some other games around the city. Apart from the regular presentations at the large auditorium there were workshops, chats and other formats that allowed the people to share ideas and to talk directly with the speakers. The programme was split in four different areas: creativity, entrepreneurship, innovation and discovery. It was not easy to decide where to go and when.
As a quick summary of the three intensive days, we can say that the most repeated ideas were about positive thinking, find and follow your passion, keep fighting and be resilient, learn from mistakes, what you (as individual) can do to fix this world, “be creative, be crazy, do it” and that with a limited amount of resources great projects can be done (as long as you are passionate).
We attended a lot of talks but we do not want to bore you to death, so just the highlights:
- Aimee Mullins: athlete, model, actress and advocate for women, sports, and the next generation of prosthetics. She was born without fibular bones and had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was an infant. The interview to her was not spectacular but she clearly demonstrated how to use the circumstances to get the best out of it, and to keep smiling and positive in front of any situation.
- Emmanuel Jal, has won worldwide acclaim for a unique style of hip hop whose message of peace came from his experiences as a child soldier in Sudan. He was saved with the help of a cooperation agent and he manged to attend the school and became a famous singer. He has worked in campaigns for the World Bank and he founded Gua Africa NGO. With his music and his charm he manage to get a lot of people involved, including the whole auditorium (1200+ people!) that clapped and danced with him.
- Elena Simons, extremely dynamic and very funny, presented a different way to tackle the social problems by being provocative. She confessed at the end of the talk that 80% of her examples were just inventions.
In Elena’s workshops we discussed how we would spend 15.000.000.000$ (the world yearly budget on military expenses) to create a more fair world and to try to bring more hope and happiness to everyone. It was like being a modern Robbin Hood.
On a second workshop, that Albert attended, it was necessary to play “reverse consumption”. That means to bring back the the shelf of a nearby mall the products you do not need anymore. The product is priced at 0 Hong Kong Dollars. The point is how you can put back into the system the objects that are useless for you but could be of great value for someone else (either in your country or somewhere else). The action performed at the mall was even covered by the local press. It was good fun! - Danae Ringelmann (from IndieGoGo), with her own words: “the work of other people is to say NO, you work is to keep saying YES”. This message was specially for those who were planning to start their own projects and will face hard times to find emotional and financial support on their endeavors. She explained that you need to be convinced and then convince people around you and then you will get their support to move things forward.
- Tal Ben-Shahar and the positive psychology. Think in a positive way to get positive results. If you think success is the key to happiness… keep looking! Everybody has different concepts of happiness but people would better understand that success comes from happiness and not the opposite. He also insisted on simplifying your life, do less but do it better and get the most out of it. If you are working your are working, if you are with the family you are with them… so do not play with the phone or answer e-mail at the same time.
- BookBridge (3rd classified at MaD awards). They collect books to build libraries in remote areas of Mongolia, Cambodia and now they are planning to expand to South America.
- MedicMobile, by using simple mobile phones and open source source they managed to create an extremely efficient solution to track patients in remote areas and also to deal with crisis (like the earthquake in Haiti).
The mood among the MaDees was very friendly and creative. Everybody wanted to share impressions about the talks/workshops/chats … and some of them were trying to gain supporters to start their own projects. Both organizers and speakers did an amazing job to create this mood. The conclusion was clear for us: share as much as you can!
For us, some of these exchanges of impressions were with young people from Hong Kong and also from Mainland China. It was interesting to compare their comments and opinions (and also compare with the Taiwanese). The Chinese that have not traveled abroad were easy to spot because of their idealistic ideas about China (including Taiwan and Tibet of course) and they also behaved in a very competitive way. Hong Kong citizens (in general) were more critic and more open minded to changes and new ideas.
Wrapping up, a special weekend where we learnt or reviewed a large number of ideas. It was full of people form university… but one can still keep this open spirit at later stage.
You can see few pictures here below. Being foreigners we ended up in a number of photos :)
For the complete collection of pictures visit MaD website. They will likely post some videos of the conferences soon.
By the way, on Friday we were also tourist in the areas of Hong Kong that we did not visit last time.
¡Muy interesante! :)
Jorge
Ei, em fareu perdre la feina amb aquet blog.
Molt bo.
Petons i abraçades
Enric.
Anna: T’hi has lluït amb aquest reportatge. La seva lectura ja val, com a mínim, per una conferència sobre les actituds positives i la felicitat personal compartida.
De fet, en les fotos també se us veu interessats i contents.
Abili i Carme