TEDxDelft: a recap

Yesterday I was liveblogging for TEDxDelft. As you can see in the picture (I’m at the left, in purple), I spent a day in super focus, resulting in 4 articles for the TEDxDelft website of which you can find the links in my summary of guest posts.

As this was only the second time that I was liveblogging, I plan to write a post on my “lessons learned on liveblogging” some time later. As for today, I want to give you a summary of my insights after TEDxDelft.

Since I was liveblogging, I stayed in the webcare room the whole day, and while I was writing about a performer, I had to block out the livestream to focus on writing, so I missed a few performances. Trouble with the livestream also made me miss everything from the opening up to most of the performance of Boyan Slat.

Bennie Mols gave us his view on the future of robots. I learned that our multifunctional human brain uses 20 Watts, as compared to supercomputer Watson’s using 6 MW.

The next performer, Marwa Al-Ansary shared her story with us on how she struggled to become an engineer and how she is always the odd duck – but she takes that position with all her courage and makes a change. She left me very impressed and inspired, as parts of her story also resonate with my own experiences.

After missing out a few performances, I was left completed blown away by Sarah Kay’s recorded performance at TED2011, leaving a note to myself that I should YouTube spoken word poetry:

After writing this introductory post and getting lost in her world for an entire evening, I was absolutely looking forward to the performance of Manon Ossevoort. Absolutely a performance to watch again some time soon – and my inner explorer was absolutely triggered: if a girl on a tractor with a maximum speed of 20 km/h can drive all the way to Cape Town and be safe, everything is possible.

I had been looking forward to Erik Schlangen‘s performance on self healing asphalt as well, and I loved the way how he brought a lab to the TEDxDelft stage. And that microwave on stage looked very familiar – I use it (or a similar one in the lab) to warm my soup in the wee hours of the evening.

After the beautiful song by Judith Adema, Ionica Smeets showed us the dangers of ice-cream or, why correlation does not mean causation.

The next performer, Wendy Lampen gave us a look into her world. Having a strange brain myself (it does “parallel processing”, I try to explain others) and being highly sensitive, I found myself nodding at the example she gave on how her memories sometimes work. She brought a strong, heart-warming performance on the TEDxDelft stage.

Becci Manson’s recorded video is absolutely inspiring as well: using your talents to make an impact on other’s lives.

After Tom de Bruyne showed us how a fake online medication website really shocked it’s visitors, the winner of the TEDxDelft 2012 award Nupur Kohli brought us lessons from children. Did you know that on average a baby smiles 400 times a day, a youngster 14 and an adult just once? She urges us to become an adult with a child in our heart. I’ve made a mental note that I should smile more often and ask more questions.

Bas Lansdorp made me dream of heading out to Mars on a trip (provided I can bring hubbie, kittie, burgundy wine and an internet connection with me), and afterwards Nynke Tromp suggest that we should vote on our birthday to avoid the influence of the media performance of the politicians.

At the end of the day, I had the feeling that my brain was on 10.000 Volts. Even though I was dead tired (we started with pep talk at 6:45am and wrapped up around 8pm), I was too fueled up to just crash down when I got home. I learned so much, and I am sure the impression is meant to last. In the meanwhile, I’m looking forward to find the videos of the performers online, so I can catch up with what I missed out on while I was writing.