Theme: TEDxNarva "Borderfree"

TEDxNarva provides a unique experience of facing different borders in our lives and mindsets between people and countries. Being on the border, can we imagine our life without them? How can we protect ourselves without borders? How can we enhance creativity with borders?
We were talking about borders in linguistics, artificial intelligence; borders for refugees and sportsmen, start-ups and helicopter pilots - inspiration without borders!

Raekoja plats 2
Narva, Ida-Virumaa, 20306
Estonia

Aleksandr Latin

sportsman

Aleksandr was born in Narva. He is a famous Estonian triathlete and an active person with a wide range of interests. He has received many awards: champion of Estonia, best triathlete-2015 and best sportsman of Narva-2015 & 2016. Has participated in numerous world- and European championships Apart from triathlon, Aleksandr has been studying environmental technologies at Tallinn University of Technology, now working on his MA.

Arvi Tavast

linguist

Arvi Tavast is a trained engineer. For 15 years he has been translating technical texts, controlling the quality of translation, composing IT-dictionaries. For another 15 years hehas been teaching the same disciplines at universities, obtaining a PhD in linguistics. Now Arvi is developing linguistic software qlaara.com. At TEDxNarva he talks about how machine understands human language, and how simple is artificial intelligence based technology.

Eva Ponsh

chef

Born in Moscow, Eva has worked as a restaurant critic in St.Petersburg, trained as a chef and now conducts cooking workshops, revealing useful tips and secrets. Has written and published 12 different books. One of her famous books is "How to learn cooking without recipes" (in Russian). Since 2015 Eva lives in Sillamäe, Estonia.

Hanna Agafonova

expert

Born in Donetsk, Hanna now resides in Munich. She works at startup company UnternehmerTUM and leads an international startup competition Business Cup EXTREME. This competition focuses on startups offering extreme solutions for unpopular topics. Hanna believes that solutions like this, coming from extreme situations, can have a positive impact on innovation.

Ibrahim Demir

expert

Ibrahim has extensive experience on early recovery, relief assistance and social development in the Middle East. He has been working and travelling across the region, gaining regional and contextual experience and an understanding of local social and economic trends. Ibrahim currently facilitates cross-border humanitarian assistance into Syria.

Ivan Sergejev

Chief Architect

Ivan Sergejev works as a chief architect in Narva. Studied architecture (MA) in Virginia Polytechnic Institute, School of Architecture and Design. He has gained valuable experience, working at different architecture companies, including the famous Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA*AMO), New York. Ivan is founder of the Interdisciplinary Reseach Honor Society.

Janis Linde

CEO

Janis has worked as a journalist for 10 years in Latvian leading business paper "Dienas Bizness", at the largest publishing house "Santas izdevniecība". For 7 years he has been dealing with product management at Tele2. He has twice tried to start his own business, before he came with his passionate idea for HackMotion. In the recent years Janis studied countless books on building startups, being more productive, changing habits. Also he has been studying psychology at university, as getting to know how our mind works has always been one of the most interesting topics for him.

Natalja Drobot

psychiatrist

Natalja Drobot, psychiatrist and psychoteraupist. Has been dealing with posttraumatic disorders for 10 years. Consultant-psychiatrist in Turku psychiatric hospital. Before this, has worked in Helsinki University psychiatric hospital, clinic of severe psychiatry. Owns Euromed OU company (psychotherapy, counselling). Natalja describes herself as an experienced doctor working with emotionally unstable patients.

Simone Grabs

TV-producer

Simone comes from Germany and is a famous TV-producer and reporter. Her documentaries have received international awards. In her work, Simone focuses on developing educational programmes for children. She also conducts training courses in developing TV-and web formats.

Toomas Välja

Team leader

For Toomas, who is Engineering team leader at Fortumo, a 24-hour day is never enough, due to his wide range of interests. This is why he has developed a habit to automate, simplify and optimize nearly everything he does. Toomas is a big fan of "Getting Things Done" philosophy and "enjoy stress-free but still fast-paced" lifestyle.