Fold tHe boX (3)

The Jack Klaff session had some weird vibes: laughing one minute, getting completely thrown off the scent the next and ending with a chilling finale. Klaft is a South African born Princeton professor/actor who was also involved in the Starlab initiative (as is Serguei by the way) in Brussels. I'm not sure I know what he talked about in the end ... but he got us sitting on the tip of our chairs.

He was followed by John Engel, production manager in the movie business and author of Uncommon Sound, a history of the guitar since the 1920's with a focus on all those ground-breaking left-handed guitar players like himself. He introduced us to another lefthanded guitar player, Djamel Laroussi, Algerian-French, who produced some trancelike sounds from his guitar (with the strings upside down) and who got the audience joining him in clapping and singing ... sort of, anyway.

I missed the last part, so I didn't get to see Catherine Verfaillie (which is a pitty), nor R.U.Sirius (behind the 10Zenmonkeys blog) nor Noam Perski (who, I read on Twitter made this equation: all datacenters in the world have an energy consumption of 2% which is more than the aviation industry worldwide) , Calligrafitti (who probably designed the awfull TEDx t-shirts) or Paul Collier. And I don't know either whether the missing speakers (Pedro Brugada, the heart surgeon? Caroline Gabriel? ) eventually showed up.

I wouldn't call it Burn the Box, and I do realize that when we think TED, we think TED.com and all those really really great guests they seem to have an endless stock of. It was certainly worth the trip, however. And absolutely to be repeated next year, with more possibilities for interaction (tweets on a screen for example and have speakers react to them if they want to)

I haven't figured out what the incentive was for those like me who paid double the amount of the 50€ fee ... and I haven't found any information yet on the TEDxBrussels website (movies, slideshows, ..) so I'm guessing it will come, eventually.

I hope.

Fold tHe boX (2)

The afternoon sessions had a much more TED.com-feel to them. A fascinating though barely understandable Serguei Krasnikov, straight from Tintin in the USSR on building time-machines (and explaining that you cannot go back to the past to kill your younger self and stuff like that). He was followed by the famous Conrad 'mathematics' Wolfram, rooting for a new way of teaching children maths. (Why does everybody always say they need to know the basics? They need to know how to calculate by hand, from the head? Do we need those basics when working with a pc or driving a car? Do we teach a todler that a cat is a fourlegged feline mammal with an aversion to water or do we let him play with a kitten? Why not teach our children how to use the tools that exist to understand math on a conceptual level?)
And he is , of course, the father of the Wolfram Alpha search engine that could perfectly answer the following question 'what was the weather like when John Brown was born'.

It got even more hilarious with Marc Millis, former head of Nasa's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project ... on stuff like colony ships, travelling for 120.000 years when looking for an habitable planet ('if homosapiens build a ship and left when they originated, they haven't arrived yet'), the need for energy to sustain the trip and other cool ideas. In short: @ one point we will really need to get off this planet so we should be getting on with it.

Fold tHe boX (1)

Yesterday's TEDxBrussels event 'Burn The Box' in the European Parliament left me with mixed feelings. It was fun to listen to hear Michel Bauwens (an old university buddy) starting about his bad Karma day. First a trip from hell from Thailand where he lives followed by his laptop disappearing. It wasn't so much the laptop he was worried about he told me during the break but the reaction of his wife on hearing about it ... We listened to Negroponte rooting for his 'one laptop per Child project' and to Karel De Gucht being interviewed (again) too long about Van Rompoy and too short about what was really important (aid to developing countries).

It got really interesting when Dambissa Moyo talked about Dead Aid and did that splendidly, seated in one of the easy chairs, no need for cues or paper notes. Marc Van Montagu surprised by being as emotional as ever when talking CGO's and about all those great ideas that could fairly simply help developing countries grow their own food.

Really disappointing was Clayton Schaeffer. Not a gifted speaker, reading notes: undoubtedly the subject was very relevant but I don't think anyone understood what it was all about ... something to do with landtitles, microfinancing, registries, rights of the poor, help get rid of charity (the 9 trillion dollar question in the title being the overall worth of all assets of the poor).

David McCandless entertained the crowd with a great exposé on the largescale information overflow and how to manage it. His theory: use our ability to visualize data to help us with that. A very interesting and practical view of the visualization of abstract data, in order to detect trends, and make the data more readily available to anyone.

The notion of “awareness” is based on some key factors: our vision, our taste, our sight, … The combination of these allows us to combine those senses into something we are “aware of“. He illustrated it with some real cool graphs that, indeed, say it all. One of them I distinctly remember having seen somewhere before is posted here. But maps like the Map of the Internet are typical for the stuff he talks about.

But all in all: no Burn The Box stuff, not really inspiring, no wow ... yet.

Let's materialise (2)

Afterthought. This amazing chair is actually called AI. Not the movie, no. Why AI? Because the design (surface, sotfness, comfort, ...) and the functionality (being able to support up to 120 kilos) is human. But it's the computer that finally designed the chair, or, to quote from the website:

Like the biological structure and mechanism of bone, the artificial intelligence software knows where to create sufficient support. The AI stool is an intelligent product that grows in free space with an artificial intelligence 'DNA' code. This code contains all of the information required to ensure that the object will transform perfectly from a virtual design into a 3D object that achieves the optimum strength or intelligent softness whilst maintaining the desired visual aesthetic.

Personally I think this is a little bit .... spooky. But hey, cool stuff, right?

Let's materialise ...

Last night's BGGD19 was impressive; the venue was the offices of Materialise, best known for its activities in the field of rapid industrial and medical prototyping. Materialise has acquired the position of market leader for 3D printing and Digital CAD software in addition to being a major player in medical and dental image processing and surgery simulation. Last night however, focus was on the MGX division for design products. Cool stuff! And unbelievable how it's produced, with one machine creating an object in one long session (depending on the object: from a couple of hours to a couple of days), layer by layer, no assembly or waste or long production lines needed . Very impressive. Check them out or keep track of what they are doing, it's worth it.

Key note speaker Dominique D'heedene enlightened the BGG's with a presentation of DesignArenas, an e-tailer specializing in bringing hotel luxury and lifestyle at home. DesignArenas partners with luxury and design hotels, build collections of interior design articles used in the partner hotels and builds a compelling visual experience through the webshop. The interesting thing is that she has her own collection Arenas as well. And some of us will know her as an IT Architect with IBM. Fascinating combination of jobs!