Last year at TEDxAmsterdam, we were very happy to have the municipality Amsterdam with us in the person of Carolien Gehrels. Gehrels, alderperson for Economic Affairs, Art and Culture, spoke about the importance of the city to spread ideas.
Indeed, Amsterd
am attempts to find a balance between the individual and the collective hence creating a marketplace where ideas flourish and are brought into practice. Music to the ears of the crowd in the Stadsschouwburg!
Almost one year later, I spoke with Carolien Gehrels about her experience of TEDxAmsterdam: “To be honest, I wasn’t all that happy with my own talk. I did it from paper and I felt the text wasn’t exactly what I wanted to transmit.” Nevertheless, the audience responded very positively and the short clips about the difficulties that foreigners experience when they first come to live in Amsterdam evoked a lot of laughter.
Gehrels continues: “The atmosphere was very sparkling. There were many enthusiastic people, young and old. It gave the establishment a very positive spirit: ‘the next generation is going to be fine, they are truly trying to make the world more sustainable’”. Irene Mathijsen was the speaker that impressed her most with her talk on surgery: “At first, I didn’t know what to expect. Plastic surgery isn’t really a topic I’d sign up for, but I really liked the talk. I found it very compelling.”
During her own talk, Gehrels highlighted the example of AMS-IX, a facilitator of internet traffic since 1994, to illustrate the great potential of Amsterdam to attract ideas. Of course, Amsterdam is still stimulating small enterprises and creative people today. “To start, we created ‘breeding places’, where we supply offices and studios to startups and artists – I’m talking about the former Volkskrant building in Wibautstraat or the NSDM docks in Amsterdam North. I truly believe in Amsterdam as a dynamic city. There are a lot of geniuses and crazy people around here.”
Next to that, Amsterdam is working on a couple of initiatives, notably the Economic Development Board, Picnic and the Metrocampus. By these projects, Amsterdam aims to link administration, business and education institutes with the objective to stimulate the creative industry. And what about THNK, the Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership? This school of business, design, science and technology strives to form a community of creative leaders that can address the problems of the 21st century. In this way, Amsterdam is sure to stay the lively marketplace of ideas it has been for centuries. Gehrels: “And I want to call upon the TED community to work on implementing all these great projects that come out of Amsterdam.”
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