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Posts na categoria TEDxSP
Bringing citizens together
Nice to meet you, visitors from outside Brazil!
Exceptionally this post will be written in English (desculpa aí, amigos brasileiros!). Let me explain why:
This week, on May 26th, we’ll give a talk at the Gov 2.0 Conference in Washington DC, which is really really cool. We’ll be there introducing the American public to our project Votenaweb.com, which will soon be launched in other 4 countries! We’ll ask people there at the conference to visit our website. So we thought it would be polite to receive them with a post in English. Isn’t it cute?
Let me tell you then who we are. We’re a company created only a bit more than a year ago, to use technology to create civic engagement and – why not – make the world a better place. From then on we did so many things that it feels like we’ve been working for decades! We were among the people who brought TED to Brazil – we curated and organized the TEDxSP conference last November. We edit a cool magazine on values called Gotas – the first issue discusses transparency, the second one wants to make a concrete impact on a neighborhood. We are also about to launch a very cool and fun website called Duelo Tube, which lets youtube videos fight with each other! And we work for a state government (the state of Minas Gerais) providing information services to the public. Not to mention a hundred other projects we’ve been dreaming about.
Thanks for passing by. I hope you come back one day. If by any chance you need a hand from passionate people in Brazil, just let us know.
Por Denis Burgierman
“It is the beat of the black, of the slums”
The actress Regina Casé went on stage at TEDxSP to talk about difference. For her, those considered culturally and socially different, may in fact be as good as those regarded as traditional. The actress spoke about musical production in the outskirts of the cities in Brazil, as the funk from Rio, the electronic forró, and also of cultural manifestations in other countries like Mexico, France and Angola. In the project “My Suburb is the World”, Regina shows that the different, or independent, also creates ideas worth spreading. And more than that, they deserve to be legitimized as successful projects, which generate income and quality of life for people. And as she could not help, her entire speech was filled with good humor, provoking smiles and laughter amongst the audience.
Yes, we can
In the moment of her presentation at TEDx SP, the journalist Roberta Faria was so excited that she couldn’t even speak after left the stage. Neither could the audience. Her history was not only surprising but also created questionings expressed in the eyes of every participant. It looked like that every person on the audience was thinking: “I can also do it, I can”, right in the very spirit of TED.
Sorria, a magazine created by the publishing house Mol, is a perfect example that good ideas can and should be accomplished. “They are difficult, demand efforts and creativity”, the journalist and entrepreneur states, making sure to be always involved with what she likes. “I need to do things which I believe”. And it was because of her belief that she has founded Mol, whose history you can check on the video below.
How to solve the water problem?
It is nothing new to anyone that there are several regions in the world with difficulties to obtain drinking water. In Saudi Arabia, for example, there is really no water at all. Brazil does not suffer from this problem, even in its semi-arid region there is water, because there is rain. Besides, Brazil has the largest aquifer in the world, the Guarani. The question presented by the ad-man Danilo Mendes at TEDx SP was a solution to deliver water using technology. The idea was to produce water.
Not just did he think about it, but he also applied it. And he has invented a machine that makes water. Do you want to know how? Watch the video in which Danilo presents his machine at TEDx SP.
A pianist wearing All Star
Victor Araújo has been on the road for 20 years now, not only professionally, but in his life, with a career spanning 10 years, and four as a professional and a classical piano promise in the country. This may be a quantitatively short trail, but one that already draws great attention.
His great challenge is part of his greatest determination: to combine erudite with popular music, as he did at his performance at TEDx SP, with the intent to break down the prejudice that erudite music is difficult to comprehend.
An example, not necessarily because of his age, but because of his dedication and enthusiasm noticed in his eyes when he is on stage.
Riding and creating
He went on stage a little shy, but soon the designer from Rio de Janeiro, Flávio Deslandes, loosened up in order to share with the audience of TEDx SP his invention. He has designed and idealized a bike made of bamboo. Actually, he has made more than ten types of bikes using native bamboo from Brazil, moved by the ideal to create an instrument that would strengthen the harmonious relationship between bikes and the city.
Living in Denmark since 2000, Flávio has developed a bike for the brand Biomega and submitted that to a resistance test, in which a bike is submitted to a force greater and greater, until it breaks. The machine performing the test broke before the bike did, a sign of work, dedication and research on the idea. In the process, the designer even created special machines and tools to work with the material. According to him, “it’s necessary to see Brazil’s riches and to work with them, because we have a lot of creative people with excellent labour skills”.
The interesting thing is to effectively see the will-power and effort turning ideas into something concrete, as in the case of the bamboo bike.
November 17th, 2009
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Hangover and Magazine
Hangover.
That’s the word to define the mood of everyone involved in TEDx SP in the last few days. Everybody has that blurry look, that slow reaction, that dull expression, a half smile on the face. Geez. TEDx SP was super intense. 12 hours of excitement, new friends, an evident feeling that everything is possible, and that the world will start to change, the easy or the hard way. Of course, when the flood of ideasin our bloodstream stops, the body feels the abstinence.
To whoever went there, a hug. To whoever didn’t go, a relief: there will always be a next year.
But time to go back to reality.
How is everybody doing?
Let me to introduce myself. I’m Denis Russo Burgierman, journalist, last week I said good-bye to Editora Abril in order to come to work for WebCitizen. From now on, I will visit this blog at least once a week.
My role at WebCitizen isn’t very clear yet. Some say I’m the Content Director. I don’t really like this name too much – I don’t think it is useful to separate content from channel, or content from form. In this new world, these things walk hand in hand. It doesn’t really matter what contains what – what’s important is the message, what matters is the information and what its user can do with it. I’d rather say then that I’m the Information Director. Besides being more elegant, it sounds like a secret agent thing. (The other day I met a guy who has a very cool project called Architecture for Humanity whose job in the company is “Chief Eternal Optimist”, for the acronym to be CEO. He thinks we should create more cool titles for our positions. It’s a first step to enjoy our job better).
Well, whoever attended TEDx São Paulo got a very big yellow magazine. That’s the first issue of Gotas, which was already born as one of the best yellow covered magazines in Brazil. (If you attended the event but didn’t get one, please let us know: some kits were distributed before the magazine came from the printer.) Gotas is Webcitizen’s magazine. To participate in the creation of this independent project was an amazing experience, which left me radiant and frightened, sometimes both simultaneously. Take a look at the cover below.
Transparency is like a trail in the woods on a sunny Sunday after lunch. Everybody is up to it, but nobody wants to start. (continues on page 4)
Pretty, right?
The issue is thematic, and the theme for the first issue is transparency. Number 2 comes in February, 2010. The theme will be “stop talking, it is time to do”. Take a look at the last page:
We’ve got an idea for Gotas issue 2, which will come in February of 2010. The theme we imagined was: “Stop talking, it is time to do”. Then we’d invent a magazine that does things, instead of only discussing them. We thought that, instead of simply filling pages, we could truly intervene in the things of the world out there, registering them and only then put them on the magazine. Did you like the idea? Do you want to participate? Do you have other ideas? Suggestions about where and how could we intervene? Ideas about what could we do it? How can a collaborative creative team, in a short time and with not much money, cause a real impact? Guesses, ideas, insults, suggestions, threats, comments are all welcome by email denis@webcitizen.com.br
The invitation is for this blog’s readers. Send us ideas, please. We want to create a historical issue, a magazine to make us proud, to make things that never have been done before in the world, to become a case study, to inspire people. Finally, we want a magazine to relieve us from the TEDx abstinence syndrome. Let’s get to work, guys?
Ah!
A little bird told me that the first TEDx SP lecture goes online today. And they will start rocking from the start.
A big hug,
Denis
