This overview page will link you trough to the speaker you want to find out more about. All names below are confirmed speakers, but due to unforeseen circumstances the program might change during the event.

Alan McSmith

Alan McSmith is the founder of Wilderness Vision, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of the wild. For over 20 years he has served as a professional guide, having walked, poled & paddled through the wild-lands of six African countries. He has tind trails and safaris in the big game regions of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Swaziland. Alan McSmith Safaris was formed in 1999, pioneering walking trails and low-impact tented camps in the South African Lowveld. Through leading trails, key-note speaking and writing, Alan has dedicated his life to wilderness conservation.

More information about Alan McSmith.

Andrew Hessel

Andrew Hessel is the co-founder (along with Jayson Tymko and John Carlson), of the world’s first cooperative biotechnology company, the Pink Army Cooperative. This is an experimental biotechnology venture working to open source personalized cancer therapies. They are a socially-owned and backed biotechnology company out to make personalized therapeutics a reality. They have a new approach to drug development that doesn’t take 15 years. Their mantra isn’t one drug for one million people; it is ‘one person, one cancer, one treatment.’

More information about Andrew Hessel.

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a psychologist and author of numerous articles and books on the subject of wisdom and contemporary society. He is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College. He frequently publishes editorials in the New York Times applying his research in psychology to current events.

More information about Barry Schwartz.

Carla Generaal

In 2010, a team of students from Delft University embarked on an ambitious project – getting fresh water to Somaliland. Combining wind energy and new technology for water purification, the Wind Drinker is an easy to install and maintain machine that can serve a whole community. Report on a year of hard work in one of the world’s most desolate regions.

David Lentink

David Lentink works in the experimental zoology group at Wageningen University. For his PhD (Cum laude) he studied optimal fluid mechanic strategies in animal swimming and flight at Wageningen with Johan van Leeuwen and with Michael Dickinson at Caltech. During his postdoc he worked on bird flight with Andrew Biewener at Harvard. He is fascinated by the implications of Newton’s law of motion on nature and technology, especially in animal locomotion.

More information about David Lentink.

Diederik Jekel

After receiving his degree in solid state physics and graduating on a superconductivity experiment, Diederik Jekel is on a mission to image scientific ideas in such a way that everyone (especially non-scientists) can grasp the fundamental concepts and have an idea of what science essentially is.

Esra’a Al-Shafei

Esra’a Al Shafei is the founder and Executive Director of MideastYouth.com, whose mission is to amplify diverse and progressive voices advocating for change throughout the Middle East and North Africa using digital media. She is also the founder of CrowdVoice.org, a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing information which grew at a massive scale after the Arab Spring.

More information about Esra’a Al-Shafei.

Eveline Crone

Eveline Crone is full professor in the Developmental and Educational Psychology Unit of the Institute of Psychology at Leiden University. She obtained her master’s degree in developmental psychology from the University of Amsterdam, based on a one-year research internship at the University of Pittsburgh where she focused on reward processing in ADHD. She received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam, her dissertation entitled, ‘Performance monitoring and decision-making: Psychophysiological and developmental analyses’. After her PhD, she spent 2 years as a post-doctoral researcher at UC Davis.

More information about Eveline Crone.

Gary Wolf

Gary Wolf is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, where he writes regularly about the culture of science and technology. He is also the co-founder (with Wired magazine colleague Kevin Kelly), of ‘The Quantified Self,’ a blog about ‘self-knowledge through numbers.’

About the pioneering of ‘The Quantified Self,’ Gary says that it is a collaboration of users and tool makers and serves as a regular ‘show & tell’ meet-up in several cities, making self-tracking easier. In the past, the methods of quantitative assessment were laborious and arcane. He says that you had to take measurements manually and record them in a log; you had to enter data into spreadsheets and perform operations using unfriendly software; you had to build graphs to tease understanding out of the numbers. Now much of the data-gathering can be automated, and the record-keeping and analysis can be delegated to a host of simple Web apps. The makes it possible to know oneself in a new way.

More information about Gary Wolf.

Jim Stolze

Jim Stolze is a Dutch entrepreneur, author and public speaker. After being at the TED Conference in California (first as a guest and later as a speaker) he fell in love with the concept. In 2009 he got the chance to bring TEDx to The Netherlands and organized -with his team- the first TEDx Amsterdam.

Since 2011 he was asked by TED.com to be one of the twelve “TEDx Ambassadors” worldwide. Today Jim Stolze will be the master of ceremony .

More information about Jim Stolze.

Joris Luyendijk

Joris Luyendijk is a non-fiction writer and journalist. A pioneer in innovative journalism, he is currently writing the experimental JLbankingblog about the World of Finance for the Guardian. The aim is to take a truly complex issue, in this case finance, and to use modern technology plus anthropological methods to make that issue accessible, interesting and perhaps even entertaining to complete outsiders.

His four books each sold extremely well, and picked up the odd prize and one was even translated into a dozen languages. Joris Luyendijk was the moderator of the first edition of TEDxAmsterdam in 2009. His personal motto is: ‘hope is the fuel that help us drive our cars even further into the swamp.’

More information about Joris Luyendijk.

Harald Doornbos

After 42 years of absolute power, terror and life in a brutal fantasy world, the Libyan people decided enough is enough. Harald Doornbos presents an eyewitness account of the Arab Spring’s most bloody uprising. About people’s power, about an end to tyranny and about losing and gaining everything you love most in life.

Hassina Sherjan

Hassina Sherjan is a consummate professional with over twenty-one years of knowledge and experience in education, business, communication, and journalism. She is the co-author of “Toughing It Out in Afghanistan” (with Michael O’Hanlon), published Feb 2011. Drawing partly on personal experiences, O’Hanlon and Sherjan outline the tactics being used to protect the Afghan population and defeat the insurgents. They discuss ongoing efforts to reform the Afghan policy, to run a better prison system for detainees, to enlist the help of more of Afghanistan’s tribes, and to attack corruption.

More information about Hassina Sherjan.

Henkjan Honing

Prof. dr Henkjan Honing holds a KNAW-Hendrik Muller chair in Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam and conducts his research under the auspices of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), and the University of Amsterdam’s Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam (CSCA). He is known as a passionate researcher in this new interdisciplinary field that gives us fundamental insights in the cognitive mechanisms underlying musicality. Honing has authored over 150 international publications in the area of music cognition and music technology. He recently published a book for the general public entitled, ‘Iedereen is muzikaal. Wat we weten over het luisteren naar muziek’ (Nieuw Amsterdam, 2009), published in English as ‘Musical Cognition: A Science of Listening’ (Transaction Publishers, 2011).

Henkjan Honing will argue that we all share a predisposition for music. Examples range from the ability of newborns to perceive the beat, to the unexpected musical expertise of ordinary listeners. The evidence will show that music is second nature to most human beings, both biologically and socially.

More information about Henkjan Honing.

Henrik Schärfe

Henrik Schärfe is Director of the Center for Computer-mediated Epistemology at Aalborg University in Denmark. He is also the proud owner of the Geminoid-DK, the latest addition to the line of geminoids, an ultra-realistic android that look exactly like its master.

Schärfe describes the Geminoid as his body number 2 and as the ultimate thinking tool. Few are left untouched by meeting the android, who frequently fuels deep questions about our own existence. Faced with a machine in an unmistakingly human form, it is hard not to think about the foundations of Human Nature.

More information about Henrik Schärfe.

Het Nationale Ballet

Het Nationale Ballet will open TEDxAmsterdam 2011 in a unique and spectacular way. The dancers will work together and portray what Human Nature stands for. Over the course of 50 years, The Ballet has developed into a leading dance group with a unique character and a rich repertoire. The group has a tradition of innovation and works with dancers from all over the world. Their performances are renowned across the globe with well received shows in New York, Beijing and Moscow.

More information about Het Nationale Ballet.

Irene Rompa

A tireless supporter of sustainability, Irene Rompa shares her passion for great food and green companies, and will tell you more about how TEDxAmsterdam is doing its share to keep the world in shape.

Louise Fresco

A powerful thinker and globe-trotting advisor on sustainability, Prof. dr. ir. Louise Fresco will present her thoughts on human nature and our planet, based on the day’s talks.

Pep Rosenfeld

Pep Rosenfeld is one of the founders of Boom Chicago, Artistic Director and co-creator of their current productions ‘Social Media Circus’ and ‘9/11 Forever.’ He was the host of TEDxAmsterdam 2010, and returns this year as a speaker. Rosenfeld is a political junkie, interested in current events in America, the Netherlands and Europe.

More information about Jon ‘Pep’ Rosenfeld.

Peter van Uhm

Peter van Uhm was born in Nijmegen, the Netherlands in 1955. In 1972, after his secondary education, he attended the Infantry officer training course at the Royal Military Academy in Breda. After training, he was assigned as platoon commander to 48 Mechanised Infantry Battalion. After having been a platoon commander at the Royal Military School in Weert in 1978, Van Uhm returned in 1979 to 48 Mechanised Infantry Battalion, where he was initially deputy company commander and later company commander.

More information about  Peter van Uhm.

Pieter van de Rest

As the recipient of a donor heart, Pieter van de Rest was given a new lease on life. His talk is about the need to express gratitude and about organ donation as the ultimate form of recycling. Saving someone’s life when yours has ended is a matter of love, respect for life, solidarity and responsibility. In our present age of medical prosperity new ethical questions arise.

Raaf Hekkema/Raaven

Raaf Hekkema is a multiple prizewinner musician with an adventurous spirit. Raaf Hekkema is a founding member of Calefax Reed Quintet (since 1985), for which he has made hundreds of arrangements, many of which were recorded on CD. Calefax described as a ‘classical ensemble with a pop mentality,’ has played in the major concert halls across the world, appeared on international radio and television and has produced numerous cds. Calefax has won numerous prizes and distinctions.

From the more recent ensemble Raaven, a pop style baroque, 17th century music style with colourful and sweeping versions, Raaf Hekkema is going to give us a taste of the zesty, ecstatic, lyric, melancholic and sometimes rough, raw or weird. Raaven plays as authentic as can be – on today’s instruments with the mindset of the here & now.

More information about Raaf Hekkema.

Yahay Alabdeli

In 2010 Yahay Alabdeli approached TEDxAmsterdam with a dream – to realise a TEDx event in his home town of Baghdad. In the face of war and reconstruction,TEDxBaghdad wants to inspire and stimulate initiatives that can improve lives. A short report on a dream come true.

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