TEDxSingapore Blog | TED Singapore

By Hailey Reissman on July 9, 2015 in Initiatives

Just a month after the first TEDxWeekend (held in Vienna, Austria), 114 TEDx’ers gathered in Singapore for the second edition of these worldwide gatherings designed for knowledge sharing, cultural activities and fun. TEDx’ers sampled local cuisine, toured museums, made friends, visited local businesses, started discussions and participated in a day-long workshop covering everything from curation to leading a volunteer team.

TEDxWeekendSingapore took place over the weekend of July 3 to July 5, and was organized by a group of organizers from the area, headed by Dave Lim, senior TEDx ambassador to Asia.

Before the action even started on Friday, a small group of hungry TEDx’ers held an impromptu “Breakfast Worth Eating,” at the famous Maxwell Road Hawker Center in Singapore’s Chinatown, sampling cuisine from the Center’s many food stalls.

The main program kicked off with a tour of the Singapore City Gallery, where attendees grabbed their registration gear and pursued exhibits detailing decades of Singaporean design.

After registration, attendees had the choice of four different city tours — the North Track: Sibeh Exciting; the Central Track: Eco Kaki; the West Track: Super Zai; and the East Track: Lobang.

Each track covered a different element of Singaporean culture and enterprise. Sibeh Exciting attendees toured a mangrove forest, an aircraft engine manufacturer and local social good organizations; Eco Kaki toured the Singapore Maritime Gallery, the Botanic Gardens as well as the National Design Centre; Super Zai stopped at the Economic Development Board, a startup accelerator and an organization dedicated to sustainability in the city; and Lobang attendees visited the Economic Development Board, NEWater — a plant dedicated to making reclaimed water drinkable and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

The day ended with a group dinner in the Empire Lounge on the 45th floor of the Singapore Land Tower overlooking the city and Singapore River.

Those who weren’t worn out by the long day of excitement, tours and bonding headed over to Lau Pa Sat, a food market and historical building that is iconic in the city. At Lau Pa Sat, gathering organizer Lim and friends ate local food and readied themselves for the day to come.

Saturday consisted of a full day of presentations and workshops — from TEDx’ers and TED staff — held in the city’s ArtsScience Museum. Organizers talked TEDx growth, knowledge sharing, budget planning, events in schools and more. A graphic recorder turned the presentation into drawings and during lunch attendees explored the museum’s exhibitions.

After the workshop, TEDx’ers walked through Singapore’s giant urban garden complex, Gardens By The Bay, to enjoy an authentic Singapore-style al fresco dinner by the waterfront. After dinner, attendees enjoyed the gardens by night, taking in the complex’s many attractions — flora, water, art installations and more.

On Sunday, attendees and organizers hosted unofficial outings and activities as part of the TEDx UnconFUNrence, including a traditional Singaporean breakfast, a trip to Google and YouTube’s Singapore offices, the Singapore Art Museum, a local design firm and more.

After the UnconFUNrence, all headed to the East Coast Park and beach for a farewell barbecue, allowing for fun, food and interactions with new friends before heading home.

TED: We are at an inflexion point that’s bigger than all of us. That’s a dialogue and a community that I want to be apart of.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwinsor/2019/04/22/is-ted-still-relevant/

This newfound self-effacing lightness, this humor, showed a new confidence in the humanity of vulnerability and imperfection.

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TED: We are at an inflexion point that’s bigger than all of us. That’s a dialogue and a community that I want to be apart of.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwinsor/2019/04/22/is-ted-still-relevant/

This newfound self-effacing lightness, this humor, showed a new confidence in the humanity of vulnerability and imperfection.

(Feed generated with FetchRSS)

#genius

What a wonderful idea! 💛

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“The oldest attendee was 99-year-old former pilot Ho Weng Toh, who flew for Malayan Airways, then Malaysia-Singapore Airlines and finally Singapore Airlines. Oh, and he even fought in World War II as a bomber pilot.”
SINGAPORE – Former air stewardess Eunice Chua had one of the biggest shocks of her life when she showed some compassion to what appeared to be a down and out passenger on one of her earliest flights. Madam Chua spotted the middle-aged Chinese man on a plane from Kuala Lumpur to Kuantan in 1962 sport…

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The island nation of Singapore is one of the smallest countries in the world. It is also one of the most technologically advanced. Lead by an environmentally conscious…

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““The ultimate goal of TRICK is creating self-responsible people in a self-responsible world. If Wojcicki’s offspring are any indication, her method works. Her firstborn, Susan Wojcicki, is the CEO of YouTube. Janet Wojcicki is a professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco. And Anne Wojcicki, the baby of the family, is the founder and CEO of genetic testing company 23andMe. “Our parents taught us to believe in ourselves and our ability to make decisions,” the three write in the book’s foreword. “We don’t remember ever having our ideas or thoughts dismissed because we were children.”
If Wojcicki’s own powerful brood—daughters Susan (YouTube), Janet (23andMe), and Anne (UCSF)—is any indication, her methods work.

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The digital revolution was supposed to bury everything from film cameras to record players to pen and paper. But after a long, slow slide many of these analogue objects are undergoing a renaissance….

Read more at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180427-why-analogue-design-still-endures

Hello from the TEDxSingapore team! We know it has been a bit quiet for a while around here, and apologies for that, but trust us when we say we’ve been brewing something special.  

This 11th November 2017, TEDxSingapore is proud to present our 40th TEDx event, themed ‘Growing Up’.

Our tickets are on sale now (buy here!) , and the team are working on the finishing touches and while the excitement is building I wanted to take the opportunity to share some insights into the theme and our intentions behind it.

So. The Theme.
When you first read ‘growing-up’ – how many of you immediately thought about kids and education? This was our starting point too, but through our curation sessions with the team it became clear that we do not (and should not) stop growing the moment we finish our formal education.

Indeed, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘to grow up’ as:

1. to grow toward or arrive at full stature or physical or mental maturity
2. to begin to exist and develop as time passes

There is no age or time period. Growing Up, we realised, means a period of transition where we develop. And what a great theme that is for a TEDx event! From that point onwards, we knew we would explore the widest expressions and meanings of this phrase and its implications for our TEDxSingapore community. We decided to specifically look at a few thought provoking questions:

• What is important to us, growing up as human beings; both as individuals, as  communities and as part of a global civilisation?
• Do we ever stop growing, as children, young people, even adults?
• Should we ever stop growing?

And of course, the theme has implications on a national level – Singapore is nearing its 200th birthday, still a baby compared to China’s five millennia, but still going through its own transitions and always growing and developing.

Once our theme and topics were decided, we looked to our community for speaker recommendations – and we’re proud to say that 40% of them came from your suggestions. So thank you for contributing and helping your speakers bring their ideas to the world!

For those who have attended previous TEDxSingapore events, you will know that the moments outside of the talks are just as impactful – a time to share ideas and meet a like-minded community. Indeed for many of us this is one of the best parts about the whole experience. We won’t say too much here, but rest assured we have curated some great activities that we hope will grow connections, conversations and hopefully inspire some action.

We hope you will join us for what is certain to be a thought provoking occasion. No matter if you take part in it for the full experience (we’re planning something special here) or for the afternoon of talks and conversation, or simply join us online via our social channels, we like to think this will be the start of something special. Our intention is that the entire experience will inspire change and growth, for you to take back into your lives and communities.  

Buy your tickets here

From

TEDxSingapore 2017 Team

What does Growing Up mean to you? What has inspired you to grow recently? Share your thoughts below.

As a student in Temasek Junior College, Dave Lim started a magic club and organised a full-scale magic show on campus. He didn’t know any magic tricks, but he knew a schoolmate who did. Today, the 48-year-old puts together talks on topics spanning poetry to public policies.

He is not an expert on any of the subjects, but he enables those who are to reach others, by giving them a stage through TEDxSingapore, an independent, local event styled after TED Talks. Even in his day job, Lim brings people together for a bigger cause.

His corporate innovation company, Ideas Worth Doing (a spin on Tedx’s tagline “Ideas Worth Spreading”), helps to bring innovative conventions and conferences to Singapore – such as Wisdom 2.0 Asia, focusing on mindful leadership, and Unreasonable Sea in 2013, a global entrepreneurship experiment that puts tech-entrepreneurs and mentors on a ship sailing to 13 countries to work on social and environmental challenges.

Getting people to share their talent and expertise seems to be a constant in Lim’s life. And it’s not just because he wants to learn. As a venture capitalist and economist, he sees the need for Singapore to move towards an idea-driven economy and society. “We used to trade commodities, now we trade ideas. The intangibles are even more valuable than the tangible.”

These factors led him to take up the licence for TEDx for Singapore, when the founders reached out to the global community to take the initiative worldwide. Since 2009, the TEDxSingapore community has grown from just over a thousand to some 70,000 local followers. “If you include the overseas followers, we have about 100,000,” says Lim. TEDx was held last month at Nanyang Technological University to an audience of 1,700 – a scale larger that TED Talks. This year’s speakers include global health expert Hans Rosling, who entertained as much as he enlightened the audience on global population trends, social activist Melissa Kwee and tropical disease scientist Thierry Diagana.

“People love TED because it gives them an avenue to express and explore what they like,” says Lim. “As for me, I love all topics! But the magic happens when I connect the dots while listening to different speakers, come up with an idea, or realise a commonality between fields. These unexpected connections, ideas and inspirations are the wow moments for me, and what drive me.”

Read the full article at ThePeakMagazine.