It took quite a while, but we have finally been able to release the first five videos of TEDxUHasselt 2012. Check them out!

We’ve also created a photo album with some of the best pictures taken at TEDxUHasselt this year.

Right after TEDxUHasselt 2012, we’ve sent an anonymous survey to the attendees. We were very happy to read all the enthusiastic feedback. One of the attendees puts it as follows:

It was truly one of the most perfectly organised events I ever went to. Everything was great. The talks, the food, the venue, the drinks, the people, all of it. Even the smallest details were done perfectly.

97% of the attendees plans on coming back next year and over 70% feels TEDxUHasselt made an impact on their life. Mission accomplished.

See you in 2013, we have some awesome events planned!

Last year, we unveiled a technical first for TEDx events worldwide. For the first time ever, people were able to watch a livestream of a TEDx event in 360 degrees, comparable to Google’s Street View but with live video!

This technology is offered to us by the Hasselt University EDM research centre, and provides an experience that goes way beyond the traditional livestream. For a preview, head over to www.360video.org, the website of Prof. Bekaert.

TEDxUHasselt founder Rutger Bevers had the honor to give a talk about our unique livestream at TEDxSummit, the TED-organized conference for TEDx organizers. Check it out:

This year, we have brought the livestream experience to the next level. At our stream page, located at www.tedxuhasselt-live.be, we added a secondary stream containing the slides of the current speaker. This way, the 360° stream can be used solely for looking around and following the speaker. The slides however, will always be visible.

So, if you can’t attend TEDxUHasselt or did not get a ticket, you can still feel like being there. Watch TEDxUHasselt like you’re a part of the audience, join the Twitter conversation and enjoy. Stream TEDxUHasselt 2012 live.

Made possible by Rambla.

Are you going to attend TEDxUHasselt? Do you need a ride?
Maybe CoCar can help you…

What’s CoCar about?

CoCar *links social networks to real-time ride sharing. At the foundation of CoCar lies a dynamic database of route- and person-related information with which an on-the-spot request is immediately linked with matching offers. In this way, the project aims to increase the degree of occupation of private cars thereby improving mobility in Flanders.

*CoCar is currently a trial version.

How does CoCar work?

Find a ride in 4 simple steps:

1. Sign up (via Iphone, iPad or website).
2. Enter your departure and
   destination address.
3. Find matches.
4. Get in touch with the driver

Offer a ride in 4 simple steps:

1. Sign up (via Iphone, IPad or website).
2. Enter your departure and destination address.
3. Find matches directly or get contacted afterwards by email.
4. Get in touch with the passengers.

More information: www.cocar.be. Visit their booth at TEDxUHasselt!

When we started brainstorming about TEDxUHasselt 2012, we came up with a goal: to organize the most awesome conference we’ve ever been to. This means we want to surprise the attendees from beginning to end, in many different ways. We won’t tell you everything just yet, but here are a few extra’s we’ve been working on lately:

The lab

During the breaks you can get in touch with a wide range of innovative projects, start-ups and companies.

‘The Lab’ offers you an exceptional experience of how people are making a change in the universe.  You can try some of the interactive booths where you can let your creativity flow, or pick up interesting stories from young entrepreneurs, making their way. Or maybe you can get inspired by some of their creative, succesfull business models?

Eight young companies will be present: Lumoza, Studio Pieck, Brelec, The New Drive, Svanto, LuGus Studios, TinkerTouch and Junior Consulting.

The lounge

No boring breaks at TEDxUHasselt. At our lounge, you’ll be able to relax in one of the super comfortable egg seats while the DJ makes sure the atmosphere is just right.

If you’re not into music, fear not: there will be plenty of other spaces.

Beer

What better way to stimulate conversation than great beer? At TEDxUHasselt, a selection of the best Belgian beers will be available.

A.S.S.

TED talks are always quite a bit better than whatever powerpoint presentation your mal-prepared coworker can throw at you. However, usually it is still only the speaker doing all the hard work, while the audience just has to show up and relax. Together with the young game developers at LuGus Studios we say: NO MORE! It is time for the attendees to show what they’ve got!

So be sure to bring your phones and tablets to TEDxUhasselt, because LuGus is putting things into perspective with their talk “Engaging audiences by showing them your A.S.S.”. With a special guest appearance of their valued employee Astro Bob, some real technological magic and a concept especially designed for TEDxUHasselt.

14 speakers sharing innovative ideas; that’s TEDxUHasselt in a nutshell.

But no TEDxUHasselt without an audience. In fact, we believe the audience is equally important as the speakers because TEDxUHasselt is a unique opportunity to meet 500 passionate people of a wide range of expertise fields, both students and non-students.

How about the price? Well, we’re very proud to be able to offer free tickets! So, what are you waiting for? Apply now for a ticket. After applying, you will receive a confirmation or refusal no later than October 27th.

We work with ticket applications rather than first-come, first-serve so we can make sure there is a good mix of audience members. We aim for a very diverse audience from beginning students to senior business experts - everyone has a chance of getting in!

And more thing: stay tuned for more information about the complete TEDxUHasselt experience – we’re working on some really awesome stuff.

We promised an extraordinary speakers line-up and today you can finally judge for yourself.

Last year, “the technology revolution” theme was quite narrow. For 2012, we wanted a line-up of speakers from a broader range of topics. But how broad should we go? We decided to focus on the three most taught subjects at Hasselt University: science, technology and entrepreneurship.

With that decided, we spent half a year selecting a combination of world-class speakers and local talent. Today, the speaker selection is finished and we are really excited by how it turned out. Let us introduce some of them to you and you will understand why:

Priya Parker (USA) doesn’t just run a start-up in New York, her research at MIT on identifying what the driving factors are that lead people to thriving and what blocks them from it is highly relevant these days.

Marc Buelens (BE), professor at Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School, won’t be delivering yet another lecture, he will take Nele Snoeck (BE), a professional actress, with him on stage for a unique talk.

Juergen Schmidhuber (CH) is not just an internationally acknowledged artificial intelligence expert, he also manages to combine complex science with humor.

TEDxUHasselt wouldn’t be a TEDx event without some surprising speakers: Jee Kast (BE) brings poetry to the mix and Peter Gregson (UK) will talk about his innovations in music. Anders Sandberg (UK), Nik Baerten (BE), Willem Ombelet (BE), Javier de la Torre (ES/USA), Jan Scheele (NL) and Thijs De Vries (NL) make this first speaker announcement complete.
You can read everything about TEDxUHasselt 2012 on this webpage. More speakers will be announced in the next days, so make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

We hope you are as excited about our speakers as we are. However, TEDxUHasselt is more than just talks. Our goal is to create a unique experience from beginning to end, in every aspect. That includes workshops, long breaks with networking tools, great food and drinks, even extraordinary decoration and much more we can’t tell you about just yet. Stay tuned.

As announced earlier, come wednesday you’ll be able to experience a portion of the TED 2012 conference right here at home in Diepenbeek. Two parts of the conference will be simulcast from Long Beach, California: ‘The Lab’ and ‘The Earth’. Each part consists of five speakers.

The Lab

This part will be focussing on cutting edge technology. There’ll be talks about robotics, illusions or the latest DARPA – those guys who invented the internet – developments.

First up will be Hendrik Schärfe and his robot double, geminoid DK. They want to find out how we as humans will talk, work and live with robots in the future. Second will be Regina Dugan of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a USA agency in the Department of Defense that is a real innovation engine. She’ll share her vision on innovation with us.

Jack Choi is next, the CEO of Anatomage. Anatomage is a high tech company that works on 3D medical technology. One of their products is a virtual dissection table, pretty mindblowing! The fourth talk will take us in an other direction, that of magic and illusion, when Marco Tempest takes the stage. As TED puts it: “Marco Tempest blends cutting-edge technology with the flair and showmanship of Houdini”.

On to the fifth speaker: Donald Sadoway. Donald is currently developping a groundbreaking new battery technology based on layers of liquid metal, aimed to make batteries more efficient and inexpensive. The final speaker will be Vijay Kumar. He studies the control and coordination of multi-robot formations, among other things. In short? He’ll probably be responsible for some of the future’s robotic wonders.

That concludes the first part ‘the lab’ and you’ll have 45 minutes of break time to eat some sandwiches and discuss all the marvelous talks.

The Earth

the second part will be focussed on our precious and fragile oasis often refered to as ‘Earth’. The first speaker is Karen Bass, a natural history filmmaker who has traveled to all the corners of the globe. We continue in this photographic setting with Sharon Beals who’s a photographer with a keen interest in snapping photos of birds nests.

Wade Davis is next, he does so much that it’s hard to summarize it all. TED tries it with the following: “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity”. Fourth speaker will be James Hansen, a climatologist who inspired a whole generation of activists and scientists on the issue of climate change. Will he inspire us too?

At some point in this part, energy has to come in to play. That’s why T. Boone Pickens, an energy theorist will be the fifth speaker. He’s currently working hard on getting the USA to reing in its dependency on OPEC oil. We end this part on a theatrical note with the Civilians Investigative Theater. They’ll be doing a show based on another play: The Great Immensity by Cosson and Friedman.

That will conclude our TED 2012 Simulcast. We’re sure you’ll have a lot to think and exchange thoughts about, no worries though, there’ll be plenty of time for that during the reception afterwards. So if this got you interested, just head on over to tedxuhasselt.be and register for a ticket!

With the next edition of TEDxUHasselt still miles away, the team has been hard at work organising two other events. As we strive to build a community around TEDxUHasselt, we want it to be something which persists throughout the whole year. That’s why we are announcing our next two events: our first TEDxUHasselt Salon and the TED 2012 Simulcast. Both events are coming up fast  at the end of this month.

TEDxUHasselt Salon
The salon concept of TEDx revolves around community involvement and sharing ideas in a more informal setting. We want TEDxUHasselt Salon to be something more low key, focused mostly on students sharing there ideas and getting involved in TEDxUHasselt. Any idea, passion or crazy thought is welcome at the salon.

If you’ve got an idea or a passion to talk about, you get 10 minutes to share it with other TED enthusiasts and open minds. You can use a presentation as well, though it is in no way mandatory. If you’re just interested in hearing ideas or getting involved, you’re welcome too. In fact, go and apply now to make sure you’re in! We look forward to meeting you at the UHasselt winter garden on February 23rd at 19h.

TED 2012 Simulcast
Ever watched a TED talk thinking “I wish I could be one of the people in the audience”? Well, we’ve got the next best thing: a live video-stream of TED 2012 in Long Beach which is literally half a world away! We’ll be showing you part of the TED 2012 Conference on February 29th at 17h30 in room H5. We’ll provide you with food at reasonable prices during the break at 19h45. That way your energy demanding brain will be able to cope with the huge load of inspiring ideas.

Pretty neat, right? Make sure you apply for a ticket so you don’t miss out on this unique opportunity.

One More Thing
So that’s what we’ve been working on, but there’s one more thing. Our founder, Rutger, is going to California to attend TED Active. That way TEDxUHasselt can acquire a license that allows more attendees at TEDxUHasselt in the fall of 2012. TED Active will take place following february 27th. Around that time you’ll be able to read about Rutger’s adventures right here, on this blog.

Can’t get enough of the extra features we are announcing? Here’s another one: Tech45 will be interviewing speakers at TEDxUHasselt for a special episode of their podcast. Tech45 is a podcast of dutch-speaking technology enthusiasts that is recorded every week. Topics are mostly based on the news in the world of tech but they also feature interesting guests from time to time.

We at TEDxUHasselt are quite fond of the Tech45 podcast. As you may know, we announced one of our first extra features on their podcast: the 360 degrees livestream. It left the Tech45 panel baffled. We decided that a partnership with the podcasters would be beneficial to both TEDxUHasselt and Tech45. By having a special episode dedicated to TEDxUHasselt, the ideas of our speakers can reach an even broader audience. Meanwhile, Tech45 will be introduced to people like you, and their audience can grow.

During the break and reception, the speakers will visit the guys of Tech45 for a short interview in which they can explain their ideas further and in more detail. So, if you like the ideas and want to know just a little more, the podcast will be a great place to start. It’ll be released in about two weeks time after the event.

Pretty great, huh!

Just like TEDx events, Barcamps are events filled with short talks about all kinds of topics. However, unlike TEDx events, the talks are given by the attendees (often simultaneous in different rooms) and are usually prepared very shortly before the event. Quite different, but pretty awesome too.

These so-called unconferences are organized in Belgium a few times per year and on October 20th the first Barcamp in Hasselt took place. TEDxUHasselt founder Rutger Bevers was there and spoke about his experiences on organizing TEDxUHasselt. Check out his presentation:

More information about Barcamp in Belgium can be found on www.barcamp.be. If you are into TEDx, Barcamp is definitely worth checking out!