Last year, Emma Bruns proved that if you have an interesting idea, it’s all you need to be on the TEDxAmsterdam stage. Only 22 at the time, Emma is a medical resident who charmed the audience not only with her stunning red dress, but also with her simple yet clever idea to memorize important medical procedures with music. By playing a classic Dutch children’s song “Op een Onbewoond Eiland“, accompanied by first aid lyrics on what to do when someone is having an heart attack, this unorthodox method turned the audience all smiles.

“It was wonderful to see that the idea that I came up with and videotaped in my attic in the middle of the night got so many people interested”, says Emma. “After my talk I have been in touch with some wonderful people. Olivier van den Eynde for example, who I met during the break. We didn’t only discuss my TEDxAmsterdam talk, but also Stichting M.O.E.T.: a charity that helps build schools in South-Africa and that I am now personally involved in. On the spot he promised to donate a bunch of computers, and he kept his word.”

“That’s the one thing I’ll remember from TEDxAmsterdam: the great atmosphere where it’s not about where you come from or what you do, but about what your ideas are and about how you want to realise them.”

It didn’t stop there though, Emma also met Hans Nijenhuis (chief editor NRC Media) through Yasha Lange (chief editor of  De Groene Amsterdammer). These meetings ended in Emma now writing a monthly column for the daily nrc.next ,and inspired her to start writing her first, yet to be published, children’s book. “It was the energy, talking with such a mixed crowd and hearing different perspectives on a wide variety of topics that inspired me greatly. After my medical internship I will get back to my idea and make it work,” promises Emma.

TEDxAmsterdam is all about putting the right people together to create opportunities; and we love stories like this. Do you have your own TEDxAmsterdam success story that we should know about? Please share them with us by emailing sasha@tedxamsterdam.nl

See Emma’s talk below (only 3 minutes)

TEDxAmsterdam: Emma Bruns on Melody Memories from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.

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During TEDxAmsterdamLIVE those TED-fans enjoyed the live stream coming from the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford and co-created an unforgettable event themselves. A wonderful group of volunteers made this possible.

The group picture taken by Claudio Encina

It was thanks to the effort of Saskia Kok, Nephtalie Demei, Martin Voorzanger, Antoinette Hoes, Maarten Wolvekamp, Saskia Maas, Jane Tjon Tjauw Liem, Gabrielle de Nijs Bik and Claudio Encina that we had such a great time…and such a lovely program!

Tuesday

• Introduction by Jon Rosenfeld -artistics director BoomChicago
• Musical performance by Noam Vazana
• Watching live TEDGlobal session 1
• Surprise performance of Merlijn Twaalfhoven (composer)
• Watching TEDGlobal session 2

Even the food was delicious. Jane and Maarten enjoy their sponsored soup

Wednesday

• Introduction by Jim Stolze -founder/organizer TEDxAmsterdam
• Watching TEDGlobal session 3 “Found in Translation”
• Live performance of Pim Betist (Africa Unsigned)
• Watching TEDGlobal session 4 “Irrational choices”
• Audience participation: what’s your favorite TED-talk and why?
• Watching TEDGlobal session 5 “Healthier Together”
• Live deejay act DJake
• Live performance Michiel Drijber (Fun as a binding factor)
• Watching TEDGlobal session 6 “Different by design”

Singer / poet Leslie Ebony on stage

Thursday

• Introduction by host Arjan Amin
• Watching TEDGlobal session 7 “Creatures”
• Live performance Anouk Piket “Dare to Dream”
• Live performance Jasper van Impelen “Inner Superhero”
• Watching TEDGlobal session 8 “Adventures in Fairness”
• Musical performance of Leslie Ebony & Stefano Bocconi
• Presentation by Monique van Dusseldorp about TEDxAmsterdam 2010
• Watching TEDGlobal session 9 “The unknown brain”
• Live performance Roderik van Grieken “The power of debating”
• Watching TEDGlobal session 10 “Who’s the teacher?”

Friday

• Introduction by host Pim Betist (Africa Unsigned)
• Watching TEDGlobal session 11 “The Tiny Blue Dot”
• Special performance by Harmen van Doorn (Founder PIF-World)
• Watching TEDGlobal sessoin 12 “Waging Peace”
• Audience participation: what’s your favorite TED-talk and why?

Some quotes from visitors:

Salmaan Sana about audience participation:
“By the end of the days, I was able to chat with many people during the breaks. Some stories we heard from the crowd watching were incredibly inspiring, in particular one we heard on Friday from Yahay (@yahay) pursuing his dream organise a TEDx in Iraq! Wow!! He received huge applause, left some of us a little emotional and now has a lot of support in his future ventures from the people attending.”

And finally Lia Hesseling – van den Hooven:
“I was a bit down and went three days to Boom Chicago to follow the live stream of the TED conference in Oxford. I have never before listened and watched that intensively to speeches. I am inspired, updated en motivated. I see life in general and my life especially in a much larger perspective. Thanks for the inspiration and please invite me for TEDx Amsterdam in November! P.S. I was the (only!) elderly lady with the grey hair”

.

TEDx fans and soccer fans in central Amsterdam

When we organised TEDxAmsterdam for the first time in November 2009, we had a waiting list of over 4000 people, all keen to attend… and of course we wanted to include everyone. So we organised a live internet stream for all those interested out there (which we’re doing again this year).

We also offered a high resolution web stream to anyone who was keen to organise a live ‘’simulcast” event, bringing people together to watch together. So as a result, in over 30 locations across the Netherlands, people came together to see TEDxAmsterdam on the big screen. Our simulcast effort was a roaring success!

Big TED, as it’s affectionately known (in Long Beach, California) is also connected to a single simulcast event called TED Active in Palm Springs. But TEDGlobal, TED’s sibling event in Oxford, took the ”Amsterdam approach” for the first time this year (ah, well, that’s what we like to think anyway…). All TEDx organizers were offered the chance to host a TEDxLive — a gathering around a live webcast of the TED Global conference.

And so we did. At Boom Chicago, a comedy club in Amsterdam, TEDxAmsterdamLive offered TEDGlobal on the big screen, combined with independent programming during the breaks. We had a few wonderful days – and our experiences at Boom Chicago absolutely confirm the value of a simulcast event.

- seeing talks on a big screen has a much bigger effect as seeing them on your laptop. Bigger image and better sound quality really do the talks more justice. (In a way, you actually have a better experience than sitting in the live audience, because you have a much better look of the speaker, although of course nothing beats being there yourself).

- seeing talks together is sweet. It’s not even so much about ”networking” and meeting other people, just sitting in a room with others and watching something together is nice. The sound of an audience agreeing, some people laughing, occasionally a round of applause even and so on.

- A simulcast event is less demanding than sitting in a live audience, so depending on the organisers’ views, it can be ok to check your mails, do some work on your laptop etc. Not everyone can take days off to witness an event, but getting together in a rather informal way, makes it easier for lots of people to at least spend some time on TED.

So what happened at TEDxAmsterdam Live? See the next blog post by Jim Stolze with a more detailed account.

And are you interested in hosting your own simulcast event on 30 November? Drop a line to Albert-Jan Tebbe, who will be delighted to assist you with your plans.

More reports:

• TED: Scenes from the first TEDxLive event
• TEDx: TEDxLive Events around the world
• TED: Coverage of TED Global
• Big City Blog: Right said TED
• Marketingfacts: Waarom je naar TEDxAmsterdam Live zou gaan (in Dutch, with video interview!)

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On stage: Pim Betist
Joining TEDxAmsterdam Live on Wednesday afternoon is Pim Betist, Dutch entrepreneur and the founder of Sellaband and Africa Unsigned, initiatives that allow fans to invest in the projects of their favourite musicians.

With beautiful music playing in the background, Betist shortly introduces himself by sharing with the audience the turn of events that led him to starting his own business a few years ago. As a sales manager working for Shell, he was sent to a leadership-development workshop at the end of which participants were asked to share with one another what they had learnt. Betist revealed he had learnt a few things: He didn’t like this job, he was therefore going to leave Shell and start his own record lable.

Two weeks later he had traded his canal house and lease car for an anti-squat home and a scooter, but felt happier than ever and at the beginning of his career in trying to change the music industry. The foundation of Sellaband became a huge hit and 36 acts raised over 50.000 dollars in support of their music and albums. However, as he points out, raising funds turned out to have had more to do with good marketing than making the best music and musicians were still not picked up by radio and television. Betist began to feel unhappy again and left Sellaband, after which he started working with his current passion: The discovery and promotion of The New African Sound.

Africa Unsigned offers a trampoline for unknown African musicians and a means for music lovers to offer support to their favourite artists. How? By investing money, which in turn gives them the ability to listen to the music and earn half of the profits after an album releases. Betist truly believes this approach of giving power to the consumer is *the* way to go with projects in all kinds of areas. Sellaband proved nearly 3 million dollars could be raised for unknown artists. Besides, Africa has great potential but is wrongly ignored in today’s music industry.

Crowd funding could be the future of music and have a tremendous impact on society. Africa is an ‘open lake waiting to be discovered’.

Information about this speaker
Pim Betist, founder of Africa Unsigned, also created online label SellaBand, attracting music fans to invest and empower unsigned artists. More than 3 million dollars were invested in unsigned talent and around 50 artists “crowdfunded” $50,000 to record and release their album. Pim was nominated Dutch Direct Marketing Man of the year in 2008 and won the title of best speaker at MIE, Holland’s largest marketing conference in 2008. In January 2010 he was listed in Management Team as one of Holland’s top 25 creative business people.

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TEDGlobal 2010 And Now the Good News. In addition to the annual conference in the US, the TEDGlobalConference is held each year in Oxford, England – an event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. This year’s conference will focus on exploring the shocking undercurrent of good news just below the surface of today’s troubling headlines. Speakers from a wide range of disciplines will be participating – from bloggers to artists to astronomers! Attendees have called it “the ultimate brain spa” and “a four-day journey into the future”. Click here to learn more

TEDx Amsterdam Live
Last year was the first TEDx event in Amsterdam, the x meaning a local, self-organized event supported by TED. It created a buzz that now brings a group of TED Addicts together to organize a four day live streaming event of TEDGlobal 2010 this July. The organization of TEDx Amsterdam Live includes Jim Stolze, founder of TEDx Amsterdam and Boom Chicago co-owner, Saskia Maas.

Tuesday, July 13
14:00-18:30: Kick off event, featuring guest speakers, music and TEDGlobal 2010 (Oxford) streamed live. Host is Boom Chicago co-owner, artistic director and comedian Jon Rosenfeld. Special performances by singer Noam Vazana and composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven.

Wednesday, July 14

8:45-18:30: All day TEDGlobal 2010 (Oxford) streamed live combined with special live speakers. On Wednesday the host of the day is TEDx Amsterdam founder, author of How to survive your Inbox, and public speaker Jim Stolze. Special performances by Pim Betist (Africa Unsigned), DJake en Michiel Drijber (Iedereen elke dag plezier).

Thursday, July 15
8:45-18:30: All day TEDGlobal 2010 (Oxford) streamed live combined with special live speakers. On Thursday the day will be hosted by poet, singer and performer Arjan Amin. Special performances by Jasper van Immelen (Inner Superhero), singer Leslie Ebony and Roderik van Grieken (Debatacademie). And TEDxAmsterdam Program Director Monique van Dusseldorp will present some first information on the plans for TEDxAmsterdam on 30 November!

Friday July 16

8:45-14:00: TEDGlobal 2010 (Oxford) streamed live

14:00-18:30: Closing event The Best of TED, where we will show the most inspiring TED talks from the past as selected by the audience.

Information:
The event is free. The €5,- reservation fee per person per day is for a welcome drink and a delicious treat. Boom Chicago is based on the Leidscheplein. Click here to reserve your seat online.

TEDx Amsterdam isn’t just another conference, it’s an experience. And if someone knows that very well, it’s Marian Spier, Vice President of the TEDxAmsterdam Foundation. She’s also in charge of the Experience Team and strives to make TEDx Amsterdam one of the most impactful gigs to hit Amsterdam. Not just for the attendees, also for the folks who are watching at simulcast locations. “TED has become a game changer. With TEDx Amsterdam, we want to help attendees to become the world’s next game changers,” she says. Her secret? “Delegate, delegate, delegate! I give the Experience Team the opportunity to come up with their own ideas and concepts. I won’t ever restrict them. Instead, I’d rather help them to shape ideas and combine them in a perfect mix.”

All experience-related matters regarding TEDxAmsterdam (the website, book, goodie bag and so much more) are part of Marian’s remit. “I have to make sure our strategy is in place and we’re running like a well-oiled machine before and after the conference in November. Last year we focused on simply getting the word out that we’d arrived; this year our task is to explain what TED and TEDxAmsterdam is all about – think of it as a deep dive into the world of TEDx.”

“It’s a really multi-disciplinary team from a range of backgrounds – a melting pot of experience and insight. Everybody brings his or her unique background to the project, and it’s working so well as everybody’s enthusiastic,” says Marian.

The mission that bonds these creative folks? That must be ‘ideas worth spreading’ right? “Naturally,” says Marian, “but our Media Liaison James Veenhoff had a good take on it. He said it during a brainstorm – and I loved it right away – TEDx Amsterdam is about spreading ideas, not business cards.”

“TEDxAmsterdam Challenges is a great project we launched last week,” says Marian, “and it’s a great opportunity for our fans to attend the event this year without having to go through the invitation process – which is complex for an event like ours. TED’s slogan is Ideas Worth Spreading, but Challenges is about ‘Ideas Worth Doing.’ I’m very curious to see what kind of ideas will come up to help to improve the world. I’m expecting a quite a few ‘pearls’ from people who do great things.”

This ‘doing factor’ is is what makes TED conferences so appealing, says Marian. “During a TEDxAmsterdam talk, people present some really strong and well-thought through ideas. I’m of the opinion that we really don’t need to look to America or the UK for inspiration – wonderful things happen right here in Amsterdam.”

And what’s Marian’s vision on working with professionals who volunteer for TEDxAmsterdam? Marian: “I love working with highly passionate people who often just fell on our lap, either via via or through email – we get a lot of enquiries from people who want to be a part of the event. I don’t believe in turning to the ‘guru’s’ of marketing or advertising – we have a creative family who all work together to produce some great work to support the event.”

Marian has her finger in a number of pies, you could say, and ‘day job’ is as Manager of Amsterdam’s Institute of Interactive Media. She’s also a lecturer in cross media and is responsible for developing international programs and partnerships with universities and companies abroad. A few years ago, it was at this job that Marian first came in contact with TED. “It came from a British colleague”, she recalls.

“He told me and I watched marketeer and blogger Seth Godin talking about standing out. I immediately got the value of TED, also for my students. Because of TED’s extensive archive, they can look up almost any theme: marketing, design, how to pitch, how to succeed in their careers. It’s inspirational and makes them think.”

“One day, I asked my media students ‘What’s your ‘Purple Cow’?” That is, how can you stand out in the crowd with the current information overload, without irritating others. It’s a very relevant topic and TED makes it visible for everybody.”

What’s one of your core value’s of life? “I truly believe it’s hard work to reach your goal. The book Outliers: The Story of Success by TED speaker Malcolm Gladwell has been a great inspiration to me. Just working hard isn’t enough. Your environment and culture should also co-operate to help you succeed. But will people allow that? Like TEDxAmsterdam in 2009. A lot of people facilitated our success. Otherwise there wouldn’t be TEDxAmsterdam.”

Marian would like TEDxAmsterdam to enhance out of the box thinking, another value that she’s attracted to. “Whether you’re a marketer, designer, scientist, farmer or carpenter, we all work towards our goals: to improve life, our habits, our house, everything. TED is not about politics or religion, TED is a channel or platform to inspire change.”

Marian’s favorite TED talks are: Majora Carter’s tale of urban renewal, Isaac Mizrahi on fashion and creativity and Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success, “Some are real eye openers and have changed the way I think. Those definitely stuck in my memory.”

One of Marian’s peculiar quirks is that she can paint in 17th century style. “I had never dreamed that I would be able to paint, or that I was even a creative being. But I have cultivated and nourished my creativity.”

As if that’s not enough, she’s almost finished her first book Nieuwe Geluiden (New Sounds). This book provides insight into the big changes in the current media landscape that affect the role of the consumer and advertiser. Any other professional ideas for the future? “Yes definitely, but I spoke to a TED speaker recently and he said that one shouldn’t mention ideas to soon [laughs], it’s scientifically proven that your ideas won’t come true! …So if you don’t mind I’ll stay silent on that one!”

Want to be part of Marian’s Experience team? There is currently an open call for a film-maker/editing team to shoot a special series of shorts as part of the communications program. Send Marian an email with your experience and portfolio links: marian@tedxamsterdam.nl