On December 7-8th, Washington DC will host the inaugural TEDWomen conference, exploring how women and girls are reshaping the future; from the developing world, to the West.

TEDWomen intends to seek out talks about women and girls, not just by them. Though speakers and attendees include women and men, the focus of the conference is to explore the link between investing in women and the effects on economic growth, public health and political stability.

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TEDWomen Live Webcast comes to Leeds

Leeds’ burgeoning Girl Geek movement, established in 2008 as a series of successful evening dinners, coupled with inspirational and enlightening keynote speakers, drawn from Google, Creative Commons and other high profile organisations.

Building on that community, we’re super excited to announce that on 7+8th December, Leeds’ Old Broadcasting House will be hosting a live simulcast of the entire TEDWomen conference, along with a light dinner on the evening of the 7th.

The speaker line up includes…

• Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State
• Johanna Blakley, Media maven
• Cynthia Breazeal, Roboticist
• Arianna Huffington, Journalist
• Donna Karan, Fashion designer
• Naomi Klein, Author & activist
• Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
• Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
• Ted Turner, Media entrepreneur & philanthropist

Our schedule…

• Tues 7th Dec (630-9pm) – optional light dinner around 730pm
• Weds 8th Dec (1230-9pm) – open house

It’s going to be a very informal, “open house” atmosphere and people are welcome to drop by for any part of the evening.

TEDWomen will be simulcasting to 46 other locations around the planet and we’d love to have you join us particularly for the opening evening and refreshments (there’ll be a nominal charge!) on Tuesday.

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On Monday 20th September, at 4pm TEDxLeeds will be joining the live global webcast of TEDxChange.

Live from New York and webcast simultaneously to 60 locations around the planet, TEDxLeeds and TEDxLondon, will be the only places in the UK where you can participate in TEDxChange.

Convened by Melinda Gates, of the Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation, TEDxChange marks the anniversary of the Millennium Development goals: Ten years in, where does the global community stand in the work to save and improve lives around the world? And what does the future hold? You can catch a brief outline of Melinda Gates’ hopes for TEDxChange in her video blog.

Please join us at 4pm, in Lecture Theatre F of The Rose Bowl to take part in the live TEDxChange webcast; we’ll also be previewing our plans for November’s TEDxLeeds2010.

Schedule…

• 3pm: Doors open, light refreshments, networking
• 3:45pm: Introduction from Imran Ali & Herb Kim
• 4pm: TEDxChange webcast
  • Introduction from Chris Anderson
  • Hans Rosling
  • Melinda Gates
  • “The Revolutionary Optimists” Video
  • Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew
  • Mechai Vitavaidya
  • Graca Machel
• 5:30pm: Close & preview of TEDxLeeds2010.

TEDxChange in Leeds is free, informal, open and inclusive, but on a subject of critical and profound importance. We do hope you’ll join us next Monday…

Register free for TEDxChange »

TEDxLeeds2009 provided a platform for iconoclastic thought leadership, challenging orthodoxies and exploring unfamiliar territory, laying the groundwork for optimism and change.

In 2010, the themes for TED and TEDGlobal have been “What the World Needs Now”; the TEDxLeeds team has chosen to build on its prior thought leadership and seek to move inspiration into motivated action.

On 10th November, TEDxLeeds2010 will be an exploration of “What Leeds Needs Now”.

The City As A Platform…
The city is at a crossroads – deep social divisions and cuts in public services, coupled with a sophisticated infrastructure, media industry and an emerging netroots class provides a thrilling backdrop for “rebooting the city”. Indeed, the notion of cities as “places” is being displaced by cities as “organisms, mindsets and platforms” for solutions in democracy, civics, climate change and sustainability.

Photo courtesy of Mark Ramsay

To paraphrase Kevin Kelly, cities are “technological artifacts – the largest technology we make; with an impact out of proportion to the number of humans living in them”. TEDxLeeds2010 will bring together local and global thought leaders to speak on “innovating a city”; an audience of technologists, politicians, civic and cultural figures, interspersed with screenings of TEDTalks focused on “cities past and future”.

Taking place during the Leeds Digital Festival at Holbeck’s newly constructed The Mint, TEDxLeeds2010 will be located at the physical and emotional fracture between old and new Leeds.

As cities are increasingly displacing nations as global power centers, demands for transparency drive open data movements across the planet and populations are increasingly digitally entangled and connected; the opportunity for innovating civic institutions and rebooting citizenship itself is too irresistible to overlook.

Leeds has to prepare itself for what Richard Florida calls The Great Reset and TEDxLeeds2010 will be a concentrated exercise in beginning this process.

Session 1: Connecting Cities…

• Introduction, Imran Ali & Emma Cheshire
• Embedding Narrative, Megan Smith
• Open Data, The City and the New Federation, Julian Tait
• For whom do we build, design, make?, Susan Williamson
• Extreme Connectivity, Usman Haque

Session 2: Cities As Platforms…

• 60 Seconds, Stuart Childs
• Deep City, Alex Sonsino
• The Makers Of Leeds, Matt Edgar
• Creating a Smarter Planet… City by City, Rashik Parmar

Further Reading…

Ideas for Cities, IBM’s Smarter Cities, NYC Media Lab, NYC Big Apps, We Will All Play Cities Together Like An Instrumental Jam, The Choice Of Cities, The City Is A Battlesuit for Surviving The Future, The Street As A Platform, Participatory Chinatown, Redefining The Neighbourhood, The High Line, Forget Shanghai, Twin Liverpool With Detroit, FutureEverything: The City Experiment, MIT’s Smart Cities and Center for Future Civic Media, Could self-aware cities be the first forms of artificial intelligence?