‘One Step Further’ Open Auditions

About two weeks ago we had our Open Auditions for the annual TEDxUniversityofGlasgow conference that will take place on the 4th of March at our beautiful university. As some of you may know, this year’s conference theme is ‘One Step Further’ – 3 simple words that combined together have the power to convert our thoughts and imagination into real life discoveries, innovations, and crucial ‘critical junction’ moments that become part of our history.

In the spirit of TED’s slogan, Ideas Worth Spreading, our Contents team shortlisted 10 brilliant speakers that presented their ideas to our lovely audience.

Dalia Gala, a Glasgow University student with a passion for science and technology, started off the evening with a fascinating talk about viruses and how they can be converted into ‘useful tools’ that are able to deliver medicines into human bodies and improve our lives.

Dalia’s talk was followed by Ryan Murdoch who is currently studying at the Glasgow School of Art’s School of Visualisation and Simulation. Ryan talked about what Brain-Computer Interfacing is, and how it can be a useful technology when utilised within educational games.

Our third speaker, Allan Stoneham, who has worked in a number of industries ranging from Energy to Finance, talked about the similarities between his two passions – mountain biking and agile software engineering – and how identifying them helped him rediscover the concept of ‘flow’ which is defined as ”the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity”.

Our fourth speaker was the lovely Jade Richardson, an English, French and American designer questioning the impact that new products, services and experiences will have on our everyday life. Jade spoke about the meaning of collaboration and showed the potential value of science and design working together, no matter the format of collaboration. Jade’s current project is called we.should.do.that.thing and we totally recommend that you follow her on instagram for updates!

Our fifth speaker Kaye Smith, who is currently working as a clinical hypnotherapist, spoke about the importance of finding a purpose and going beyond the perceived goals in order to encounter a more authentic identity. Kaye’s talk was truly inspiring and she will also be one of the speakers at our Launch Party (tickets for the event: http://tedxuofglaunchparty.getqpay.com/ ) .

Kaye’s talk was followed by the lovely and truly brilliant Lovisa Sundin.

Lovisa is a final year undergraduate at University of Glasgow studying Computing Science and Psychology. Her talk evolved around a personal story of why she began to make artwork and the importance of students preserving their understandings. We really loved her brilliant ideas!

The 7th talk was presented by Simona Cartuta, a front-end developer & designer at J.P. Morgan Chase. Simona spoke about the channeling of randomness in music and how it can lead to creating aesthetically pleasing compositions. Her talk offered a glimpse into different methods of using randomness to create a balance between stability and unpredictability in music.

Simona was followed by Suraj Chepyala who spoke about How we can go to Mars and Why we should do that. His brilliant talk gave us a clear vision of the similarities and the differences between the Earth and Mars and the importance of the exploration of this planet to the humankind.

The Open Auditions evening continued with Raj Sark’s talk about ideas and the massive potential they hold. He covered the topic of what is our individual contribution in today’s increasingly globalised, yet localised society and stressed on the importance of finding something we truly care about that we can take One Step Further.

The last talk was presented by Stephen Baker who is a Senior Manager with Grant Thornton. Stephen spoke about our productivity gap and elaborated on the idea of the new Apprenticeship Levy that will aim to deliver 3 million new Apprenticeships by 2020. Unfortunately, Stephen could not make it to the event, but we watched the talk he had recorded for us.

We’d like to thank all these inspiring speakers for their talks and we do wish them the best of luck for the future! Also, we were delighted to meet so many of you at this event, we hope to see you at our Launch Party this Thursday as well!

Best wishes,
The TEDxUniversityofGlasgow Team