#tedxaustin

[sastasays]

How Do YOU Define Yourself Lizzie Velasquez at TEDxAustinWomen

inspirational.

[tayfaynay]

@djcaseyconnor shared her brave story and then bringing the crew to dance on stage ! #BraveStartsHere #TEDxWomen #TedxAustin

[tayfaynay]

@Saulpaul in the house #BraveStartsHere #TEDxWomen #TedxAustin

[tedx]

"It's always the optimists who are pushing for change because they're the ones who actually believe in a better tomorrow."

From Byron Reese's TEDxAustin talk, "Greatness is a decision."  In his research on leaders throughout history, Reese has found that one key factor separates great leaders from the rest: the willingness to make a change. Watch his whole talk here.

[regulars]

Watch Michael and Jared show TEDxAustin their idea for gondolas as mass transit aka urban cable aka The Wire. Whacha think? 

[barkleymoonshot-blog]

I think the most compelling part of the TEDxAustin Fearless Portraits we created was the animated drawing process that reveals the person's image and their favorite word.

I created some videos that illustrate exactly how these images appeared on the big screen at the TEDx event. In addition to the one posted here, I made a YouTube playlist with a few more.

For the nerds reading this, here's a quick description of what's going on. For starters this is a Processing app that I developed in Eclipse using Proclipsing. The app monitors a folder of photos on my Mac and when my DSLR transfers a new photo to my machine, the app picks it up. From there, the app identifies the placement of the person's face using OpenCV and quickly creates a WordCram word cloud of the user's favorite word.

Then a particle system goes to work. As the particles move around the stage, they leave a trail. The color and shape of the trail is based on textures and shapes that I found did a good job at revealing the composite image below. Since OpenCV gave me the rectangle representing the face, I can tell the particles what they should be drawing according to what side of the face they are currently over.

When I'm happy with the result, I stop the particles and kick out a JPG to a Dropbox folder which is synced with our Flickr account using IFTTT.com.

I'd like to call out two people whose work was a huge help and inspiration for this project. The first is Daniel Shiffman whose book The Nature of Code has been a daily read (and re-read) for me the last few months. Second, Sergio Albiac who creates incredibly stunning generative artwork.

-chris

[johnfitch]

I was heavily motivated by some of the presentation at TEDxAustin this year. I will be creating a post for each talk that influenced or got me thinking the most.

I took the photo above with my iPhone and it was in the area that they called "the playground" which was a nice experimental exhibit. I would like to contribute to their future installations down the road!

[danielperlaky]

TEDxAustin

fear less / invisibility through negative refraction / self-perception shift / complimentary intellect system extending human cognition / surprise forecasting – "only bother me with an alert if there's a high probability that I'll be negatively surprised by an anomaly in the future that I should consider now" / life-browser with volume control / a designed lunch in balance with the Japanese food colors / a man touches his wife's hand for the first time with a replacement arm controlled by his thoughts  / "life gets interesting when we fail because it's a sign that we have surpassed ourselves" / "what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?" / landfillharmonic recycled orchestra / "hell is a place where nothing connects to nothing"