Forces of Change: A Q&A about a TEDGlobal session exploring world-shaping shifts emerging from Asia & Africa

Global Issues TED Fellows Erik Hersman and Adrian Hong have curated the TEDGlobal 2013 session “Forces of Change.”

Only one thing is constant in the world — that things will continually change and evolve.  Session 9 of TEDGlobal 2013, called “Forces of Change,” will explore how, in recent years, much of the change happening in the world has originated in Africa or Asia. This session, which will be guest curated by TED Fellows Erik Hersman and Adrian Hong, will explore the powerful and unexpected forces of change emerging from these continents, from political upheaval to economic shifts to art and innovation.

How did this session originate?

Erik Hersman: When TEDGlobal director Bruno Giussani approached us last year with the idea to guest curate a session together, we jumped on a call and started thinking about how the people we know and admire, the movements we see, the world that we are a part of could best be showcased on the TED stage.

Adrian Hong: The theme “Forces of Change” is a way to highlight the strong movements, energies and people that are driving major shifts in the world, particularly in Africa and Asia, the regions in which Erik and I work.

How do your professional backgrounds and interests complement each other as co-curators for this session?

Hersman: As a technologist based in Kenya, I tend to focus on Africa, specifically in the fields of technology and business. Adrian is a strategist and advisor engaged in Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. Both of us have been involved with the frontlines of technology use in these regions during political change and unrest, as well as for business. This made it easy to tap into our knowledge of people and organizations in each region to bring interesting insights into the TED community.

Hong: Erik and I both tend to travel quite a bit and come across people, players and insights that aren’t always readily accessible or apparent from a distance. We’re both excited to be able to highlight some of those in this session. Erik and I have also known each other for years — we were both in the first class of TED Fellows and TED Senior Fellows. We also share an affinity for promoting innovation and forward-thinking in austere and challenging environments.

How did you go about choosing speakers?

Hong: We both tried to find speakers who represent the future that is being made now — voices that are heralding, in some way, what is to come in places that are also critically important to their respective regions, as well as globally. There are some real shifts underway now, just under the surface, that will reshape entire industries, continents and interests. We’re quite fortunate to have been able to grab some speakers who are at the forefront of either leading the charge, or of understanding shifts that may be less apparent to the untrained eye.

Hersman: Looking for speakers was a lot harder than I first imagined. It’s not just important to find someone doing something interesting, new or insightful, but also someone who can tell the story of what they do in a way that resonates. We ended up starting from the very top, the people we admire and who are actively involved in doing some of the most exciting things, or doing the best job at researching or writing about their work. Luckily, almost all of these people were available, so we’re excited to introduce them from the TED stage in Edinburgh.

Tell us a bit about the speakers you picked.

Hong: Charles Robertson will be highlighting the seismic shifts happening the Africa of today as compared to the Africa that is stereotyped in the eyes of outsiders. He believes Africa is poised to be an engine of massive economic development, and says it will go from being the “bottom billion” to the “fastest billion.” Mustafa Abushagur, a long-time Libyan opposition leader and first democratically chosen Prime Minister-elect of Libya, will share with us his prescriptions for stabilizing the Arab Spring and helping countries to build stronger societies post-revolution. And Joseph Kim will speak about growing up in North Korea, and how his story may herald possibilities for the future of North Korea as a nation.

Hersman: Dambisa Moyo is a long-time favorite of mine. She explores some of the uncomfortable truths of development aid in Africa and China’s position on resource economics. She’ll be a great startup speaker for the session. Toby Shapshak will offer up some thoughts on innovation in Africa, and how we should pay more attention to what’s happening on this continent. And Just a Band is an eclectic band of Kenyan artists who will surprise everyone with their exuberant electronica.

Which speakers do you think will blow us away?

Hersman: I’m particularly excited about Dambisa Moyo. I’ve been a longtime reader of her work, and think she’ll deliver a great talk. Outside of our session, I’m most looking forward to Daniel Suarez’s talk. We at Ushahidi are all fervent readers of his work.

Hong: All of our speakers are extraordinary in their own way and right. Part of the beauty and magic of TED is that there is something for everyone — and often the talks and speakers we least expect to resonate with our personal interests spark thoughts, insights and inspiration in ways rather unexpected and often profound.

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The World on its Head: A Q&A about the ideas behind this exciting TEDGlobal session

Global Issues TED Conferences TEDGlobal 2013 guest curators Nassim Assefi and Gabriella Gomez-Mont share how they created the session, “The World on Its Head,” which will make you rethink the global order.

Session 6 of TEDGlobal 2013 has a captivating title: “The World on its Head.” Guest curated by Nassim Assefi and Gabriella Gómez-Mont — both from the inaugural class of TEDGlobal 2009 Fellows — the session will be a chance to turn our conceptions of the Middle East and Latin America upside down, and to rethink staid assumptions about politics, religion, art, architecture, peacemaking and more. 

Here, the TED Blog asks Assefi and Gómez-Mont to share what inspired the session and how they went about picking speakers.

Where did the theme “The World on Its Head” come from?

Nassim Assefi: Gabriella and I brainstormed, trying to tie together our two regions. What is the zeigeist in each of our regions? The undercurrents? What do they have in common? How have they been underestimated? Misunderstood? What is their hidden potential? We settled on “The World On Its Head” after viewing a wonderful map of the world with the South facing upward. That visual became a metaphor for rethinking deeply held assumptions and views of the world and sitting with the discomfort of a new idea until the brain adjusts.

Gabriella Gómez-Mont: For me, the idea of “The World on Its Head” rings strongly and intimately with moments in life when I had to truly rethink important things so deeply that the former map no longer works, no longer matches the new reality. That moment, pause, gap, chaos of no longer understanding anything because one fundamental part of understanding crumbles — it’s one of the most enigmatic and profoundly human moments one can go through.

It is both so strangely beautiful and tremendously brutal to rethink once unshakable truths. No wonder all of us, collectively and individually, try to make the world sit still and force maps to remain the same for centuries even when they no longer work. But in the end, that moment of confusion is a fundamental part of every transformation, adventure, and reconstitution — a pure turbulent threshold between paradigms. And then many new possibilities surface after finding one’s footing again in an upside-down world.

How did the guest curation come about?

Assefi: I had been pitching speaker ideas to [TEDGlobal curator] Bruno Giussani since the moment I met him, and many of those suggestions have made it to the TED stage. I play that role at TEDMED, too. In August 2012, we received a marvelous email invitation out of the blue from Bruno to guest curate/host a session at TEDGlobal. There are more than 300 TED Fellows from around the world, each doing amazing work, and no TED Fellow had ever guest curated a session at TED, so this is an incredible honor.

Gabriella and I were chosen in part because we work in, and come from, distinct regions of the world — I represent the Middle East/Central Asia, and Gabriella Latin America. I’m an internist and global women’s health specialist (most recently tackling maternal mortality in Afghanistan). I also write novels, work on civic peace-oriented projects in the Middle East, defend human rights from a medical angle, and am a feminist activist, a single mom, and a diehard TEDhead. Gabriella is an artist, a documentary filmmaker, a curator for the arts in Latin America, and now head of a civic think tank/laboratory for Mexico City.

I represent the sciences/health, literature, and global politics; she is the arts expert, the design/architecture person, a cultural force. We have different styles of working, but in reality, we overlap quite a bit. I speak Spanish and have worked in Central America. She has traveled in the Middle East. We’re both polyglots, crazy dancers, and global citizens, though we have strong predilections for our regions of origin.

What’s the thrust of the session?

Assefi: It’s about discarding assumptions about the Middle East, Latin America, and the way you think the world works in exchange for groundbreaking ideas that will hopefully inspire you to rethink politics, religion, art, peacemaking, the role of sports, underestimated economies and architecture, and even toxic environments.

Gómez-Mont: Exactly, that is a great description. I was interested in reformulating and rethinking certain gray areas we take for granted, and I wanted to focus on Latin America, on certain places and subjects that could be explored more thoroughly. We sought to make our speakers complement each other, understand how we could weave certain threads among individual narratives, regions and diverse disciplines. And diversity — of age, country of origin, religion, and so on — was important to us.

Can you describe your speakers?

Assefi: All are global citizens/multicultural. Each of them has taken on courageous work. The lineup include: architect and urbanist Teddy Cruz; explorer, writer and filmmaker Holly Morris; economic policy innovator Juan Pardinas; historian/political scientist Trita Parsi; performance artist Tania Bruguera; accidental theologist Lesley Hazleton; and founder of the Beirut Marathon, May El-Khalil.

We found our musician through two other TEDFellows, Meklit Hadero and Esra’a al Shafei. Dina el Wedidi is one of Meklit’s Nile Music artists and is featured in Esra’a’s MidEastTunes app. Through the Rolex Mentor and Protegee Arts Program, Dina has been paired with the famous Brazilian musician, Gilberto Gil. Dina seemed like a poetic fit for our session — the TED Fellow-link to discovering this brazen, beautiful, young woman singer-songwriter from the Middle East, who found her audience during the Arab Spring and is being influenced and mentored by a legendary Latin American musical force.

But we don’t want to give away our speakers’ topics. It’s more fun if you are surprised by our session. At a TED conference, one generally doesn’t know what each speaker’s idea worth spreading will be until show time!

Which speakers do you think are going to knock our socks off? Why?

Assefi: That’s a cruel question, like asking a mother to choose the favorite between her children! The truth is, if curated well, different speakers will wow different people. It depends on what’s happening in your life, what you’ve been thinking about lately, and how open you are to certain ideas. Of the four I’ve chosen, I can imagine each one of them blowing you away. I predict Gabriella feels the same.

Gómez-Mont: I feel the same. And one never knows until that fateful day when the crowd goes silent and the curtain goes up what will happen in that space between those words on paper and the voice on stage — between the careful planning and the happily reckless, often serendipitous, many times shifting, sometimes accomplice or sometimes trickster — reality.

TED Global, themed “Think Again,” kicks off on June 10 in Edinburgh, Scotland. See the full list of speakers, and get lots more information about attending at the conference website. And stay tuned to the TED Blog where we will be bringing you live coverage of the conference.

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In short: Rare Book School in session, Amelia Earhart crash site still a mystery

Here, some great finds from across the internet, for your reading pleasure:

Others may dream of the beach this summer, but we secretly wish we were at Rare Book School, a five-week long camp that brings together librarians and antiquarian enthusiasts at the University of Virginia. The school is taught by William Noel, who gave the gripping TEDTalk “Revealing the lost codex of Archimedes.” [NY Times]

Must. Listen. Now. Montell Jordan sings the news over at “That Headline is My Jam.” [msnNOW]

When French aristocrat Pierre de Frédy revived the ancient Olympic Games in 1896, he believed it was vital to stick with a less-athletic tradition of the Greek original — art competitions. [Mental Floss]

Writer Moe Tkacik has a bold idea for how to make money as a journalist these days — she has declared herself a “Web 2.0 Panhandlr” allowing, well anyone, to pay for her reporterly services. [Das Krap]

A group set out last month to prove a theory that Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan crash-landed on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro. Today, they have returned home empty-handed. [CNN]

Speaking of collecting data, David Johnson has sent rapper Jay-Z 262 emails over the course of two years, and believes Hova himself has read — even reread — each one. The story is a meditation on celebrity, access and online connection. [Buzzfeed]

Photo: Shutterstock

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Building Blocks: Session 3 at TEDGlobal2012

Click to watch the session-opening animation

It’s a truism that everything we know or think is the result of our past and our previous experiences. Yet it’s on these building blocks that we build our chances of achieving real progress and change. In this session, we wanted to introduce some of the world’s pre-eminent educators. They’re not all necessarily working in schools or with “students” as we might traditionally think of them, but each of these speakers is helping us to think in new and different ways.  

Coursera is an online education company that aims to democratize the education provided by the world’s elite universities. The company was co-founded by Stanford computer science professor (and MacArthur Genius) Daphne Koller, who is here to share more about the thinking behind her radical experiment to disrupt higher education. Here’s what she said >>

Despite his associations with high-profile universities such as NYU, Harvard and Stanford, Shimon Shocken‘s real interest lies in promoting an open-source approach to teaching computer science. He co-authored the book, The Elements of Computing Systems, while he is here to help us understand more about self-organized courses and classes.  [For a glimpse at a different part of Shocken's world, check out this talk filmed at TEDxTel Aviv in 2010, in which he discusses an outdoor program he started with Israel's young offenders.] Here’s what he said onstage >>

Beau Lotto describes himself as the “head misfit” of Lottolab Studio, the world’s “first public perception research space.” What does that mean, you ask? Scientist Beau Lotto has set up his lab inside of the Science Museum in London in order to bring science, the arts and education under one roof. Today, Lotto will discuss how this unconventional location has helped his work, while a former student will share her experience working with the team–the results of which were published in the prestigious Royal Society journal, Biology Letters. Here’s what Beau and Amy talked about onstage >>

Entrepreneur and author, Eddie Obeng founded Pentacle, the world’s first “Virtual Business School.” He’s going to talk about the speed of change — and how we need to deal with it. Read what he told us >>

It’s a big week for Karen Thompson Walker. Her first novel, The Age of Miracles, finally hits bookshelves after being the subject of a high-profile bidding war, not often waged by publishers these days. Walker eventually sold the book to Random House for a $1 million contract, but we’ll see no self-congratulation here. Instead, Walker will discuss fear–and how the nominally negative emotion can actually be a useful mechanism for imagination and creativity. Here’s what she talked about >>

To round off the session, we’ll welcome the inimitable Macy Gray, a Grammy Award-winning vocalist of distinction and, well, raspiness. Read about it >>

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Building Blocks: Session title animation for TEDGlobal 2012 Session 3

Mission statement: Ideas are born in different shapes, colors and ways to build our shape-shifting world.

Director’s statement: “The idea is to build an abstract paper world made of boxes. Out of each box an idea is born and spreads across the world. A side lifts up and voilà! Out comes the ‘idea.’” — Mandy Smith

CREDITS:
Director/ Art Director / Animator – Mandy Smith http://www.mandysmithwork.com/
DOP – Leon Hendrickx http://www.leonhendrickx.com/
Editor – Michael Moore http://cargocollective.com/mrmichaelmoore
Sound by Michael Kneebone at toolboxaudio.com
Agency: WE ARE Pi
Planner: Alex Bennett-Grant
Producer: Jamie Nami Kim
Creative Directors: Hobson-Chant

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April 16: Watch a TED session live online from Doha, Qatar

Next week, in Doha, Qatar, we’re launching a four-day-long workshop called TEDxSummit — where 700 TEDx organizers from around the world will meet to take classes and learn from one another how to make great local TEDx events.

And to kick off the summit, we’re throwing a session of TED — and inviting the world to watch live!

Mark your calendar for TEDxSummit Opening Night, a two-hour session featuring global TEDTalks stars and powerful, creative, funny voices from the Middle East. TEDGlobal’s own Bruno Giussani curated the program around this theme: “The Power of Reframing.”

The session happens on Monday, April 16, at 7:30pm AST / 4:30pm GMT / 12:30pm EDT, and will stream from this page.

Speakers include TEDTalks star and health-data guru Hans Rosling … boundary-breaking artist Raghava KK … TEDx teacher Diana Laufenberg … “solar cracking” expert Nesrin Ozalp … and the wonderful young singer Zain Awad!

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The City: Session 7 at TED2012

This year, the TED Prize has been given to a concept, The City 2.0. In this session, we reveal all, interspersed with a host of speakers who’ve dedicated their life and work to making our world’s cities as excellent as they can be.

In this session:

2011 TED Prize winner and street artist, JR shows the world its true face.

Economist, Edward Glaeser‘s work focuses on the role of cities as centers of idea transformation.

Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro. He is on a mission to ensure the Rio’s renaissance creates a positive legacy for all its citizens.

Suja Lowenthal is the vice mayor of Long Beach.

Gospel for Teens Program is a program of The Mama Foundation for the Arts and Vy Higginsen’s School of Gospel, Jazz and R&B Arts.

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Report from TED University Session 3

At the final session of TED University, we learned how to draw mindmaps, predicted a future in which buildings are self-assembling, and heard a touching story about a passenger’s life after the Hudson River plane crash. Here were some of the highlights:

Bill Gates talks about state budgets, corrupt processes, and what this means for our schools. Watch his talk here.

TreeHugger founder Graham Hill reflects on the joys of less and letting go of the extraneous: http://lifeedited.treehugger.com/

Google engineer Matt Cutts challenges us to do something new for 30 days, like biking to work or giving up sugar.

AnnMarie Thomas transforms science class by building kid-friendly circuit boards out of – yep, that’s right – play dough. Learn more about this project at http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/.

Photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson

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TED2011 Report – Session 12: Only If. If Only.

Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error: “We need to be able to look at the vastness and complexity of the universe and say, ‘Wow, I dunno. Maybe I’m wrong.’”

John Hunter, creator of World Peace Games says,  ”I allow them to learn, in a bloodless way, how to do what’s right.”

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert recruited some of his friends to speak for him: Dr. Dean Ornish, John Hunter, and his wife Chaz. ”Computer voices are not very sophisticated, but with my computer I can communicate more widely than ever before.”

Photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson

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TED2011 Report – Session 11: The Echo of Time

Jack Horner describes his work to recreate a living dinosaur from the genes of an unlikely ancestor: What we’re trying to do is take our chicken, modify it, and make a chickenosaurus.

Rajesh Rao on deciphering the controversial Indus script: If it looks like a linguistic script and it acts like a linguistic script, then perhaps we have a linguistic script on our hands.

Forget Guitar Hero. Tod Martin says, “Be a TED Hero. Prepare to give the talk of your life. And when a TEDx organizer asks you to do it, bring it.”

Harvey Fineberg argues for “neo-evolution: the new evolution that is not simply natural, but guided and chosen by us as individuals.”

Stanley McChrystal, former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, recalls an early military experience: “In one sentence, he lifted me, put me back on my feet, and taught me that leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure.”

Photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson

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TED2011 Report – Session 10: Beauty, Imagination, Enchantment

Béatrice Coron is a paper cutter: “I visualize my story … and as my image is already inside the paper, I just have to remove what’s not from that story.”

Sarah Kay shares her spoken word with TED and talks about the challenges and joys of poetry: ”I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that I’ve been.”

Kate Hartman makes whimsical wearables. Her Talk To Yourself Hat channels the sound of your own voice back into your hears when you speak out loud.

Shea Hembrey shares his world: ”I invented 100 artist from around the world. I figured out their bios, their passions in life, their artistic styles, and I started making their work.”

Singer Jason Mraz closed Session 10: ”I feel like gratitude is always what gets us to the next level.”

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TED U Session 2: Smiles, bravery and serendipity

At TED University Session 2 this morning, we discovered the science behind our smiles, witnessed a tale of a valiant shoe rescue, and heard about the “rich seed beds of serendipity.” Here are just a few of the highlights:

Googler Amit Sood used his “20 percent” time to develop the  Google Art Project, which transports us to museums of the world to explore timeless masterpieces up close and personal.

Candy Chang designs “I Wish This Was” stickers to empower a community voice in the transformation of empty storefronts. A few of our favorites: I Wish This Was… my produce market … real soul food …full of nymphomaniacs with PhDs.

Brian O’Sullivan gave us step-by-step directions on how to build a wind turbine, from the initial research on nearby wildlife to the assembly of the football field-sized blades.

All photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson

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Report from TED University Session 1

At TED University Session 1, we learned about modernist cooking … saw a flower unfold in sped-up time … met a woman who grows her own clothes … and heard one of the most exquisite musical instruments ever made. A few highlights from this session:

Cellist Joshua Roman, a TED Fellow, played his (borrowed) Stradivarius.

Nathan Myhrvold’s new cookbook Modernist Cuisine cuts food, pots, pans, even ovens in half to explain the science behind cooking. Here he’s explaining how he and his team got this shot of the inside of a pot of noodles.

TED Fellow Suzanne Lee, a fashion designer, describes the process of growing your own completely organic fabric. Including the jacket she’s wearing onstage.

Joe Crump from Razorfish studied digital development in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro — where, he says, the digital divide is dead: in Brazil, 9 out of 10 PCs are bought by the emerging class, many who live in the favelas themselves.

All photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson

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TED2011 report — Session 1: Monumental

It’s time for TED! Photo: TED / Robert Leslie

Astronaut Cady Coleman talks to the audience newly assembled in Long Beach, Palm Springs and all over the world, from her home in zero-gravity on the International Space Station. Watch her talk.

Then Gregory Groover Jr., from TED2011's house band, the Berklee City Music All-Stars, played us on.

Physicist Janna Levin: “I want to convince you that the universe has a soundtrack, and that soundtrack is played on space itself.” (Listen to the soundtrack of the universe.)

Chris Anderson talks to Sarah Marquis, who’s walking from Siberia to Antarctica, alone. She told him: “I don’t want people to get into nature. I want to get nature back into our lives.”

David Brooks: “Over the past few years, we’ve been given a deeper view of human nature, of who we are. Not from theology, but from brain science.” (Read HuffPo’s report on this talk.)

Composer and conductor Eric Whitaker describes his first time hearing Mozart: “My entire life I had seen in black and white, and suddenly everything was in shocking technicolor.”

Wadah Khanfar, the head of Al Jazeera, spoke to this extraordinary moment in the Arab world. He said: “The democratic revolution sweeping the Arab world is the best chance to see peace. Let us embrace it.”

Photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson, except photo 1: TED / Robert Leslie.

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