Theme: Tomorrow Started Yesterday

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

The Gig Music Hall
Kitchener, Ontario
Canada

Madhur Anand

Madhur Anand is an internationally-recognized scientist and professor with over 45 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Ecological Change at the University of Guelph. Her research in forest ecology, ecological modeling and biodiversity spans several countries including Israel, Europe, India, China, Brazil and the USA. She serves on several journal editorial boards and granting panels and is currently President of the Sigma Xi Scientific Society (University of Toronto Chapter). Dr. Anand is also a poet. Her poetry has been published in CV2, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Room, Grain, Interim, Vallum and Maple Tree Literary Supplement, anthologized in The Shape of Content: Creative Writing in Science and Mathematics (2008) and nominated for a Pushcart prize (2007). She is co-editor of the anthology entitled Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry (2009; Your Scrivener Press), the “first anthology of contemporary poetry about the environment and environmental concerns”, a project that was inspired by the regreening of Sudbury. She lives in Guelph with her husband and two small children.

Marty Avery

Marty Avery is a business advisor who collaborates with business founders and leaders to design and implement prosperity strategies. She has been consulted by the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Women in Business as well as NextMEDIA & Fortune Magazine. Marty has presented on Digital Delivery at several CEO forums, and social change at Buzz–a CEO think tank in California. Chief Catalyst at What If?, faculty at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media lab and at the Banff Centre’s BNMI, Marty’s passion is using the power of networks and connection to build a world where you can extend your reach.

Philip Beesley

Philip Beesley is an associate professor in the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo who creates immersive, responsive environments. His projects feature interactive kinetic systems that use dense arrays of microprocessors, sensors and actuator systems arranged within lightweight ‘textile’ structures. These environments pursue distributed emotional consciousness within synthetic and near-living systems. His current Hylozoic Ground project will transform the Canadian Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale with an environment made of tens of thousands of digitally-fabricated components fitted with meshed microprocessors and sensors. Beesley’s work is widely published and exhibited, and has been distinguished by awards including VIDA 11.0 and FEIDAD, and by the Prix de Rome in Architecture (Canada). He was educated in visual art at Queen’s University, in technology at Humber College, and in architecture at the University of Toronto.

Caroline Disler

Inter-cultural transfer of information Caroline Disler is a master of translation. With reading knowledge of many modern languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Polish, modern Greek and Arabic, as well as working knowledge of ancient languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Edomite, Ancient Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek, she has unique perspective on the sources of human thought. In addition to translating modern books and academic papers from German, French, Dutch, and Italian, her work and teaching reveals how we come to think the way we do, examining the largely unexplored role of translation itself in ancient history. Drawing from original source material such as pagan Ugaritic epics and original Moabite, Babylonian, Syriac and Coptic texts, her studies of history, society and translation at York University explore inter-cultural transfer of information from the dawn of writing to the present day. Her personal interests, apart from the pleasures of family and friends, range from woodworking to calligraphy, from water skiing to ice hockey. She has raised six children and counts motherhood among her greatest accomplishments.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal

To say Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a writer, filmmaker and radio host does not do justice to the variety and sheer innovation behind her creative endeavors. The New York Times said this about her work: “Her books radiate fun the way tulips radiate spring: they are elegant and spirit-lifting.” Rosenthal has published 12 children’s books (and 8 forthcoming) including The New York Times bestsellers Duck! Rabbit! and Cookies: Bite Size Life Lessons. Duck! Rabbit! was selected as Time Magazine’s best children’s book of 2009. As for her adult work, Amazon named her Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life one of the top 10 memoirs of 2005. Amy is also the creator of YouTube sensations such as “17 Things I Made” and the international film project, “The Beckoning of Lovely: A Feature Film Featuring You.”

Raymond Laflamme

Raymond Laflamme is originally from Québec City, where he studied Physics as an undergraduate at the Université Laval. After surviving Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge, he completed his PhD on aspects of general relativity and quantum cosmology in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) under the direction of Stephen Hawking. Laflamme and his colleague Don Page are responsible for having changed Hawking’s mind on the reversal of the direction of time in a contracting universe (see Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time). From 1988-1992, Laflamme held a Killam post-doctoral fellowship at UBC, and a post-doctoral fellowship at Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge. From 1992-2001, Dr. Laflamme worked as a research scientist at Los Alamos Research Laboratory, where his interests shifted from cosmology to quantum computing. Since the mid-1990’s, Laflamme has developed theoretical approaches to quantum error correction, and has given experimental demonstrations of these techniques. In collaboration with Emmanuel Knill, Laflamme gave conditions for quantum error correcting codes, and established the fault-tolerance threshold, thereby showing that quantum computing systems could be practically useful. He went on to perform the first experimental demonstration of quantum error correction. With colleagues, he has developed a blueprint for a quantum information processor using linear optics, and devised and implemented new methods to make quantum information robust against corruption in both cryptographic and computational settings. In 2001, Laflamme returned to Canada as the founding Director of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), and as a founding member of the Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics. Dr. Laflamme is the founding Scientific Director of QuantumWorks, Canada’s national research consortium on quantum information science, and has been Director of the Quantum Information Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) since 2003, and a CIFAR Fellow since 2001. Dr. Laflamme holds the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information, and is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Laflamme’s group holds the world record for the largest quantum computer achieved to date, at 12 qubits.

Terry O'Reilly

Terry O’Reilly began his career as a copywriter for some of Canada’s top creative ad agencies. In 1990, he co-founded audio production company Pirate Radio & Television, now in Toronto and New York City. Terry has won awards around the world for his writing and directing. When he’s not creating advertising, he’s talking about it as host of the award-winning CBC/Sirius radio series, “The Age of Persuasion.” He’s co-written a best-selling book based on the radio show, published by Knopf Canada, which hits American bookstores this year. The advertising industry has given Terry three lifetime achievement awards, even though, to the best of his knowledge, he only has one life. He has a wonderful wife and three lovely daughters. Who like some of his work.

Michael Sacco

Michael Sacco is a technologist, writer and chocolatier. He founded ChocoSol, an artisanal chocolate company which he as termed a ‘learning community social enterprise’ promoting the diversity of production of organic cacao through a structure defined as “horizontal trade”. Rather than sell commodities, says Michael, ChocoSol extends symbolic invitations: “The chocolate is an expression and vehicle for our dignity, creativity and learning.” Honoured as Toronto Food Policy Council’s Local Food Hero in September 2009, he believes in open-source learning and building, and has been designing green production systems using solar power, pedal power, and waste diversion and upcycling techniques. ChocoSol’s bicycle-powered chocolate grinders earned it the title of Toronto’s Best New Bicycle Business in 2008.

Paul Saltzman

Paul Saltzman is a two-time Emmy Award winning Toronto-based film and television producer-director known for over 300 productions. After briefly studying Engineering Science, he did congressional civil rights lobbying in Washington, D.C., and voter registration work in Mississippi. He began his film and television career in 1965 at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a researcher, interviewer and on-air host, and then moved to the National Film Board of Canada. In 1967 he interviewed American inventor and visionary Buckminster Fuller, who would later say that Saltzman changed his assessment of the ‘60s generation. Early in 1968 he learned meditation at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in India, an experience that changed his life. While there, he photographed the Beatles, Mia Farrow,Donovan and Mike Love. In 1968-69 he assisted in the birth of a new film format as second-unit director and production manager of the first IMAX film, produced for the Osaka 1970 World’s Fair. In the summer of 1969, he attended the original Woodstock Music Festival; and in the early ‘70s he produced a Leonard Cohen live concert tour. In 1972 he produced and directed his first film, a half-hour documentary on Bo Diddley. In 1973, Paul founded Sunrise Films Limited. He produced and directed documentaries for the next decade, including the acclaimed series Spread Your Wings. His work included producing, directing, writing, editing, cinematography and sound recording. In 1983, he turned to drama, producing and directing the premiere of HBO’s Family Playhouse and a special for American Playhouse. In the same year, he co-created and produced the family action-adventure television series Danger Bay. The hit CBC-Disney Channel series ran for 6 years and 123 episodes. Since then he has produced television series like My Secret Identity, Matrix and Max Glick, as well as miniseries and movies of the week. He co-produced the feature film Map of the Human Heart, an international epic directed by Vincent Ward, starring Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud, Patrick Bergin, John Cusack and Jean Moreau. He also executive produced Martha, Ruth & Edie as well as Sam & Me, which received an Honorable Mention in competition for the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2000, Paul released his first book, The Beatles in Rishikesh, through the Viking Studio, Penguin Putnam. In early 2006 he self-published his second book, a deluxe Limited Edition Box-Set, The Beatles in India, complete with a Limited Edition archival chromogenic print, an original CD and an original DVD. In 2008, he made his feature-film directorial debut with the documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi, with Morgan Freeman, which premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, 2009. He is currently editing his 2nd feature, the documentary Return to Mississippi, with Harry Belafonte, the KKK and Morgan Freeman. Paul is a member of the Director’s Guild of Canada and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. He loves travelling, skydiving, scuba diving, and plays ice hockey, often. He has one daughter.

Darren Wershler

Darren Wershler is a Canadian experimental poet, non-fiction writer and cultural critic. A former grave digger, he was the senior editor of Coach House Books between 1997 and 2002, where the works he edited included several highly acclaimed books of contemporary innovative poetry, including Fidget by Kenneth Goldsmith (2000), both volumes of Seven Pages Missing, the collected works of Steve McCaffery (2000, 2002), Lip Service by Bruce Andrews (2001), and Eunoia by Christian Bök (2002). Wershler-Henry’s The Tapeworm Foundry was a Trillium Book Award finalist in 2000. He has instructed courses at York University and currently is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He has authored several books about the Internet, technology and culture, as well as occasional essays on pop culture for newspapers and magazines such as Brick, Broken Pencil and This Magazine. He lives in Montreal.