Aproximando cidadãos
Posts com a tag TEDx SP
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
Enough talking, let’s start doing
Look how fun is that project we have started. We’re still open to people wishing to participate: next meeting is on Saturday, at 9:30am, Tendal da Lapa.
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.
Everything simple and shared
Data revolution, more and more, always and non-stop. Organizing all the currently available information for a better understanding of our society isn’t an easy task, be it to count public transport data, or even to understand a soap opera. This is what Fernanda Viégas did, using the data visualization resource.
She’s a computing designer and has presented the site Many Eyes to the audience at TEDx SP. The site aims to change complex statistics into visually easy to understand graphics. “It’s very hard when information is delivered in massive amounts of data in spreadsheets” Fernanda confirms.
Then came Many Eyes. At that site any person can insert data, and the site changes them into graphics that can be understood by a glance. As mentioned, even a Brazilian soap opera can be an example. The exemplification made all the audience laugh, when they realized they could follow the entire plot without even watching it on TV.
Fernanda shows this project that is very much in tune with the TEDx SP proposition: to share ideas, possibilities and to pave ways which indicate a harmonious world. And she does all that, making us laugh.
Inspiration
Where comes from the unconscious gaze taking people to have exceptional ideas? Could be the moment? Could be the place? Maybe it’s just the way how we see the occurrences in front of us, the way how we notice them. To the advertiser and musician Jarbas Agnelli it’s “possible to see poetry anywhere, depending on the way we see”. And he did just that.
During some time, Jarbas was divided into music and commercials direction. In doubt he’s decided to be with both and has created the AD Studio. There, designers and animators work alongside with musicians in the creative process for movies. Especially in music they had a good experience with the band Avenida Paulista which placed hits on radios of London. As advertiser he had prominence as the only Brazilian to win the Grand Clio, American advertising award in addition to have worked more than 13 years for the agency W/Brasil.
In his speech at TEDxSP, Jarbas shared the story of the picture which was the origin for the composition “Birds on the wire”. The song has traveled for thousands of homes through Internet and has won a proportion greater than he thought. An account which makes us believe that good ideas can come from inconceivable places and accomplishment depends only on the will power.
