Last Wednesday around 150 people took the day off work to be told what happens to your body during passionate kisses, to watch a scientist put a mobile phone in a bun while wearing a headlamp, and to learn about our deep, dark psyche which we’d rather ignore.
The event was part of TEDxNicosia, a locally organised event licensed by TED which is a nonprofit organisation “devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading”.
TED started in 1984 in the USA as a four-day conference aiming to bring together professionals from different areas, that of technology, entertainment and design.
Since then it has grown tremendously holding conferences throughout the world with hundreds of millions checking out TED talks online (their YouTube channel alone has almost seven million views and almost 90 million uploads).
But there was one person in Cyprus who felt that within the confines of the island, people were often uninspired.
“In a big city like London you may be inspired by just taking a walk, in Cyprus you have to create opportunity and inspiration,” said TEDxNicosia’s founder and curator Marina Theodotou.
Theodotou went from being a banker in the USA to being an NGO country director in the Middle East, before becoming a government agency director in Cyprus and finally starting her own consultancy, Curveball.
“It was time to gather all of you here: the people who want something more,” Theodotou told the audience on Wednesday.
Among her listeners were entrepreneurs, young professionals, intellectuals and even a diplomat or two. They all had to fill in an application form as per TED’s instructions “which was a bit like proving you were good enough to be there”, as one attendee put it.
The application form for example asks people to talk about their dreams, accomplishments and their connection to their community.
So is TED elitist? Theodotou referred me to the TED website which answers in the following way: “Yes (in a good way) but also no.” The organisers go on to say that they are not interested in financial success per se but seek “to ensure that everyone who comes to TED is exceptional in some way”.
An audience member described the event as “being back somewhere in Manhattan, experiencing something magical.”
One of the TEDxNicosia speakers for example, Devrim Celal, is an entrepreneur who ran in four desert ultra-marathons (over 50km) experiencing extreme weather conditions – in Antarctica, Sahara, China and Chile. He became the 14th person in the world to run 1,000km in 9 months. “The experience is so difficult physically, it strips you down emotionally,” he said.
Another speaker, Viken Tavitian, does a science show called Vikenxploratorium “to have fun” with science and experiments.
It was definitely fun watching him put a mobile phone in a bun and cover it with aluminium foil to show it would not ring.
Holding a potato and a straw, Tavitian likened the first to our brains and the second to an idea. To get an idea in you have to be decisive – the straw (idea) will not penetrate the potato (the mind) if it’s not pushed in strongly.
Then, there was psychoanalyst Angeliki Yiassemides who spoke of the dark corners of the mind we try to ignore, and the difficult choice to make the darkness conscious in order to grow as individuals.
There was also Nikos Anastasiou, an economics teacher who through his bi-communal projects managed to get a bunch of 16-year-olds spontaneously cry and hold hands with the Other (the Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot).
“What was missing was the pain of the other. We choose to remember only our own pain,” said Anastasiou explaining why teenagers forced to confront alternative narratives broke down and cried.
Such was the power of his speech, there were few dry eyes among the audience.
You can watch the speeches at www.tedxnicosia.com (available after December 20). You can also follow TEDxNicosia on Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. The non-profit event was held at the University of Nicosia
