TEDxMcGill- The Largest TED Event North of the Border
“Relentless Curiosity” was the theme of the day on a beautiful, crisp Saturday afternoon this past weekend. November 20th marked the largest TEDx event held in Canada, and one of the largest university TEDx events ever. For those new to TEDx, the x symbolizes an independently organized TED event. It took place at Marché Bonsecours, an enormous convention center who’s architecture epitomizes old port Montreal where the venue is located.
“From the slums of Kibera to the Great Wall of China…people everywhere are gathering to share ideas,” wrote Jan Florjanczyk, the executive organizer, in his welcome note. This was the second annual TEDxMcGill event, but this year it was on another level. Upwards of 600 people piled into the large hall. It took more than 30 executive team members and volunteers to make the event happen. There were two large screens, student organizers patrolling with Secret-Service-style earpieces, and vats of coffee brewing around the clock. The tech and video crew was impressive, with many people shooting video, taking photos, and frantically working behind the sound booth at all times. It was broadcast live over the internet with a host and interviews happening around the clock. It truly felt like TED.
The crowd was composed of students, parents, business people, investors and scientists. Even the small children running around seemed to be part of the family of TED enthusiasts. With the ID badges, free pens and notebooks given out, coffee and water in the hands of the eager attendees, the event began.
The hilarious Andy Nulman, of Just For Laughs fame, kicked things off. Mentioning how the event was composed of 50% students, and 50% non-students, he remarked how TED “…is a religion that doesn’t take money from you.” A former TED attendee in Palm Springs, he joked about the interesting pickup lines that one would hear at TED. Donning a black blazer with a shimmering school on the back, he introduced Lee Park, the first presenter.
Lee is an extremely talented violinist from Halifax pursuing a master’s in psychology from McGill. Her group, Libertango, was hailed by the Globe and Mail to be “one of the finest world music acts east of Montreal.” On stage, alongside a “laptop artist” and a percussionist, she built a musical performance piece by piece. Laying down eerie and romantic samples on the violin the was inter-spliced with samples of percussion and then voices from the laptop, she created a song entitled “Ears of Joy” live for the audience.
The tone was set with melodious wonder when an official TED talk from the adorable Adora Svitak was screened. She is a child who spoke about what adults can learn from children. She was witty and cute, and posited that the word “childish” be abolished. “The world needs irrational thinking,” she said, emphasizing the point that learning between grownups and kids should be reciprocal.
This was a wonderful segue into Henry Mintzberg’s presentation. Holding the position of Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies in the Desautels Management Faculty at McGill, he framed his entire presentation on curiosity with beaver sculptures. It seemed, from his pictures, that a beaver sculpture is a piece of wood with which a beaver might build a damn. Taken from a river, it is a form of Mother Nature’s art, often resembling animals or mythical figures. Discussing how most children lose their wonder and artistic interest at an early age, he elaborated on his management methods of reflective writing and emphasis on community.
Along this same vein of teaching, Amruth Ravindranath was up next. From Bangalore India, he is the co-founder of Vita Beans, a company that integrates cognitive sciences with artificial intelligence. He demoed his technology, which aims to bring the two necessary ingredients for wonder, emotional excitement and intellectual stimulation, back into the classroom. Students can create their own cartoons, including a program to teach them physics, with this new adaptive education.
Amruth mentioned how he was always bored in the classroom, as did the next speaker, Francois Lacousiere. A Strategy Group Manager at the creative services firm Sid Lee, Francois said, “structure was never my friend.” He is working on creating a virtual space where improvers, which he says are the ultimate management litmus tests, can grow. “It’s organization for the self-organized,” remarked Francois.
A short stretch and coffee refill later, the second announcer, Mitch Joel, the famous marketing and communications guru, was telling the audience that the conversations and connections that are made in the hallways between speakers is what makes TED incredible. He then introduced a video by Hans Rosling, an official TED speaker. Rosling described the economic and population growth of the world from 1960 to 2010. He gave his predicitons for 2050 about developing countries and emerging economies, stating that the poorest billion people in the world today will quickly become another 4 billion poor people, unless we stop them from having to look for food and shoes.
This was a fantastic primer for Salma Moolji, an honors student in International Development Studies at McGill. She spoke of her travels to a small island off the cost of Nicaragua where there are an absurd amount of cases of abuse. With her own investigative work, she determined that Colombian drug smugglers would dump drugs in the ocean on their way to the U.S., and the locals would fish them out, fueling gang violence and abuse. The dismal four-person police force in the town was not enough. She created an afterschool program where children suffering from abuse could go, share experiences, and find a sense of community.
Com Mirza, a local serial entrepreneur, spoke of his efforts to save lives abroad. Traveling to Pakistan, he has to date saved 125 lives. His goal is to save 1,000,000. Believing in the power of social media as the tool to spread change, he is bringing sustainable food solutions, micro-loans, and even diesel water pumps for farmers to the developing world. Follow him on Twitter to help become an agent of change.
Improving lives in a different way is Michelle Morningstar. She discussed a type of brain damage called aphesia, which decreases articulation in speech. A very bright psychology student from McGill, she is studying how to make a melody speech therapy called MIT work better for francophones.
In this same department is Ian Gold, the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy and Psychiatry at McGill. A very talented and effective speaker, he posited that too much focus is placed on studying how the brain works to understand behavior. Citing the feature film “The Truman Show” as a cause for what he termed “The Truman Show Delusion,” he maintains that to understand the brain we also have to understand the world and culture in which the brain lives.
A musical interlude from Jonathan Emile followed. Jonathan is a singer and hiphop artist who was treated for cancer from ages 18-20. His story is amazing, and his music is even better. He sang 3 songs throughout the day with inspirational lyrics on overcoming adversity, and doing great things. You can listen to his music here.
A wonderful lunch followed, and in a short time Andy Nulman was back up on stage introducing the next screened official TED talk by James Kuntsler. Powerfully and hilarliously delivered, Kuntsler talks about suburban sprawl and how it is creating a nation that is not worth defending. Calling for a change in the way our communities are built, he stated that, “…the age of the 3,000 mile Caesar salad has to come to an end.”
This was a wonderful segue into Bree Akesson’s discussion of the power of place. A school of social work student at McGill, she spent time in Palestinian territory in the Middle East studying how a place for children to play and experience community is necessary for them to survive in war-torn areas. Jonathan Emile followed up, quite poignantly, wtih a song called “Babylon is Falling,” which he said represents the injustices that take place in the world.
Taking it back about a century to the times of the Armenian genocide, Amara Possian, an honors Political Science student at McGill, talked movingly about her families roots in Turkey after they were forced from Eastern Turkey in 1915. Her grandparents eventually settled in Turkey, but the pain of their past was, “…frozen in time” for her. By returning to Turkey and acknowledging her past, she was able to free the narrative of her family’s history.
Examining history even further in the past was Derek Ruths, a professor of Computer Science at McGill. He compared the ancient roads of the Roman empire, the process of finding the effects of cancer drugs on a system, the utensils his daughter had just learned to eat with, and connections in the world of social media, to conclude that, “…structure determines function.”
Mitch Joel was back up on stage after a short break, introducing the final string of speakers who would focus on environment and climate change. Graham McDowell was up first, and his goal was to de-abstract climate change. Graham is an honors geography student at McGill who discussed his recent travels to Baffin Island near the Arctic, and to the Himalayas in Nepal. He gave a first hand account of how climate change is affecting individual people. The audience learned how Native hunters are having a more challenging time finding food, and Nepalese farmers are seeing decreased soil fertility for their crops. Displaying beautiful pictures that he took on-site, he believes that de-abstracting this topic is the only way to give hope to people affected by climate change.
On the more scientific and experimental side is Gregory Dudek, the Director of the School of Computer Science at McGill. He showed videos of the underwater and Mars robots that his team is working on. As the crowd was watching a cute, almost puppy-like robot swimming on its own, he discussed how they are making advancements in the robots’ abilities to find and select the best data from areas like coral reefs.
Brett Rogers, the next speaker, is an adventurer that stays above the water. He’s rafted up the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean, the Yukon River into the Bering Sea, and the entire lenth of the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. The audience was in awe of this young man’s courage and abilities. Shrimping-boot-clad on stage and showing pictures of his travels, he detailed his encounter in Alaska with a native tribe that was fighting off oil companies wishing to develop their land. He compared this experience with that of Cancer Alley, the stretch of river from Baton Rouge to New Orleans in Louisana, where 25% of the the United States’ chemicals are manufactured. Fighting a month of rain, and headaches from nuclear, coal, and petrochemical plants, he finally made it into the Gulf of Mexico where just months later the BP oil spill would take place. It was a haunting reminder for him to see what the Alaskan Natives were fighting to prevent.
Wrapping it up was Jonathan Glencross, the McGill Environment student who leads the development of McGill’s $2.5 million sustainability fund. Obsessed with creating a culture of sustainability, he wants to build community and empower students and professionals alike. He wants to restore students’ sense of agency, and champions, “…anchoring vision in the lived experience.” He finished with a blank slide, telling attendees that it was their slide, and they should figure out what good they can do with it. This was met with great amounts of cheers and applause.
Speaking with Jan, this year’s executive organizer who was also a presenter at last year’s event, he was, “…blown away by the speakers. They overdelivered.”
Tahnee Pantig, who held Jan’s position at TEDxMcGill 2009, said “It was incredible to see how far the event has come since last year. Where’s it going to be next year?” she asked.
The presentations will be available in the coming weeks on www.tedxmcgill.com. You can listen to 2009′s talks, and read about 2010′s speakers there as well. Follow them on Twitter for updates.
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