TEDx comes to Cape Town

The highly successful non-profit global set of conferences, TED has spawned a program of ‘local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience’ – called TEDx – and it’s coming to Cape Town.

The event, named TEDxCapeTown, will combine TEDTalks video and live speakers to ignite engaging, deep discussion and connection within a small group. The self-organized local event will be held at the Ratanga Junction theme park on the 16 April 2011 and will include speakers and well known personalities such as Springleap co-founder Eran Eyal, Cognician co-founder Patrick Kayton and SAB Environmentalist of the Year (2010) Anthony Turton.Visit the TEDx Cape Town site or their Facebook page for further information or to register for the event.

The event is a first for Cape Town but not a first for TED talks in South Africa, with 2009 and 2010’s TEDxJohannesburg events a huge success – with speakers such as Missing Link founder Rich Mulholland, Clyral director Andi Friedman, Digital Marketing Agency Quirk CEO Justin Spratt and South African singer and playwright David Kramer.

“Be water My friend”, the theme for TEDx Cape Town is a quote from Kung-Fu legend Bruce Lee, emphasising the importance of adaptation and flow within the technology, entertainment and design spheres with a strong focus on awareness, community building and engagement.

In addition, at the SXSW event earlier this week, TED’s Executive Producer of Media June Cohen, announced that TED would be opening up an API for its TEDTalks and associated data  – in the hopes that developers will use the API to build new tools for viewing and sharing: “Initially, the API will focus on TED’s content library, giving developers access to TED’s almost 900 posted TEDTalks, as well as their rich metadata, including topic/tag, date, event, length, ratings, translations and transcripts. Access to the API will be granted to individual developers or organizations, based on an application detailing the proposed noncommercial use.”

About TED:

What began in 1984 as a once off conference bringing together key discussions on technology, entertainment and design has since broadened its scope globally with over 700 talks available online and a viewing figure of more than 300 million users. Past TED Talk speakers include politicians Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Jane Goodall, Malcom Gladwell and various Nobel Prize winners, who are given an 18 minute window in which to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging way.
Check the TED website and blog for further information and discussions.

Globally, the TEDx series of conferences have been hugely successful and have received positive reviews and while each event is unique and developed independently, they still maintain several features of the overall TED structure including: TED’s celebrated format, TEDTalks videos and bias-free programming.

After Cape Town, the TEDx talks will move back to Johannesburg with TEDx Soweto on 27 April and TEDx Sandton in June and thereafter the talks will hit Durban with TEDx UKZN also in June before moving back to Cape Town for TEDx Stellenbosch later on in July.