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Was invited to attend the second edition of TEDx Helsinki last week, and I have to thank the organizers for a fantastic event.  We had great speakers, awesome videos from official TED conferences and some very interesting insights.  A quick bullet-point summary below.

1. Sebastian Wernicke and how to create the ultimate TED talk using statistics (video).  “Tool” available from get-tedpad.com.
2. Esa Saarinen introduced us to the idea of Baby Radicalism, or what should we learn from toddler behaviour in our daily life: the power of smiling, growth and love.
3. Juuso Nissilä went over how our biology hasn’t evolved as fast as our culture and society, and our bodies struggle to catch up with our conduct and environment.
4. Bjarke Ingels showed us the power of letting ideas evolve in the architectural design process (video).
5. Virpi Kuitunen gave us a very personal talk on the challenges of giving up something. “The most difficult thing of quitting is not leaving stuff behind, is starting anew as you don’t know what lies ahead”.
6. Reidar Wasenius put the audience to exercise their brains for a little while.
7. Anssi Vanjoki explored the power of volunteering and volunteer organisations.  He mentioned the open source software movement and sports clubs as good examples, while contrasting them with the sad state of political party volunteering in Finland.
8. Mikael Jungner talked about the illusion of control and how it affects the decision-making process giving biting examples from his time at the helm of YLE.
9. Tom Wujec on the nature of collaboration (video).  Openness, expertise and facilitation will go a long way.
10. Kirsti Lonka showed us some of the challenges the Digital Natives pose to the way the education system in Finland currently works, and what are they doing to change it.
11. Teppo Turkki talked about the rising economic, technological and even cultural influence of South Korea, Japan and China.
12. Temple Grandin on how autistic minds work, and why they can and should be allowed to contribute to society (video).
13. Jufo Peltomaa showed why the coming singularity won’t mean the end of the human race.  In fact the emerging AIs will evolve so fast they will not care more for us than we do of, say, wolverines.
14. Miina Savolainen closed the event with a bang, talking about the empowering quality of portrait photography: what it says of the photographer’s values and ways of communication.  When you look at pictures, don’t only focus on what’s present, but also on what is not being photographed.  More info on her website.  You’ll never see family albums in the same way again.

All in all an enjoyable and inspirational occasion which I hope I can attend again.

TEDx Helsinki was organised this year as a local mirror for the wonderful, famous TED talks.  The event was quite good overall, even if the level of the talks was a little uneven.  The only problem they had was with misleading marketing in one important aspect: while their website and the registration process was in English, 80% of the event was in Finnish with no translations, which meant those attendants who didn’t master the language of Aleksis Kivi (and there were quite a few), were given a cold shoulder from the get go.

This was one of those situations where I was really glad to have learned the local lingo. If you are interested to know more about the event, you can check twitter or Anssi Kela’s post (in Finnish).

Update 18.05.2010: Videos from the presentations here, here and here (in English).