VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization

TEDX Chennai organisers’ meetings were always special. I still remember the days when we used to meet at CCDs and Subways for the 2009 edition of TEDx Chennai. The meeting itself is a learning experience, just like watching a TED video or attending a TEDx. You meet people from different walks of lives which, am sure you would not have met in your normal course. Planning for the event just becomes incidental to the main activity of networking and sharing of ideas among people.

War room

Ever since Samuel Eddy joined the meetups his room at YMCA Royapetah has become the de facto meeting place for TEDx Chennai organizers. The room has been nicknamed as The War Room.

These War room meetings is a great example of the saying that “not only destination but the journey also should be rewarding and am eagerly waiting for the coming meeting

A write up on TEDx Chennai 2010 that appeared in ‘The Hindu’, dated July 12, 2010.

Chennai’s second edition of TEDx, a locally organised volunteer-driven version of the TED conference, will be held on October 10. Till now, close to 110 speakers have been long-listed for the event. Nominations are open and anyone can log on to http://tedxchennai.com/ to recommend an individual or organisation. The theme of the event this year is ‘Do’ and to add local flavour, a predominant share of the eleven speakers will be from Chennai, with one or two giving their talk in Tamil.

It just can’t get any better!

I would just like to give a heads up to all the TED, THE TED, fans in Chennai. Yes, I know that you already heard about TEDxChennai 2010. This is not about that!

TED has allowed TEDxChennai to stream of TEDGlobal LIVE, that is taking place in Oxford, UK from July 13 till 16. TEDxChennai team is trying to put it together, so that you can watch THE TED talks, LIVE!

We are calling it TEDxChennaiLIVE !!

Keep following the blogs and this site for more details on TEDxChennaiLIVE. We will keep you updated!

Could it get ANY better!

UPDATE: Details and registration here.

TEDxChennai in Twitter | Facebook

cheers
Joe

TEDxChennai season is coming up! After the great show that TEDxChennai team put together last year, this year its gonna be MUCH BETTER!! IF you are a fan of TED and you are in Chennai during this event, you wouldn’t wanna miss it!! You must have already noticed in the site that TEDxChennai, for this year, will be held on 10/10/10 i.e 10th October, 2010. If you wish to attend TEDxChennai ’10, please fill out this form and we will get in touch with you.

The TEDxChennai team would also like to thank YOU for the awesome event last year, thank you for coming, tweeting, blogging and much more. This year, we promise you a better TEDxChennai!

Spirit of TEDxChennai is to “Share the Ideas worth spreading”. In that same spirit, we would like you to nominate people who have achieved and who inspire you. We, at TEDxChennai, would like to call them the TEDxChennai stars. You can nominate TEDxChennai stars here and we would love to showcase the stars during TEDxChennai.

Check out the team that works behind the scenes to make TEDxChennai what it was (last year), what it is going to be (this year), and what it will stand for in the future.

Lets DO!!

TEDxChennai in Twitter | Facebook

cheers
Joe

The three tweople who won the free passes to TEDxChennai ’09 are:

@ramprakash_r

@armchairexpert

@karthikjai

Congrats guys!! Let us know if you can make it to the event.

Looking for great people to network with? #TEDxChennai is the event for you. Buy your tickets at http://tedxchennai.com/ C ya there

I used to watch TED videos all my life; now i get a chance to experience it in real. Nov29 #chennai #TEDxChennai http://bit.ly/7rut7o

TED comes to Chennai.Attend #TEDxChennai on Nov 29 at ICSR audi in IIT-Madras; Get inspired and be inspirational http://bit.ly/7rut7o

“We make great ideas available to millions of people”

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, an annual four-day residential conclave devoted to “ideas worth spreading”, which concluded in Mysore recently, was held for the first time in India. Chris Anderson, curator of TED, spoke to Sudeshna Chatterjee:

What has taken you so long to reach India?
Apart from one experimental event in Japan 15 years ago, TED has been for most of its history a closed event held annually in California. In 2001, its ownership transferred from its founder into my non-profit foundation (The Sapling Foundation) and we gradually started bringing in a more global roster of speakers. The big shift came in 2006 when we started releasing talks on the Web and discovered that there was a vast global audience excited by this type of content.

But isn’t the Rs 1 lakh entry fee exorbitant in a country like India?
Yes, a lakh is a lot, although it’s one-third the price we charge in California. No one is making a profit at TED. It’s run from a foundation and the fees don’t cover the large costs of putting on an event as ambitious as TED. This conference was subsidised by the foundation because we so badly wanted to come to India. Despite the high price it sold out. We also included 100 fellows, selected from 1,000 applicants, all of whose costs we covered, and a number of discounted educational and non-profit passes. We also streamed four of the sessions on the Web to anyone for free, and will be releasing all the best talks on our website, ted.com, in the coming months.

There will be numerous selforganised events held across India in the coming months under the programme we call TEDx. These will be publicised in due course, and people can find them on http://ted.com/tedx. Typically they will be one-day events held in various cities or universities and targeting a few hundred local knowledge-seekers.

Can you talk about some of the interesting ideas that came up at the Mysore conference?
Pranav Mistry is developing SixthSense, which is a wearable prototype that augments the physical world around us with digital information. Shaffi Mather’s corruption-busting business idea, where he proposes to set up antibribe BPOs across India and which will take a fee from the client is both brilliant and courageous. Shashi Tharoor’s views on soft power have been articulated before, but perhaps never in so compelling a way. The philosophy behind TED is ideas have a unique ability to shape the future. By making great ideas available to millions of people on ted.com, we’re helping to accelerate this process. There was the special moment when attendees responded to Sunitha Krishnan’s searing talk on her fight against sex trafficking by committing more than $100,000 in donations on the spot, and by promising jobs for the young women she is rehabilitating.

Courtesy:TOI,Chennai

Interview with noted quiz master Giri Balasubramaniyam from TEDxChennai on Vimeo.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ background is as multidimensional as the visions he helps create. In the 1990s, he authored patents on both video compression and 3D visualization techniques, and in 2001, he made an influential computational discovery that cast doubt on Gutenberg’s role as the father of movable type. Full Bio>>