TEDxCalgary

TEDxCalgary Videos

Our speaker videos are now all uploaded on the TEDxTalks YouTube channel. Click the link to visit our playlist, or watch below. You can also visit our speakers list page to view bios and videos by individual speakers.

Special thanks to TEDxCalgary volunteer Gordon McDowell for his recording, editing, and posting of the videos.

What is TEDxCalgary?

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Our event is called TEDxCalgary, where x=independently organized TED event. At our inaugural event on April 29, 2010, TEDTalks video and live speakers combined to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

If you'd like to learn more, visit our [ contact page ] to send us an e-mail!

Theme introduction

Humanity 3.0 Theme

No, we're nowhere near to being at Humanity 3.0. But we wanted to set aside our natural pessimism and explore the possibilities of what a future version of humanity might look like, especially if we wanted to get it right. We're drawing from the TED disciplines of Technology, Entertainment and Design to see what Humanity 3.0 might be like if we were to strive to get there. The challenge is incredibly complex, but the rewards of moving forward to a new state of humanity would be worth the effort.

Youth

Youth are our future, and part of our energy as a society... if only we care to listen to their inherent wisdom and find ways to engage their passion to help move society forward. We don't want the youth of today to grow up fast beyond their years, but we also recognize that they've never had as much of a stake in the future as they do now. Many of the decisions we make about the world today will fundamentally shape the world of tomorrow, and determine what type of society our youth will inherit down the road.

Elders

How we treat our elders, and how we engage their accumulated wisdom in our ongoing journey as a society, says much about us and our potential for progress as humans. Like youth, however, we are progressively marginalizing the voice of our elders. Too many times, we let people pass an arbitrary age and no longer deem them to be fully productive members of society. That is a great loss, both for them and for us.

Conflict

Conflict is a seemingly unchangeable part of our human nature, an element of human society since our earliest days of recorded history. It also is the seed of our eventual downfall as a species, unless we can learn to focus our destructive energies in more positive ways. Our penchant for conflict has never been easy to explain or to try and curb, and today's conflicts aren't likely to make it any easier. Across the globe, we have countless armed conflicts on the go, many of which are more complex than ever in terms of their sources and their potential solutions.

Poverty

Today's world has never been as prosperous in so many ways, nor has there ever been as much poverty. This is one of the fundamental contradictions of today's humanity: in a time of great wealth, the world is very much divided into "have" and "have not", with more than two thirds of the globe's population living in comparative levels of poverty. In a world of progress, this is one of our most visible forms of disgrace. The sources of poverty are many, and the solutions are highly complex, yet we also have never had as many potential ways to address the conditions of poverty if we apply ourselves to the task.

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