In planning since July 2009, the first TEDxLeeds was held at Leeds Met’s newly opened Rose Bowl on 10th September 2009; chaired and curated by Imran Ali, introduced by Herb Kim and attended by around 150 delegates.
The second of a five-city TEDxNorth tour; from August to October 2009, TEDx events took place in Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and Manchester.
The evening was divided into three sessions – focussed on TED’s themes of technology, entertainment and design – themed around iconoclastic thought leadership.
Technology
- TEDTalks: Kevin Kelly – The next 5000 days of the web
- Dr. Norman Lewis – YES WE CAN: Innovating out of a recession
Entertainment
- TEDTalks: Rives – A story of mixed emoticons
- Charles Cecil – Gaming revolution — rebuilding a direct relationship with audiences
Design
- TEDTalks: Jacek Utko – Can design save newspapers?
- Clive Grinyer – The democratization of design
Each of our three speakers was paired with a short screening of our favourite talks from the TED archive. After the close, many delegates spent the remainder of the evening debating and discussing what they’d experienced. Some of the more memorable moments are captured in photos taken by attendees.
The evening was universally acclaimed, underlined by some very positive reviews…
- Alex Wolf’s TEDxLeeds Review
- Dr. Norman Lewis’ TEDxLeeds: innovating out of the recession
- Ian Forrester’s TEDxLeeds
- Nigel Barlow’s Innovating our way out of the recession
- nti Leeds’ TEDxLeeds
- Tom Morgan’s #tedxleeds
The success of TEDxLeeds helped surface interesting voices and nurture neccessary debate from around the region, suggesting that future TEDx events should seek to harness these voices to effect real change.