TEDxBristol ‘Great Expectations’ – A German Review

My first day at work as a trainee from Germany at Newicon actually was a fun and simple task as an introduction to the team and the work they are doing here. But as one might have guessed it from the headline, the second day was very different.To my own luck I started my internship at Newicon at the right time, because their sponsorship of the TEDxBristol event allowed me to join in.

To be honest I have not had many experiences with the TED(x) talk’s until then and apart from the tagline, I did not knew what was going to happen, or who was presenting. Contrary to what I expected, almost all of the topics dealt with problems of the past and the present and solving these in the near-future.

Surprisingly technology and future inventions was not the single topic, but mixed up with self-improvement/ -acceptance and changes in society. The mixture made the event an outstanding experience and gave enough variety for the audience to stay focused.

David Slolly explained how to solve a problem structured in three acts: Act 1 – the problem; Act 2 – the struggle and act 3 – the resolve, and many of the topics were presented in the same structure, others were built around a personal experience. But this does not mean that the latter were inferior in quality. One great example would be Kirsty Cockburns part, who spoke about a tragic moment in her life during an earthquake in Nepal, and the aid modern communication technology provided.

Furthermore another eyeopening talk was held by Prof. Kate Pullinger. She dealt with remembrance of the unknown soldiers fallen during WWI and opened up a new web-portal to write letters to the lost and addressed the problems occurring with that task.

As stated many shared topics had personal reasons, which would be kind of in Meabh Quoirin’s mind. She gave a thought-provoking speech about sharing personal information on social media is a chance to voice positive as negative experiences and should not easily be condemned. Also what part emojis play in that role.

Rather unusual, and as stated by the host Mark Mill a first time occurrence at TEDx, was the talk from Dr. Paul Bremner, who presented (through) his gesture mimicking robot avatar. He gave a short summary about the project realization, its future problems and chances of solving the issue of social isolation.

I find it remarkable that Newicon is the perfect example of a company, which deals with the exact problems of the ever ongoing changes in technology, society and the individual. They help people like Prof. Kate Pullinger expressing themselves by giving them a voice on their own website and dealing with tasks like SEO (search engine optimization), and other difficulties a lot of people might not even heard of.

At the end I want to say thank you to everybody from Newicon for sharing this experience with me and I look forward to spending the time I have left in Bristol with them.