Theme: Pale Blue Dot

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.“ -- Carl Sagan

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a then-record distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth.
Inspired by this fascinating picture, and by the principle idea it represents, this year TEDxVilnius team invites you to reflect on the biggest contradictions and crucial subjects of today. You will spend the day engaged in deep discussions with outstanding speakers and wonderful crowd!

TEDxVilnius 2015 will guide you through the full day event, letting you immerse yourself into a number of different topics:

MANMADE vs. NATURAL
Bionic man living in a green city; synthetic biology meets nature; ecology, biotechnology, rooftop gardening and 3D- printed cells... We are definitely living into extraordinary decades ahead!

PUBLIC vs. PERSONAL
Privacy; online security; legal corruption; corporate social responsibility, doing well by doing good; philanthropy. Is there anything “Personal” left nowadays?

TRADITIONAL vs. FUTURISTIC
Historic heroes, lessons learnt from the past and artificial intelligence, crazy novel ideas. We can now detail the essence of Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, but what about the generations yet to be born - what could they be like?

LOCAL vs. GLOBAL
How does Lithuania look on the Pale Blue Dot? Can we still make a distinction between Local and Global? Talks and performances by some of the most talented Lithuanian artists and experts, both widely known and still undiscovered.

Even though media reminds us daily of the political, social and economic challenges of the world, we want to explore an amazing collection of new ideas, new ways of thinking, science and technology, new art and most importantly new understanding of who we are.
While suggesting a different set of the opposites and contrasts at TEDxVilnius 2015, we invite YOU to join the discussion, express your personal views and as always... prepare to be amazed!

Gedimino pr. 4
Vilnius, Vilniaus Apskritis, 01103
Lithuania

Claudio Santori & Muezz Vestin

Claudio: Growing up in a time where there was no Internet, Claudio had a lot of time to explore naturally given things, but as soon as he got his first Internet connection at the age of 18 everything changed. Internet opened doors to a complete new world: from Serra San Quirico, a small town in Central Italy, to Rome where he got a bachelor in Economics. Not long after he became a manager of the famous Italian singer Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini and also became a curator of no.1 Italian blogger Selvaggia Lucarelli. Muezz: Problem solver. Life learner. Life explorer. That is just a few descriptions about Muezz. Putting himself outside his own comfort zone is his greatest strength. But he was not born with this mindset. Muezz grew up in one of the most culturally diversified suburbs in Sweden. Over there he learned about different cultures and being a part of boy scouts at 8 years taught him to be “always ready”. More info about them: http://bit.ly/1QreTFQ, http://bit.ly/1zUum6V

Martynas Levickis & SinChronic

To date, Martynas is the laureate and prize-winner of over 30 competitions. Back in his time spent studying in London, the performer had the opportunity to participate in various musical projects, collaborating with the BBC Concert and the Birmingham City symphony orchestras, working with conductors Ch. Hazelwood and V. Gergiev. He also gave solo appearances at the H. Purcell, Queen Elizabeth, Kings Place, Tate Gallery, Wigmore, and Royal Festival concert halls. For TEDxVilnius he is joined by SinChronic: a young quartet consisting of four contradicting characters, bound by a musical philosophy made up of similar ideas and inspiration. More info about Martynas & SinChronic here: http://bit.ly/1PvftRk

Nate Mook & Steve Garguilo

Nate is a filmmaker and adventurer. He joined What Took You So Long? in 2012 after working for TED and spending his earlier career as an entrepreneur in the technology and software industries. Nate has recently led film productions in Somalia, Haiti, Colombia, Panama, Uganda, Kenya, Iraq, and Liberia, working with clients such as USAID, UNDP, and the World Bank, along with smaller NGOs. Steve is an instigator and adventurer who has worked in and visited over 100 countries and has lived in the United States, Switzerland, India, and Kenya. Now at Johnson & Johnson, Steve is focused on instigating a culture of innovation at the world’s largest, most broadly-based healthcare company. After establishing TEDxPSU at Penn State University, Steve also built the team that pioneered the first global, corporate TEDx program of its kind: TEDxJNJ. More about Nate: http://bit.ly/1DVEaOA More about Steve: http://bit.ly/1zcEZGV

Soul Moustache

Soul goes for what we are, Moustache - for what we think we are. Our music - for what we have become being both”, - Vytis and Vytaute says. Soul Moustache - still trying to name their style, but yet, no ideas show up. Except maybe this one: they’re playing not popular popular music. Band’s kernel is Vytaute Pupsyte and Vytis Smolskas. Vytis is best known for being a characteristic, a bit eccentric and one of the most interesting piano players in Lithuania, Vytaute - owner of an unique voice and especially sensitive worldview, which perfectly reflects on the songs she sings and creates. While blending their ideas and personalities in music, Vytis and Vytaute made quite an interesting and touching cocktail so that we all could drink it with our ears and eyes.

Andreas Bastian

Andreas Bastian is a designer, engineer, and artist who develops and applies cutting edge 3D printing technologies. By being a 3D printing research scientist at Autodesk, he studies both novel and established additive manufacturing technologies and their role in the near future. More about Andreas Bastian: http://bit.ly/1EXendY

Andrew Crysell

Andrew Crysell is founder of cultural insights and innovation agency, Crowd DNA, a hotbed of creative thinking, innovative methodologies and powerful storytelling techniques. All of them are used to help clients such as Facebook, Twitter, Red Bull, Disney, Sony Music and Peroni keep in tune with increasingly empowered and demanding global audiences. One of Crowd DNA’s most longstanding projects is UK Tribes for broadcaster Channel 4, a longitudinal study of how young people shape their identities - this in turn leading to their Global Youth Tribes Framework, which helps brands understand differences and commonalities in youth culture around the world. More about Andrew: http://bit.ly/1IchnnI

Anna Kaziunas France

Anna Kaziunas France is passionate about distributed, highly-personalized, hands-on technical education. She believes that motivated individuals from any background can learn to make (almost) anything and is dedicated to providing educational resources and frameworks that further this style of independent learning. Anna is an Editor with Make: Books, whose parent company Maker Media provided the catalyst for a tech-influenced DIY community that has come to be identified as the Maker Movement when they launched MAKE magazine in 2005 followed by Maker Faire in 2006. She's also the Dean of the Fab Academy, a rapid prototyping program in digital fabrication and electronics directed by Neil Gershenfeld of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms and taught locally at fab labs around the word. In addition, she co-authored Getting Started with MakerBot and compiled Make: 3D Printing.

Daria Kaleniuk

Daria Kaleniuk is co-founder and Executive director of Anti-corruption Action Centre in Ukraine. She is experienced in international legal mechanisms for anti-corruption actions, particularly in stolen assets recovery and anti-money laundering initiatives. During Euromaidan protests in Ukraine she was running yanukovich.info campaign aimed at freezing assets of former Ukrainian president's Yanukovych and his associates that kept in Western jurisdictions. More about Daria: http://www.tedxvilnius.com/2015/speakers/Daria-Kaleniuk

Darlene Damm

Darlene Damm leads Ashoka’s relations in the Silicon Valley building an ecosystem of global companies, foundations, venture capitalists, schools and social innovators that are ensuring all humans develop the changemaking skills of empathy, omni-directional team work and the ability to continually innovate for the good of all— skills essential in our accelerating world of complex change. Prior to that Darlene built Ashoka’s internal operating and fundraising system to manage thousands of entrepreneurial teams and partners around the world raising a $40 million annual budget in a coordinated yet decentralized way. In 2012 Darlene co-founded DIYROCKETS, which crowdsources affordable space technology online, and in 2011 - Matternet, one of the world’s first drone companies for transporting goods. More info: http://www.tedxvilnius.com/2015/speakers/Darlene-Damm

David Troy

Dave Troy is a serial entrepreneur and community activist in Baltimore, Maryland. He is CEO and product architect at 410 Labs, maker of the popular e-mail management tool Mailstrom.co. He has been acknowledged by the founding team at Twitter as the first developer to utilize the Twitter API, with his project “Twittervision,” which was featured in the 2008 MoMA exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind.” His crowdsourced project Peoplemaps.org uses social network data to map cities. He is also organizer of TEDxMidAtlantic and is passionate about data, cities, and entrepreneurship.

Eames Demetrios

For the past decade, artist Eames Demetrios has been traveling our linear world installing markers and historic sites that honor events from a parallel world he calls Kcymaerxthaere. This global project is a vast, interwoven work of 3-dimensional fiction–like a novel with every page in a different place. Even where one reads such a page influences how one visualizes that particular story. Kcymaerxthaere also connects communities through shared interpretations of the stories in drawings, weavings and other crafts. Currently, there are 104 markers and historic sites installed in 22 countries on 6 continents. Lithuania appeared on this list when in 2013 Eames came to Vilnius and left a footprint in Užupis names after “The City of Justice”. More info: http://www.tedxvilnius.com/2015/speakers/Eames-Demetrios

Hubertus Knabe

Hubertus Knabe is a historian and the scientific director of Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, where he studies the inner workings of the East German Ministry of State Security (MfS) -- or Stasi -- between 1945 and 1989. The memorial, once the main remand prison used by the Stasi, is devoted to raising awareness of the brutal oppression that once stemmed from the agency. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall Knabe was under surveillance himself, for smuggling banned books from the West into East Germany. He is the author of over a dozen books on German history, including 17. Juni 1953 - Ein deutscher Aufstand. While working at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial Hubertus learnt a lot of stories of true heroes around us. He witnessed that most oftenly those heroes are not the great generals and heads of state, but the brave -- but often unknown -- people who revolt against injustice. We just can’t wait to welcome Hubertus Knabe to TEDxVilnius and hear his amazing story.

Jokubas Ziburkus

Joyce Bertram

Joyce grew up in The Netherlands where she started to volunteer at the age of fourteen. At this age she got the first sparkle of passion for Volunteerism and it’s culture. Before reaching the age of thirty, she changed volunteering into a paid job position. She has been involved with various organizations, to help them organize, recruit, train and manage their teams to help them reach their goals. In this role, she has worked with hundreds of volunteers, each with their own story and expectations. Joyce agrees that without dedication of volunteers she could not have realized those goals. More about Joyce: http://bit.ly/1OX7a3Z

Julijonas Urbonas

Kristina Gudziunaite

Kristina is principal dancer at Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre. After graduating National M.K. Ciurlionis School of Arts in Vilnius she went to Germany to continue her studies at Ballett-Akademie Heinz Bosl-Stiftung in Munich. In 2009 she became a member of Hong Kong ballet company. Kristina came back to Vilnius in 2010 and started working as a soloist in Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet theatre. After 4 years she got promoted to the principal dancer and won a “dancer of the year” title the following year. More info about Kristina: http://bit.ly/1HwOJ1D

Laimonas Briedis

Laimonas Briedis is a native of Vilnius and currently a resident of Vancouver, Canada. A writer by vocation and cultural geographer by education with a doctoral degree from the University of British Columbia. Laimonas has written a critically acclaimed work Vilnius: city of strangers. The widely reviewed book was described by The Economist as a “subtle and evocative” portrait of the city, leaving readers with a sense of being “stalked by horror and steeped in wonder” as they follow the story of Vilnius through darkest chapters of European history. More about Laimonas Briedis: http://bit.ly/1QmmKU8

Lawrence Lessig

Lawyer and activist Lawrence Lessig spent a decade arguing for sensible intellectual property law, updated for the digital age. He was a founding board member of Creative Commons, an organization that builds better copyright practices through principles established first by the open-source software community. He is the professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He is also a founder of Rootstrikers, a network of activists who are leading the fight against government corruption. Lessig authored numerous books which including Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Our Congress - and a Plan to Stop It, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Free Culture and Remix. More: http://www.tedxvilnius.com/2015/speakers/Lawrence-Lessig

Martynas Levickis

Martynas Levickis’ first encounter with the accordion took place when he was barely three. He currently holds a Bachelor graduate degree at London’s Royal Academy of Music. To date, the performer is the laureate and prize-winner of over 30 competitions. Back in his time spent studying in London, the performer had the opportunity to participate in various musical projects, collaborating with the BBC Concert and the Birmingham City symphony orchestras, working with conductors Ch. Hazelwood and V. Gergiev. He also gave solo appearances at the H. Purcell, Queen Elizabeth, Kings Place, Tate Gallery, Wigmore, and Royal Festival concert halls. More about Martynas: http://bit.ly/1PvftRk

Monty Halls

Monty Halls is a writer, explorer, television presenter and public speaker. A former Royal Marines officer who worked for Nelson Mandela on the peace process in South Africa. After leaving the services in 1996 he pursues a career in leading expeditions. Having achieved a First Class Honors degree in marine biology, over the next decade he circumnavigated the globe four times on various projects, leading multinational teams in some of the most demanding environments on earth. His television career began when he won Channel Four’s Superhuman competition in 2004. Since then he has presented series and documentaries for the BBC, Channel Five, The Discovery Channel, The National Geographic Channel and the History Channel. More: http://www.tedxvilnius.com/2015/speakers/Monty-Halls

Niki Ernst

Niki's work involves running a design firm in Austria with offices in Vienna and Salzburg, and raising a global network of innovation agencies (IACy). He is currently launching an accelerator to support Austrian startups growing their professional network to Silicon Valley (AICsv), and additionally serves as a TEDx Ambassador for Europe and TEDxSanFrancisco licensee.

Rebecca McGuire-Snieckus

A Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) with the British Psychological Society, Dr Rebecca McGuire-Snieckus is a Senior Lecturer and is the Undergraduate Programme Leader in Psychology at Bath Spa University. She is also the Associate Academic Director of the Global Academy of Liberal Arts (GALA). A network of creativity spanning national and cultural boundaries created by the Bath Spa University Vice Chancellor, Professor Christina Slade. More about Rebecca: http://bit.ly/1zwH3Kc

Rodrigo Nieto Gomez

Rodrigo works as research professor at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) and at the National Security Affairs (NSA) Department of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He is a public policy entrepreneur in the fields of geopolitics (including geostrategy), deviant innovation (how criminal actors adopt emerging technologies) and the intersection between public policy and disruption (how governments react to changes brought by entrepreneurial behaviors). His work has created tools for public actors to become better strategic thinkers when managing the accelerating pace of innovation, and has provided private entities with strategies to become more resilient and agile when confronted by systemic change. More about Rodrigo Nieto Gomez: http://bit.ly/1EV3IAh