TEDxTransmedia

TEDx Transmedia is an inspirational global conference which invites thinkers, doers and dreamers to join us in a discussion about the future. Nov. 5th 2014, TEDx Transmedia will return to Geneva, Switzerland, with the theme 'Exponential Buauty.' To find out more, visit tedxtransmedia.org TEDx Transmedia was created in 2010 by Nicoletta Iacobacci and is supported by the European Broadcasting Union In 2009, in the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED created TEDx, a program of local, self-organised events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is call TEDx Transmedia, where x=independently organised TED event. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organised.

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"Thoughts and insights from TED Global..."

Here I am in Rio, attending TEDGlobal.

A couple of days ago, during an interesting meeting amongst TEDx organisers, I was listening to June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media for TED as he shared some precious insights on how a TEDx talk makes it to TED.com.

Every experienced speaker should have heard what was said. TED's lemma is -ideas worth spreading- therefore, besides a personal story, the speaker should share an idea which is new and possibly global.

This is my 5th TEDxTransmedia event. All the unfortunate speakers who participated in the last TEDxTransmedia events know, only too well, how precise and almost maniac I am. I became friends with them all, though perhaps, to them it might have sometimes felt close to being stalked.

What I like to provide for my speakers is a stage upon which they may enhance their idea, their dream and nurture their passion.

I had a 9 year old speaker, who froze the audience by bouncing a question like: "when I was your age, did you have my problems?"

I had a philosopher teaching ethics to primary schools.

A speaker proving how non linear, transmedia storytelling can became a powerful strategy to aggregate communities to change the world.

My passion has always been to try and build a powerful conversation that could embrace all talks in one meaningful, intense story.

This year event is, maybe, the most structured of all.

More daring, covering global issues and diverse topics that under the same universe can demistify the fear we have for an unknown future.

Who doesn't like beauty? It will be an inspiring day full of surprises. Expect to be taken a bit by surprise, but to return home with enhanced knowledge about what to expect from the future.

See you in Geneva the 5th of November.

Obrigado!

Nicoletta

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Following is the TEDxTransmedia program:

This year's program will exploit, disrupt, investigate and reconsider Beauty. Every aspect of Beauty.

We will immerse in beauty in order to aknowledge Technology's "soul".

Beauty as an expression of evolutionary fitness; David Orban defines it Social Evolution.

Beauty as in the creation of robots with ethical values, the current research of Nikolas Mavridis.

Be amazed and appreciative of Beauty in a new and more profound way, as Anthony Rose will share with us.

Shift to being a techno-optimist rather than being fearful of exponentially growing technologies, as Zoltan Istvan will illustrate. 

Dare collisions between physics and art, main occupation of Ariane Koek, and enjoy the innovative funfairs and the new researches by Nicholas Nova.

Marco Lombardo will demonstrate how “beautiful” and  beneficial the collaboration between robots and autistic kids can be, and  Sabine Seymour will introduce the latest innovations in wearable technologies.

We will see the Beauty of coding with Mario von Rickenbach; we will ponder on slow tech with Jean-Yves Le Moine, and we will experience the Beauty of architecture across scales with Kawamura-Ganjavian. 

Then a few short talks (Power 300 seconds), some music and a really remarkable and unexpected guest speaker!

It promises to be an amazing, incredible event. We will peek into the future, we will laugh, be concerned, be astonished, sometimes a little shocked, but overall we will learn how to embark on a journey to demistify the fear we all (more or less) have for this future; crafted and almost totally governed by the exponentially growing society.

We've got the program online and it's a can't miss opportunity. Check it out now!

Don’t miss it! It’s a once in a lifetime event!

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Anthony Rose, who makes technology with a soul.

Anthony Rose is co-founder and CTO of zeebox / Beamly, a new platform that turns live TV into a two-way, social and interactive viewing experience. 

Previously he headed up BBC iPlayer from 2007 to 2010, taking it from pre-launch to major success story. Recognising the fact that consumers wanted all their media in one place, Anthony moved to YouView in May 2010 to create an open next-gen connected TV platform with aggregated content from lots of providers. 

I met Anthony at the EBU during a -pure tech- meeting. Anthony is an engineer who’s conversation can span from the future of media (I think he's one of the media visionary of our times) to 3D software, to music, to politics, to design. I invited him to participate to the EBU General Assembly and he gave a incredible inspiring talk about the future of media consumption and the power of connected generation, which created several new activities amongst Public Service Media. 

Prior to his time at the BBC Anthony was at Altnet and Kazaa, creating a digital music store and download application, and before that at Brilliant Digital, building a real-time 3D engine and tools for creating interactive branching-plot movies? Ironically, he comments, "About 15 years too early" with the new generation of connected TVs leading to a rebirth of this medium. 

Anthony is both, an originator and a disruptor. I am sure he will "shake" the audience.

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A.I. Scientist who wants to bring ethics into robotics.

Attending Singularity University sparked my interest in robots and I started investigating everything about them. A few months ago a was invited as a speaker at TedxCarthage and spoke about my newfound passion. Humankind has been trying to replace human abilities with machines since the early days. I discovered that the Greeks with Homer, were the first to mention automata. We find several examples in ancient mythologies and most modern religions that portray the concept of artificial people, as servants or companions.

I became really fond of this subject and I thought I had a case for an interesting talk to bring to Tunis at TEDxCarthage. At the rehearsal, when I spoke with the curator he said to talk to Nikolaos Mavridis, who was presenting at the event too and whom I knew as one of few creators of Humanoids robots, who took his doctorate from MIT. At first I was a bit humbled to discuss my intervention with an expert of such caliber but actually Nikolaos was very generous, he taught me a lot and we discovered that my talk was an interesting introduction for his talk based on his research in the robotics field.

Dr. Nikolaos Mavridis, PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has taught, written about, designed, and built Intelligent Systems, Robots, and systems exhibiting Collective Intelligence, since his early youth, having served as faculty at UAEU and NYU. He is the founder of IRML (the Interactive Robots and Media Lab), which achieved wide publicity for "Ibn Sina", the world's first Arabic-Language Android Robot, as well as "FaceBots", Microsoft-award-recipient Social Robots which access info and publish on FaceBook. Furthermore, he has designed and operated the hybrid physical/electronic participation workshops of the citizens movement Recreate Hellas, which he presented at the Council of Europe, and his works have appeared in media of more than 30 countries. His dream is to help create a future in which Humans, Robots, and all of the other Intelligent Entities that will comprise the rich and complex ecosystem of the future, maximise their creative potential, while living together in Harmony and Peace.

At TEDxTransmedia he will not only explore the future of Human-Robot Interaction and Collective Intelligence, but will also ask: What is the role of "Ethics" and "Beauty" in the world-to-come?

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Ariane Koek, the change maker who leads the International Arts at CERN

Ariane Koek (UK) leads the International Arts at CERN - the world's largest particle physics laboratory - based outside Geneva in Switzerland, since Spring 2010. I met her during a conference in Basel; very impressed by her talk, I read about her professional life and discovered her particular and very successful career. 

She’s an award winning BBC producer and director in both radio and television, working across arts, science and politics. But she left the media to venture into CERN in order to engage artists with CERN scientist pushing their artistic work to new creative dimensions. 

After Basel, I met Ariane several times. I enjoy her witty sense of humor and the fact that her conversation can span from philosophy to physics; from food (being a sophisticated gourmet) to movies, from fashion to science.

She’s a change-maker and her desire to spark innovation beyond paradigms is contagious. Ariane's talk will be an indispensible contribution to this year TEDxTransmedia’s achievement.

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Zoltan Istvan, The Transhumanist Philosopher

Last year I was lucky enough to go on a  cruise from Athens to Istanbul with a very smart crowd: the Stanford Alumni. It was a small cruise, navigating through most of the Greek islands, with a peculiarity: every day, after a perfect day relaxing on beaches to dream of, and seeing beautiful places, we had a lesson. Yes a real university lesson.

As a matter of fact, on the cruise there were also 3 professors who would give a lesson every day. A “beautiful” way to spend vacation (at least, in my view) : an intellectual vacation.

Well, my vacation was also pollinated by other information, ideas and forecast ideas, all triggered by a book. “The Transhumanist Wager”, a philosophical science fiction book which today is a known bestseller. 

I was so engaged in the book and I immersed myself so deeply in the plot that I even skipped 2 excursions! 

Some time after my cruise, when I went to San Francisco for my course at Singularity University I asked Zoltan Istvan, the book’s author, to meet me for a coffee. We started talking about what's in store for the future and I shared with him the TEDxTransmedia’s theme I wanted to explore for 2014.

In a sense, I got the idea from that discussion, therefore I invited him on the spot and he was the first speaker on my agenda.

Zoltan is Istvan is a philosopher, futurist, journalist, and transhumanist. 

At the age of 21, he began a solo, sailing journey around the world. His main cargo was 500 handpicked books, mostly classics. He traveled over 100 countries, many as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel and his work was covered by the most important media companies (like The New York Times, The Huffington PostThe NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, etc) 

After the success of his book, Zoltan started actively promoting transhumanism and other futurist issues giving talks, media interviews and of course, writing.

I'm happy to have Zoltan Istvan on the stage of TEDxTransmedia 2014: he’s a techno-optimist and he will leave us with a positive feeling when looking into the future!

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Beginning from today we will present the TEDxTransmedia speakers’ agenda. Stay tuned!

David Orban - Faculty and Advisor of Singularity University. He speaks widely on the coevolution of humanity with technology, and our future.

I got to know Singularity University at TED in 2012, speaking briefly to Peter Diamandis, one of the founders of the institution.

The claim of SU is - educate, inspire and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges -.

Back home I started to be interested in topics that, before then, I thought, were only for engineers and scientists. Lately though, science has become more approachable and I immersed myself in discoveries, activities and technologies that have the power to make our life better.

In November 2013, I attended the Singularity Summit in Budapest and I was still debating if I was going to fly to Silicon Valley to attend the course where, as Bloomberg Tv stated - the world's brightest minds convene to attack the world's toughest challenges.

Eventually I did attend SU in February 2014 and, after that, my interests/passions/activities completely changed. I became fond of robots, I learned how to manage bitcoins, I extracted my DNA, I speculated and forecasted, together with super-smart people what the future holds for us. But most importantly, I demystified the fear I had at the time of exponentially growing technologies and I actually I became part of this community.

Back to Budapest. The Summit was an incredible event, a TED like experience, not yet as widely recognized as TED, but strong, motivating and incredibly powerful.  During a break, I found myself engaged in a conversation with an Italian Singularitan crowd and I met David Orban, who speaks perfect Italian despite being Polish 

I discovered that, few years before, he launched the Network Society Project, exploring the technology based transformation of society. He was debating on the social, political and economic implications of network technologies and their application across a wide range of practices and institutions.

David is the CEO of Dotsub, a browser based, one-stop, self-contained system for creating and viewing subtitles for videos in multiple languages across all platforms. And I am pleased to announce that he will be presenting at TEDxTransmedia 2014.

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Why Beauty?

This is the 5th TEDxTransmedia event I organize and, in reaching this milestone, I feel a strong responsibility for the speakers, for the team of volunteers that are following me (the event changed location), for the partners and particularly for the people that will choose to attend.

We are living a particular moment in time in which technology is growing exponentially, and each day brings a new “piece of the puzzle” to have a longer, healthier, and a more-intense life.

We are experiencing a magnetic and action-packed movie in which we can quantify ourselves to know how our own body functions and how its behavioral health performs. We can capture feelings with software recognition devices, live in an ubiquitous learning ecosystem, which is virtual, augmented and 3D/4K/Ultra HD.

Are we going to face a post-scarcity era of super-abundance where technological innovation allows its supporters to believe they are helping to generate extraordinary beings, (akin to Nietzsche’s Overman) with powers bordering on the divine? Or are we facing the enormous harm, ranging all the way to the extreme possibility of intelligent life becoming extinct?

Not to worry, these are not the issues covered by TEDxTransmedia 2014, but they certainly did start me thinking about the theme: Exponential Beauty.

Technology is growing exponentially and Ethics can’t keep the pace of this growth. Once some new moral guidance is defined, technology has already gone further.

How can we catch up? Is it still possible to have a positive approach if we look into the future? How can we demystify the fear we experience (more or less, I think we all fear something, facing the future)?

I think one of the answers can be beauty. There are a thousand definitions of beauty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or as Euripides said it is being “of one’s hour” or “being in the moment”.

Being in the moment today means acceleration or “growing at an exponential rate”. What do we need to know, consider, study and define in order to be prepared for an anticipated future of convergence between mankind and technology?

What if we bond beauty and technology? Can Fear diminish? Can Fear fade?

This is what we will do (together) at the 5th TEDxTramnsmedia, in Geneva, Switzerland. We are going to engage in a battle with Fear and we will win it with Beauty, with Exponential Beauty.  (to be continued)

Nicoletta Iacobacci,

TEDxTansmedia curator

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Federico Pistono at TEDxTransmedia 2013 - 'How to be wise'

Federico Pistono is an internationally known author, a social entrepreneur, a scientific educator, a lecturer, and aspiring filmmaker. He has written on science, technology, Internet communities, artificial intelligence, and climate change. Federico's book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy" is a bestseller worldwide. He's a graduate from Singularity University, and lately he founded Esplori, whose goal is to provide an inclusive, global learning environment, where anyone can learn anything, anywhere, without physical or language barriers.

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Katharina Sand at TEDxTransmedia 2013 - 'Fashionably Disruptive'

Katharina grew up in Italy, Germany, Kenya, and Switzerland. After graduating from London's Goldsmith's College, she covered the New York fashion scene as a correspondent for over 5 years. In the year 2000 she opened the boutique Septieme Etage to bring designers to the place she felt needed it most: the decidedly un-froufrou calvinist Geneva, home of international organizations, financial institutions, and the Swiss private schools forming the next generations of leaders.She is currently working on a book and a digital project for retail disruption. Her closet includes a dress that -- unzipped -- represents the silhouette of E.T.

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Simon Cohen at TEDxTransmedia 2013 - 'How to be wise'

In this talk, Simon challenges us to drop conventional ideas about wisdom, ditch the old bearded professors, the tweed, and even the books, and invites us on a personal journey of self-discovery. Simon Cohen is a social commentator, national broadcaster and media ethics champion. He pioneered Personal Relations (humanising, ethical PR), Inspirational Marketing and Symbiotic Communications, and spread positive social stories to hundreds of millions of people.

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Video - Keren Elazari at TEDxTransmedia 2013 - 'Heroes and Anti Heroes of the Information Age'

Keren has been a key member of the Israeli Cyber Security & Hacking scene in the past decade and since 2000, has been employed with leading Israeli security firms and government organizations to cover emerging security technologies.

She teaches at Tel Aviv University and at Singularity University in Palo Alto; her academic research focus on the effects of hacking and cyber warfare on global politics and national security issues.

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Satisfaction with an interaction with friends is greater after laughter, even if it's just an emoticon

Robin Dunbar on laughter at TEDxTransmedia 2013

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We have to be makers and risk-takers today we have jolt us into new ways of seeing and give us the courage to rub against the new. Together we can weave a collaborative vision of the future. Let us create more stories that give people the courage to add to the future with imagination and talent.

- Anna Reeves, #TEDxTransmedia 2013

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Wise people do not avoid pain but embrace pain and show the utility of it in order to be more authentic, to feel more, to love more, to learn more, to BE more.”

Simon Cohen on 'How to be wise' at TEDxTransmedia 

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To educate your child and to alter your child genetically are structurally analogous procedures. Choosing your procreative partner and choosing a fertilized egg after IVF and PGD are structurally analogous procedures, too. Hence, genetic enhancements do not have to be morally problematic procedures

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner at TEDxTransmedia 2013 

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When I was coming back to the surface I had a lot of adrenalin and in that moment I had my answer to that question - WIN or compete?” - World Record-breaking 88m Free Diver Alessandro Rignani Lolli #TEDxTransmedia 2013