Waterloo

Waterloo

TEDx Waterloo, Ontario, Canada – February 25, 2010

About TEDx 2Event Details 7Schedule 8Speakers 9Sponsors 16

About TED

Table of Contents

TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading

thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are

most passionate about. “TED” stands for Technology,

Entertainment, Design – three broad subject areas that are,

collectively, shaping our future. And in fact, the event is

broader still, showcasing ideas that matter in any discipline.

Attendees have called it “the ultimate brain spa” and “a

four-day journey into the future.” The diverse audience

– CEOs, scientists, creatives, philanthropists – is almost

as extraordinary as the speakers, who have included Bill

Clinton, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Paul Simon,

Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck and Bono.

TED was first held in Monterey, California, in 1984. In 2001,

Chris Anderson’s Sapling Foundation acquired TED from

its founder, Richard Saul Wurman. In recent years, TED

has expanded to include an international conference,

TEDGlobal; media initiatives, including TED.com and

TEDTalks and; and the TED Prize. TED2010, “What the

World Needs Now,” was held February 9 -13, 2010,

in Long Beach, California, with a simulcast in Palm

Springs, California. TEDGlobal 2009, “The Substance of

Things Not Seen,” was held July 21-24, 2009, in Oxford,

UK, and TEDIndia was held in November 2009.

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What is TEDx

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program

of local, self-organized events that bring people together

to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks

video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion

and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized

events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized

TED event.

Event Details

TEDxWaterloo – February 25, 2010

Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Time: 1 p.m. – 8 p.m., followed by an afterparty.

Venue: Gig Music Hall, 137 Ontario Street North,

Kitchener, Ontario.

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Welcome to TEDxWaterloo

Welcome to the inaugural TEDxWaterloo, an independently

organized TED event celebrating Ideas Worth Spreading.

You are part of an extraordinary community of enthusiastic

and accomplished individuals who have come together

today to be inspired, to share, and explore our theme:

Tomorrow Started Yesterday.

We often find ourselves so focused on opportunities,

problems or promises of the future that we can lose sight of

valuable lessons and stories from the past. Every moment

that we look forward to has had its seed in the past, and

what we are living through today has grown from the chaotic

complexity of what came before. Seen through this lens, our

ten speakers and three TED.com videos acknowledge and

celebrate the continuity of our journey from the past into

the future, inviting you to reframe, rethink, and re-imagine

what can be, from what is now, and from what once was.

Our day includes three sessions, each with its own mini-

theme: First the focus will be on design, art and technology.

Then we will look at our planet and cultures, and finally,

we will consider the evolution of our own selves. Between

each session will be a break to relax, mingle with one

another and discuss what you have been experiencing.

Following the event, you are invited to the after party at the

Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, the perfect place to carry on

discussions from the day.

It is our great honour to bring TEDx to the Region of Waterloo

and we thank you for coming to share this experience with

us. You are joining us from over 150 different companies,

schools and organizations, representing the diversity of

the region of Waterloo and beyond. As an important part

of this TEDx community, you will help further spread the

ideas presented today. As you get to know your fellow

attendees, you’ll have the chance to share your thoughts

and stories with them in this venue, and later online via the

TEDxWaterloo Facebook group, Twitter tags #tedxwaterloo

and #tedx, and Flickr pool ‘tedxwaterloo’.

We are looking forward to an unforgettable event, and we

hope you are too.

Jaclyn Konzelmann

Matt Gorbet

Renjie Butalid

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ScheduleRegistration 1:00 pm

Opening Remarks 2:00 pm

Design Started Yesterday 2:15 pm • Terry O’Reilly • Philip Beesley • TED.com Video – “Aimee Mullins and her 12 pairs of legs” • Ray LaFlamme

Break 3:40 pm

Our World Started Yesterday 4:40 pm • Paul Saltzman • Caroline Disler • TED.com Video – “Wade Davis on endangered cultures” • Madhur Anand • Michael Sacco

Break 6:15 pm

Our Identity Started Yesterday 7:00 pm • Darren Wershler • TED.com Video – “Matthew Childs’ 9 life lessons from rock climbing” • Marty Avery • Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Closing Remarks 8:15 pm

Afterparty 8:45 pm

JaclynKonzelmann - Co-host

Jaclyn Konzelmann is currently studying Mechatronics

Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She is the president

of EPIC Technology Organization, a non-profit, student-run

initiative dedicated to connecting students, academia and

business with an interest in technology and innovation.

MattGorbet - Co-host

Matt Gorbet is a co-founder of Gorbet Design, Inc., a firm that

uses technology in creative ways to create delightful experiences

for exceptional spaces. He and his partners are currently

implementing a comprehensive physical, technological and

human systems infrastructure for technology-based public art

at the new San Jose International Airport in Silicon Valley.

RenjieButalid - Lead Organizer

Renjie Butalid is interested in social innovation and social

entrepreneurship, and believes that young people have the power

and opportunities like never before to affect positive change in

the world. He is currently the Communications Coordinator for

Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo.

MariaArshad - Logistics & Finance

MladenRangelov - Logistics

RichardHarbridge - PR Lead

RamyNassar - Sponsorship

DanTaylor - Logistics

SajjadKamal - Oganizer

TareqIsmail - Website Lead

JoannaWoo - Social Media Lead

Event Team

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Speakers

TerryO’Reilly

Terry O’Reilly began his career as a copywriter for some of

Canada’s top creative ad agencies. In 1990, he co-founded

the audio production company Pirate Radio & Television,

now in Toronto and New York City.

Terry has won awards around the world for his writing and

directing. When he’s not creating advertising, he’s talking

about it, as host of the award-winning CBC/Sirius radio

series, “The Age of Persuasion.” He’s co-written a best-selling

book based on the radio show, published by Knopf Canada,

which hits American bookstores this year.

The advertising industry has given Terry three lifetime

achievement awards, even though, to the best of his

knowledge, he only has one life.

What you think is not always what you’d think. Terry O’Reilly shares some surprising insights about human behaviour that have led to a counterintuitive approach to marketing.

PhilipBeesley

Philip Beesley is an associate professor in the School

of Architecture at the University of Waterloo, and creates

immersive, responsive environments. His projects feature

interactive kinetic systems that use dense arrays of

microprocessors, sensors and actuator systems arranged

within lightweight “textile” structures. These environments

pursue distributed emotional consciousness within

synthetic and near-living systems.

His current Hylozoic Ground project will transform the

Canadian Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale with an

environment made of tens of thousands of digitally-fabricated

components fitted with meshed microprocessors and sensors.

Beesley’s work is widely published and exhibited, and has

been distinguished by awards, including VIDA 11.0 and

FEIDAD, and by the Prix de Rome in Architecture (Canada).

Can buildings literally come alive? With the Hylozoic Ground project, Philip Beesley demonstrates how buildings in the future might move, and even feel and think.

RaymondLaflamme

Raymond Laflamme is originally from Québec City, where he

studied physics as an undergraduate at the Université Laval.

After surviving part three of the Mathematical Tripos at the

University of Cambridge, he completed his PhD on aspects of

general relativity and quantum cosmology in the Department of

Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) under

the direction of Stephen Hawking. Laflamme and his colleague

Don Page are responsible for having changed Hawking’s mind

on the reversal of the direction of time in a contracting universe

(see Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time).

Throughout history, our innate human curiosity has driven us as we seek to understand and transform our world. This curiosity has now led us to the quantum frontier, where the mind-boggling rules of the subatomic realm promise to fundamentally challenge our very perception of reality.

PaulSaltzman

Paul Saltzman is a two-time Emmy Award-winning Toronto-

based film and television producer-director. He began his

career in 1965 at the CBC and then moved to the National

Film Board of Canada. In 1968-69, he assisted in the birth

of a new film format, as second-unit director and production

manager of the first IMAX film, produced for the 1970 World’s

Fair. In 1973, Paul founded Sunrise Films Limited. Since then,

he has produced television series, miniseries and movies of

the week, and in 2008, he made his feature-film directorial

debut with the documentary Prom Night in Mississippi with

Morgan Freeman, which premiered in competition at the 2009

Sundance Film Festival. He is currently editing his second

feature, the documentary Return to Mississippi. Paul is a

member of the Director’s Guild of Canada and the Academy

of Canadian Cinema and Television.

Is it true that we all have prejudices? and why do we so rarely talk about them? Paul Saltzman wants to change this, starting with his film Prom Night in Mississippi.

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DarrenWershler

Darren Wershler is a Canadian experimental poet, non-fiction

writer and cultural critic. A former gravedigger, he was the senior

editor of Coach House Books between 1997 and 2002, where

the works he edited included several highly acclaimed books

of contemporary innovative poetry, including Fidget by Kenneth

Goldsmith (2000); both volumes of Seven Pages Missing, the

collected works of Steve McCaffery (2000, 2002); Lip Service by

Bruce Andrews (2001); and Eunoia by Christian Bök (2002).

Wershler’s The Tapeworm Foundry was a Trillium Book Award

finalist in 2000. He has instructed courses at York University

and currently is an assistant professor of communication

studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He has authored several

books about the Internet, technology and culture, as well

as occasional essays on pop culture for newspapers and

magazines such as Brick, Broken Pencil and This Magazine.

Untimely? Conceptual? Impossible? Darren Wershler introduces the rich history and critical importance of imaginary media.

MichaelSacco

Michael Sacco is a technologist, writer and chocolatier. He

founded ChocoSol, an artisanal chocolate company which he

has termed a “learning community social enterprise,” promoting

the diversity of production of organic cacao through a structure

defined as “horizontal trade.” Rather than sell commodities,

says Michael, ChocoSol extends symbolic invitations: “The

chocolate is an expression and vehicle for our dignity, creativity

and learning.”

Honoured as Toronto Food Policy Council’s Local Food Hero

in September 2009, he believes in open-source learning and

building, and has been designing green production systems

using solar power, pedal power, and waste diversion and

upcycling techniques. ChocoSol’s bicycle-powered chocolate

grinders earned it the title of Toronto’s Best New Bicycle

Business in 2008.

With chocolate, Michael Sacco invites us to think differently about food, community, business and our planet.

CarolineDisler

Caroline Disler is a master of translation. With reading knowledge

of many modern languages such as Spanish, Portuguese,

Swedish, Danish, Polish, Modern Greek and Arabic, as well as

working knowledge of ancient languages including Sumerian,

Akkadian, Edomite, Ancient Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Latin

and Greek, she has unique perspective on the sources of

human thought. In addition to translating modern books and

academic papers from German, French, Dutch and Italian, her

work and teaching reveals how we come to think the way we

do, examining the largely unexplored role of translation itself in

ancient history. Drawing from original source material such as

pagan Ugaritic epics and original Moabite, Babylonian, Syriac

and Coptic texts, her studies of history, society and translation at

York University explore intercultural transfer of information from

the dawn of writing to the present day.

Caroline Disler explores the history of how language and cultural exchange have led to what has come to be called, somewhat ironically, “Western civilization.”

MadhurAnand

Madhur Anand is an internationally-recognized scientist and

professor with over 45 publications in peer-reviewed scientific

journals, and currently holds the Canada Research Chair in

Global Ecological Change at the University of Guelph. Her

research in forest ecology, ecological modeling and biodiversity

spans several countries, including Israel, Europe, India, China,

Brazil and the USA. She serves on several granting panels and

journals’ editorial boards and is currently president of the Sigma

Xi Scientific Society (University of Toronto Chapter).

Dr. Anand is also a poet. Her poetry has been published

in CV2, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Room,

Grain, Interim, Vallum and Maple Tree Literary Supplement,

anthologized in The Shape of Content: Creative Writing in

Science and Mathematics (2008) and nominated for a

Pushcart prize (2007).

What is the colour green? Madhur Anand explores the science and poetry of ecological remembering.

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Afterparty

The TEDxWaterloo afterparty will be held at the Kitchener-

Waterloo Art Gallery which is located at 101 Queen St

North. The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KW|AG) connects

people and ideas through art. The Gallery’s exhibits and

programs are built on a vision of art as the catalyst for

shared experience, dialogue and imagination. KW|AG

emphasizes contemporary art, has a 4000 work permanent

collection, and offers artistic experiences for adults, children

and families. Established in 1956 and operating within

Centre In The Square, KW|AG is the oldest and largest

public gallery in Waterloo region: roots in the community,

eyes on the world. Current exhibitions will include:

Pandora’s Box

Curated by Amanda Cachia. Organized and toured by Dunlop

Art Gallery with the financial assistance of the Regina

Public Library, The Canada Council for the Arts and the

Saskatchewan Arts Board. Inside Pandora’s Box viewers

encounter myths, folk tales, stereotypes and ambiguity.

International artists challenge myths and fairy tales to make

them a more accurate mirror of female experience in new

contexts. They share personal fictions, political statements

and psychological manifestations. We are invited to reflect

on larger human issues such as birth, death, parenthood,

relationships, rites of passage and multiple identities through

an engagement with other worldly creatures and everyday

environments.

Ground Level

Whether through perspective or actual material components,

the works in Ground Level are either ‘of’ the ground or ‘from’

the ground. Peter Von Tiesenhausen and Jim Reid’s work

utilize two opposing vantage points: a view from the ground

looking up and the other of the ground viewed from above.

Other selections are composed of earth elements, like the

stone carvings of Stanley Lewis, or are intended to act as

a segment of earth, as in Graham Peacock’s Seasoned

Ground Vee.

Being Magnified: Heroes and Villains

Being Magnified focuses on works that depict the

fully realized being; those who through exceptional

ability in the physical, intellectual or spiritual realms, are

considered heroic by the multitude. The works in this

exhibition delineate a common thread of all myths, which

Joseph Campbell called ‘The Heroes Journey’.

Amy KrouseRosenthal

To say Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a writer, filmmaker and

radio host does not do justice to the variety and sheer

innovation behind her creative endeavours. The New York

Times said this about her work: “Her books radiate fun the

way tulips radiate spring: they are elegant and spirit-lifting.”

Rosenthal has published 12 children’s books (and 8

forthcoming), including The New York Times bestsellers

Duck! Rabbit! and Cookies: Bite Size Life Lessons. Duck!

Rabbit! was selected as Time Magazine’s best children’s

book of 2009. As for her adult work, Amazon named her

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life one of the top 10 memoirs

of 2005. Amy is also the creator of YouTube sensations such

as “17 Things I Made” and the international film project,

“The Beckoning of Lovely: A Feature Film Featuring You.”

Amy Krouse Rosenthal shares some notes on life, from A to G-sharp.

MartyAvery

Marty Avery is a business advisor who collaborates with

business founders and leaders to design and implement

prosperity strategies. She has been consulted by the Prime

Minister’s Task Force on Women in Business, as well as

NextMEDIA & Fortune Magazine. Marty has presented on

Digital Delivery at several CEO forums and on social change

at Buzz, a CEO think tank in California. Chief Catalyst

at What If?, a member of the faculty at the Canadian Film

Centre’s Media lab and at the Banff Centre’s BNMI, Marty’s

passion is using the power of networks and connection to

build a world where you can extend your reach.

Marty Avery offers us a decoder ring for everyday clues and takes us spelunking for the inner treasure that makes our outer world richer. What if?

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Sponsors

Partner:

Friend:

Media:

Thank you to Joseph Chen for use of the Theater.

Networking:

Map

Artbar

The GigTheatre

Artbar 101 Queen St N

Kitchener, ON

The Gig Theatre 137 Ontario St N

Kitchener, ON

Notes:

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