TEDxVolcano

I have never attended any of the TED events, but always wanted to. Now I got a unique chance to be part of an ad hoc exercise, when some of the TED crew were stranded in London, as I am. They threw together a special TEDxVolcano evening in 48 hours.





"Stranded by the ash cloud, inspired by the just-concluded Skoll World Forum, and temporarily headquartered in one of the world's greatest cities, a group of entrepreneurs, thinkers, tinkerers and creatives is throwing an unprecendented TEDx event: TEDxVolcano.

Put together in 48 hours by TEDster Nathaniel Whittemore with the support of TED, TEDxLondon, The Hub, Sandbox Network, Assetmap and many others, TEDxVolcano will feature a wide range of thinkers and doers stranded by the volcano, plus inspired audience participation and a few ash-induced surprises. Also: the extraordinary sounds of London-based, global-minded musician Susheela Raman."

My expectations were high, especially with this impressive line-up of speakers presented:

Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program
2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant, president of Skoll Global Threats Fund
CBS travel correspondent Peter Greenberg
First Round Capital's Chris Fralic
Skoll Foundation executive director Sally Osberg
Jim Fruchterman, CEO of Benetech and MacArthur "genius" fellow
Rita King, CEO of Dancing Ink Productions
Matthew Bishop & Michael Green, author of Philantrocapitalism and The Road from Ruin
and Jim Berk, CEO of Participant Media

I must say the actual speeches did not all reach my expectations. Peter Greenberg from CBS talked about how the airline industry, politics and economy are intertwined, and delivered an insightful speech. Also Matthew Bishop from the Economist had a nice thread to his presentation, linking Goldman Sachs to the story. Other presentations were entertaining, but not really memorable.

The best part of the evening was perhaps this unique feeling of forming an ad hoc village in the middle of London, by people who don't know each other but are like-minded, and all miss home. 

Webcast here and a couple of pictures that I took can be found here .

 

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