Tag Archives: Ted

The magic of TEDxAmsterdam: Humour, flow, wit, passion and power

11 November 2013 15:38 , Leave a Comment ,

There is something magical about TEDx events. Two weeks ago, TEDxBrussels kicked off my TEDx autumn. And last Wednesday, TEDxAmsterdam was something truly special. I don’t want to say too much about all the talks here – all my articles are on the TEDxAmsterdam site, and my fellow blogger Bibi Veth made an amazing visual storyboard.

Photo: Peter Clausman/TEDxAmsterdam

This year’s theme was ‘Connected Consequences’. Photo: Peter Clausman/TEDxAmsterdam

Instead, I’d like to share a couple of videos that show the humour, flow, wit and power of our speakers. TEDx speakers are people with amazing stories and know how to package a good idea in a captivating talk. As a listener, you can only stay silent in awe during the rollercoaster of ideas, energy and surprises.

Humour: Fons Trompenaars

Fons Trompenaars clearly is a gifted public speaker and applies a healthy dose of ironic remarks, often aimed at himself in his speech. It certainly works with a Dutch audience. In addition, the cultural differences and prejudices he refers to make a good laugh.

Flow: Benno Naaijkens

Every year, TEDxAmsterdam organises the TEDxAmsterdam Award to use its platform to bring great ideas closer to reality. This year’s winner is Benno Naaijkens. He delivered his speech seconds after he heard he had win, and is evidently extremely nervous (it has been cut out from the video, but he started with a nervous “Can you imagine… oh, fuck!”). Yet, during his speech, he forgets about the polished lines he had rehearsed, gets into his flow, and makes his call for support in a very authentic fashion.

Wit: Floris Kaayk

Floris Kaayk is an artist. He has a natural sense of creativity over him. In a brilliant, witty talk talk, he talks about a even more brilliant project by Jarno Smeets, an ordinary Dutchman with one dream: to fly with birdwings.

Passion: Jimmy Nelson

Photographer Jimmy Nelson’s wants to conserve the traditions of human civilisations all over the globe. In his book ‘Before they pass away’, he documents the lives of isolated tribes. Thanks to the personal stories he tells and the amazing pictures he shows, as a viewer you can personally feel his passion.

Power: Mona Eltahawy

Bam! Mona Eltahawy’s talk is like a storm, blowing you away with her energy and persuasion in her mission to bring sexual freedom to Arab women.

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Teaching my smartphone empathy – Matt Dobson at TEDxBrussels

4 November 2013 21:23 , Leave a Comment ,

Once again, I had the chance to experience the magic of TED during TEDxBrussels this year. I’ve already written about the scrub for the brain I got for the blog of TEDxAmsterdam. For me, some of the highlights were Diana Reiss‘ research on the intelligence of dolphins, TEDx regular Mikko Hypponen on the protection of a free internet and Antony Evans, who creates glowing plants just for the heck of it and to replace street lamps by fluorescent trees (and still manages not to sound completely ridiculous).

As a happiness blogger, though, here I’d like to focus on the talk by Matt Dobson. Dobson is the co-founder of the UK tech startup EI Technologies, which aims to ‘teach smartphones empathy’. That is, he has created an app that based on a speech sample of half a second to a couple of seconds long can recognise emotions. The 7 second video below from Dobson’s blog gives a feel of how it works:

In his TEDx talk, he explains how the app that he and his co-founder Duncan Barclay have conceived works. Human beings – and dogs alike – are able to recognise emotions in people’s voices, even if they don’t understand what is being said. These skills can even be ‘taught’ to smartphones! Whilst human beings can distinguish between emotions intuitively, the story becomes a question of physics and maths for your phone. In physics, spoken text moves in sound waves, and wave lengths vary with emotion. All these acoustic features – loudness, pitch, patterns can be measured, analysed and interpreted, allowing the app to recognise how you feel. Dobson explains it in full in his talk:

And than the million dollar (or Pounds, for a Brit) question: what can you do with this? Is the next step a smartphone also be taught to tell us jokes, make us read feelgood articles or send us a funny cat video whenever we are down? Well, even when the smartphone is invading our lives, our happiness does not depend on it.

But the smartphone may come to the rescue. Around 50% of the population in Western countries suffers distress, or has stress levels that reduce their life expectancy. 15 to 20% has anxiety or depressions. Despite these large numbers, other, more visible, diseases and therapies get way more investment than mental health problems.

A fundamental problem in psychotherapy is that therapists rely on the feelings that depressed people report. Often, people are asked to report their feelings through a mood diary with their feelings. But as depressed people are not the most motivated ones, data in these diaries is often not very reliable. Based on very short samples and data points at several moments in the data, Dobson’s Xpression app can help. Even if the app can’t directly respond itself, it can help you, or your therapist, to understand your feelings during different moments in the day. When the data is there, human empathy does the rest.

Further reading:

Matt Dobson at TEDxBrussels. Photo copyright: TEDxBrussels

Matt Dobson at TEDxBrussels. Photo copyright: TEDxBrussels

Posted in: personal, science, TED talk , Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Matthieu Ricard’s plea for altruism

21 October 2013 15:59 ,

bonheurs coverOn my way to the shopping street for my Saturday groceries, I stop by in the press corner with the aim to buy stamps. I scan the shelf of magazines and see the familiar face of Matthieu Ricard stare at me from the cover of Bonheur(s) magazine.

Normally, I am wary of these kind of pseudo-psychological magazines produced for the happiness market. Every vague word that is not evidence-based triggers a critical counter-reaction. But, admittedly, this blog operates in the same market, so I figured I can always buy it for research purposes. In any case, it’s worthwhile to hear more of Ricard’s wisdom.

Matthieu Ricard is a former biochemist who become a Buddhist monk. He has been labelled the happiest man alive, and has a website featuring a ‘smile of the week’. In 2003, he wrote Happiness: A guide to developing life’s most important skill, which he presented at TED in 2004. To summarise his talk, Ricard argues that ‘mind training’ and meditation can help us transform our brains. He questions why human beings spend 15 years in education, and lots of hours to keep fit and beautiful, but don’t seem willing to invest time in their well-being. Through this training, we can rewire our brain and nurture our receptiveness for happiness (or better, well-being).

 

A plea for Altruism

His interviewed in Bonheur(s) magazine is dedicated to the hefty 928-page volume on altruism he just published. His new book Advocacy for altruism spots the traces of altruism in neuroscientific research and the spiritual traditions of Buddhism.

Ricard argues that we all have an interest to be altruistic with our neighbours and future generations: “Altruism will help passing from a merchant’s world based on the principle of efficiency to a world of mutual help, from competition to cooperation“. To achieve that world, says Ricard, human beings must transform themselves to become truly altruistic. Like well-being, this is something we can train ourselves for. To do so, we need  the support of good masters like the Dalai Lama for whom altruism is a first nature. Ricard himself has been guided by Buddhist spiritual masters since the 1970s.

He ends the interview with a plea for altruism as a radical change in attitude that can contribute to solve the problems of our times – materialism, consumerism, narcissism, and even climate change. Ricard here refers to a study by the American psychologist Tim Kasser, whose longitudinal research demonstrated that people with strong materialistic tendencies and higher levels of wealth developed weaker social ties, a worse health record and lower levels of happiness.

What is altruism anyway?

Does this make Ricard’s plea for altruism convincing? Though the general principle and a concept sound appealing, there is one problem: what is altruism? If I decide to be altruistic from tomorrow onwards, what do I do? Could I function as an altruist in a generally consumerist and egoistic society? Can I really fight consumerism and climate change by thinking about my neighbours?

This notwithstanding, I believe Ricard has a bunch of valid points. Le bonheur, c’est les autres (happiness is other people). Many studies have shown how other people matter. But that will be the topic for a later post. To give a little pointer: ask the internet about Michael Norton’s work on money, giving and happiness.

Posted in: spiritual, TED talk, video , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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