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TEDxAmsterdam Award

Where TEDxAmsterdam is about ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’, the TEDxAmsterdam Award is about ‘Ideas Worth Doing’. With 218 plans sent in for the 2011 TEDxAmsterdam Award, the prize for the best Idea Worth Doing 2012, our TED community proved to again be very rich in ideas. It was no easy task to narrow down all those great projects to just ten nominees. Luckily, we somehow managed to make a choice and on the 25th of November during the official TEDxAmsterdam Award 2011 ceremony MetFarm from John Apesos and Masud Hussein was declared the winner

In october 2011, all ten nominees were invited to present their idea on the 5th of November to the TEDxAmsterdam Award Jury, which had the professional opinions of:

- Jim Stolze: Initiator of TEDxAmsterdam
- Chris Buur: Main editor of the second section ‘V’ at the Volkskrant
- Carla Generaal: Winner TEDxAmsterdam Award 2010
- Rahul Gannamani: TEDxYouth participant, 14 year old

Our jury has judged all ideas on three criteria: 1. is it inspiring; 2. is it for the greater good; 3. does this idea need help (other
than financial support

The entries were judged on three criteria: It needed to be inspiring, be for the greater good and it must need human capital. The 2011 nominees which were ready to take the TEDxAmsterdam motto ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’ to the ‘Ideas Worth Doing’ level were:

• MetFarm from John Apesos and Masud Hussein: A plan to grow food in empty office buildings for not only making good use of the buildings, but also helping the environment by keeping transport to a minimum.

• Paypool from Adam Postma: An online joint-savings system to make saving money fun again.

• Stichting Lekker Stuk from Reni de Boer: A campaign to positively change the image of disabled people.

• WeGo from Daniel Leahy: A platform to make car sharing of a lot easier.

• Infosfeer Sustainable CHAINge from Jan-Govert van Gilst: A plan to start sustainable energy plantations in urban wastelands.

• KleanWorldWide from Peter Smith: A campaign to motivate people to get rid of street litter.

•  The Vegetarian Butcher from Lizzy Knip: A butcher who addresses the needs of a meatloving crowd but with environmentally friendly meat substitutes.

• Autitouch BV from Freena Eijffinger: A programme to improve the diagnosis process for autism.

•  1%CLUB from Anna Chojnacka: An international marketplace that links people, money and knowledge to projects of people in developing countries.

•  Text to Change from Josette de Vroeg: an SMS campaign to increase the knowledge about HIV and urge people to be tested.

De Volkskrant has written an article about the nominees in the edition of 5 November (in Dutch).

Article in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant about the ten TEDxAmsterdam Award 2011 nominees (November 5, 2011)

Article in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant about the ten TEDxAmsterdam Award 2011 nominees (November 5, 2011)

All great ideas which surely would make the world a little more inspiring, healthy and connected. Unfortunately, there could only be one winner. At the TEDevent on the 25th of November, a very special guest was asked to announce the winner MetFarm: Lara Stein, the director of the TEDx program at the TED office in New York.

John
Photo: Maurice Mikkers & Jan-Jaap Heine

An overjoyed John Apesos took the stage to enlighten the audience with his simple but efficient idea for a sustainable solution to the issue of food miles. He asked: “How do we feed the next generation without destroying the planet?” Answer: Just take the food production to the city! Taking advantage of recent developments in LED, hydroponics, and aeroponic technologies, argues John, will allow us to grow cheap, safe, high-quality food inside unused offices and empty industrial space. Consider a world where food travels 20 km instead of 200… Where food is no longer wasted in the food chain…There’s a global crisis in food production today, and it’s time we face this ‘other inconvenient truth’ as John calls it.


With the TEDxAmsterdam Award, MetFarm not only has a pretty trophy, but it is now officialy an Idea Worth Doing 2012, and can count on the human capital, support and access to the TEDxAmsterdam network to turn their idea into reality. Please follow John and the other nominees on their way from concept creation to concretely building their dreams. Or, even better, tweet or email your ideas to Jasper de Valk (@jasperdevalk) or contact the nominees directly to make their dream reality!.

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