Renjie Butalid

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TEDxWaterloo – Tomorrow Started Yesterday

Posted by renjie On February - 18 - 2010

After months of hard work, we’re coming down to the wire with the organization for TEDxWaterloo, finally happening next week on February 25 at the Gig Music Hall in downtown Kitchener – and we’re definitely super excited!!!

On a personal note, it’s been quite the journey for me from my initial blog post on a possible TEDxWaterloo event last summer, to opportune meetings with an amazing group of people who are equally as passionate about ideas worth spreading. Credit for putting TEDxWaterloo together really has to go to the entire team of volunteers behind the event, who have collectively given hundreds of hours of their time, energy and commitment towards making TEDxWaterloo a success.

Our diverse range of speakers, all of whom are well recognized and respected in their fields, are also giving us their time and energy because they truly believe in sharing their ideas and experiences with the broader community.

We will be live webstreaming the entire event beginning 2pm EST on February 25 at www.tedxwaterloo.com. All of the TEDxWaterloo Talks will be made available online after the event.

For more information on TEDxWaterloo, please visit: www.tedxwaterloo.com

TEDxWaterloo Speakers

Terry O’Reilly – Advertising visionary and host of the CBC award-winning radio series “The Age of Persuasion“.

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Philip Beesley – Professor at Waterloo Architecture creating vastly complex ‘living’ environments that can breathe and feel.

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Raymond LaFlamme – Founding Director of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing whose insight changed Stephen Hawking’s mind and theories about our universe.

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Paul Saltzman – Beatles photographer and two-time Emmy Award winning film & television producer-director.

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Caroline Disler – A master of translation with working knowledge of ancient languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Edomite, Ancient Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek.

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Madhur Anand – Internationally recognized scientist, poet, and professor of Global Ecological Change at the University of Guelph.

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Michael Sacco – Chocolatier and social entrepreneur promoting the diversity of production of organic cacao through a structure defined as “horizontal trade”.

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Darren Wershler – Canadian experimental poet, non-fiction writer and cultural critic.

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Marty Avery – A connector and catalyst whose strategic approach offers remarkable insight into the human side of business.

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Amy Krouse Rosenthal – New York Times best-selling children’s author, radio host and creative filmmaker.

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Below is a video segment of Jaclyn and I discussing TEDxWaterloo that appeared on the Waterloo Region Record website, courtesy of Philip Bast.

The full interview with Chris Meidell of Waterloo Tech TV can be found here.

TEDxWaterloo on The Record from Renjie Butalid on Vimeo.

Popularity: 24% [?]

- Current Projects, - Personal, - TED Talks, - TEDxWaterloo, - Waterloo, Community, Featured, Photos & Videos, Projects

TEDxWaterloo – February 25, 2010

Posted by renjie On January - 13 - 2010

Full disclosure: I am one of the lead organizers behind TEDxWaterloo, taking place on February 25, 2010.

If you are a big fan of TED and find yourself watching TEDTalks videos on a seemingly regular basis, why not come out to TEDxWaterloo on February 25, 2010 to experience a TED-like event in the company of like-minded, passionate individuals who believe in ideas worth spreading.

Applications to attend TEDxWaterloo are now open and you can apply to attend here

If you are not located in the Waterloo Region or surrounding area, you can still follow the proceedings of the day’s events on Feb 25 by watching the live webcast on our website www.tedxwaterloo.com

The theme for TEDxWaterloo is Tomorrow Started Yesterday, and will feature an amazing line-up of speakers discussing a broad range of topics and ideas touching on this theme. The speaker line-up for TEDxWaterloo will be announced in the coming weeks, stay tuned!

Why do I have to apply to attend TEDxWaterloo?

I have seen a number of comments to this effect on twitter as well as on facebook, following the announcement yesterday on the TEDxWaterloo twitter account and facebook fanpage. For the sake of openness and transparency, I wanted to clarify a few of the key issues that have been brought to our attention.

To provide a bit of background to the event itself, TEDxWaterloo is organized as an independently organized TED event.

From www.ted.com/tedx

TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

At TEDx events, unique talks given by live speakers combine with TEDTalks videos to spark deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.

There are some guidelines as well as recommendations that TED provides to organizers to help re-create a TED-like experience at TEDx events. For example, TED encourages prospective TEDx attendees to fill out applications forms in order to showcase their commitment to attending the event.

From my own perspective as one of the organizers of TEDxWaterloo and discussions with other TEDx organizers, this approach also allows organizers to deeply and more meaningfully understand what motivates the audience members. Of course, there are also some practical considerations to this approach, such as capacity limitations of the venue (to be announced soon for TEDxWaterloo!) as well as budget considerations.

Taking the cue from the upcoming TED 2010 conference happening February 9-13, 2010 in Long Beach, CA, it seems to me the purpose of curating both the speakers roster as well as the audience members comes down to ensuring a rich and stimulating exchange of ideas among a diverse group of peers.

There are major differences between actual TED conferences (TED 2010, TEDGlobal 2010, TEDActive) and local TEDx events held in cities around the world. I would like to note that it is free to attend TEDxWaterloo and the application process is open to all, everyone is invited and encouraged to submit an application to attend. We look forward to seeing you there!

N.B. If you’re interested in reading more about this discussion, I would encourage you to check out this page on TED’s website, that addresses a number of probing questions including, ‘Is TED elitist?‘

Popularity: 100% [?]

- Current Projects, - TED Talks, - TEDxWaterloo, - Waterloo, Community, Featured, Photos & Videos, Projects, Social Change

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

Posted by renjie On January - 6 - 2010

via ted.com

I will be sharing a TED Talk every Wednesday beginning this week, in an attempt to personally keep track (as well as document) many of the mind-blowing ideas, perspectives and projects that exceptional people are working on, from all over the world.

This approach to blogging is quite new for me as up until now, my blog posts have been (in)frequent and based on a random schedule of when I feel like putting up a blog post.

Looking over my (rather short) blogging history, there have been certain periods of time where you can tell I was inspired given I was able to produce 3-4 solid blog posts in a week, sustained for weeks at a time. Then there are cases such as September 2009 where there was not a blog post to be found considering how busy the month was for me, together with my lack of motivation for writing (similar to the case between January-March 2009).

This is my attempt at working on my new year’s resolution for 2010 and incorporating ‘working smarter, not harder’ into all aspects of my life, including blogging.

If there is one thing that I have learned from having maintained a blog for a year and a half now, is that the keys to being succesful at blogging are

Quality of Content
Consistency
Knowing exactly why you are writing.

Of course, you need to throw in a little spontaneity and randomness every now and then, just to keep things interesting.

Posted via web from renjie’s posterous

Popularity: 63% [?]

- Blogging, - Social Change, - TED Talks, - TEDxWaterloo, Photos & Videos, Projects, Social Change, Social Media

Time for Change (#t4change) at DigitalMediaCamp Toronto (#dmcamp)

Posted by renjie On December - 15 - 2009

View original post on www.t4change.com

See and download the full gallery on posterous

DigitalMediaCamp Toronto (#dmcamp) took place this past Saturday, where participants gathered in an attempt to address the question,

“How can we work together to propel Toronto’s technology, content and design communities into the future and make Toronto a globally competitive hub of digital media entrepreneurship and innovation?”

Facilitated by Mark Kuznicki, and supported by the Canadian Digital Media Network, some excellent conversation took place throughout the day around this question, with some concrete action items attached to specific timelines emerging at the end of the day. A number of blog posts have popped up following #dmcamp, providing an overview of the day’s proceedings, including a blog post over at TechVibes by Karim Kanji. For a much more comprehensive listing of blog posts to do with #dmcamp, please visit dmcampto.slinkset.com

The day’s events were captured in real-time, on the #dmcamp Toronto wiki, as well as on ScribbleLive, where any tweets or blog posts with the hashtag #dmcamp, were automatically fed into the ScribbleLive feed. It was almost disarming to find a picture of yourself projected on the wall in real time whilst engaged in a group discussion (look closely at picture 6 and 7 in the photo gallery above). It is interesting to see how social media is changing the way conferences and events are being communicated in real-time for those unable to attend, as well as documented for future reference.

#t4change at #dmcamp

Nick (@petten), Ruby (@rubyku) and myself (@renjie), took part in a conversation facilitated by Gabe Sawhney later in the day, where the topic revolved around connecting the technology industry with community organizations in order to create real change on the ground. Notes from this session can be found here.We brought up Time for Change, known as #t4change in #dmcamp-speak, and how this model is based on the original Timeraiser concept where we value time over monetary donations. We highlighted our pilot event on December 3rd as an existing ‘action’ item that we were already pursuing, and we acknowledged that we did not have all the answers as of yet, but were keenly interested in learning and adapting as the project unfolds.

A lot of people seemed to take interest in this, judging from the quality of the conversation at #dmcamp, as well as the number of times the hashtag #t4change appeared alongside the hashtag #dmcamp on Twitter. We outlined that we were looking to redefine the terms ‘volunteer’ and ’service’, and that we were focused in our efforts to engage young professionals working in the corporate sector, utilizing their professional skills and matching them with opportunities in the community best suited to their skills, interests and passions.

Next steps for #t4change

One of the concrete action-items that emerged from #dmcamp was a commitment to host a roundtable discussion on #t4change at the Centre for Social Innovation sometime in early January 2010, with the help of Mark Kuznicki and Gabe Sawhney. Notes from this session can be found here.

We invite all those interested, including those who attended Time for Change on December 3rd, as well as #dmcamp this past Saturday, December 12, to join us to discuss possible next steps forward with #t4change. We will be posting more information on our blog as well as on Twitter once we have finalized a date and time for the roundtable discussion at CSI.

For now, we are extremely excited for what lies ahead with this project, and will continue to learn and adapt as the project emerges. We want to make it clear that we would like to continue to be the holders of the process for #t4change, but we do not want to control the process. We want this emergence to be a product of co-creation, and we certainly welcome any input or critical feedback provided. As of now, we do not know if #t4change could spin-off into its own independent organizational structure, or become a project embedded into an already existing system infrastructure.

It is exciting for us to have people excited about #t4change. This project has certainly resonated with each one of us (myself, Nick, Ruby and Kristina) and perhaps this has to do with the much broader trend of young people in today’s world, wanting to pursue their passions and create meaning in their lives.

Popularity: 16% [?]

- Current Projects, - Social Change, - Social Entrepreneurship, - Social Innovation, - Technology, - Time for Change, - Toronto, - Waterloo, - Young People, Community, Featured, Photos & Videos, Projects

Out in the Cold

Posted by renjie On December - 9 - 2009

Founded in March 2007 by Nick Petten while an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo, Out in the Cold is a grassroots, student-run event held every November, where students and community members are invited to spend the night outside on campus, to raise money and awareness of homelessness issues in their local community.

We are continuing the Out in the Cold initiative by sharing a model by which other schools and universities can adapt to their respective campus and local community. www.outinthecold.ca was launched in October 2009 as an online portal to document the growth of this grassroots initiative. It is our goal to provide the tools necessary for people in other schools and universities to organize similar events in order to provide a better understanding of issues surrounding homelessness, poverty and housing stability.

Causes of homelessness include poverty and a lack of affordable housing. Root causes of poverty include low income, unemployment or underemployment, social isolation, racism, low literacy, poor education, and many more. Addressing homelessness is effective social, health, and economic policy.

Learn more about the issues

After three years at the University of Waterloo, the Out in the Cold model was successfully adapted at the University of Toronto campus. In November 2009, Out in the Cold was run simultaneously at both campuses, and was organized by teams of students led by Kaija Saarinen (Waterloo) and Jenna van Draanen (Toronto).

Learn more about Out in the Cold 2009
Out in the Cold in the news

Out in the Cold Timeline

Out in the Cold has raised over $10,000 for organizations tackling the issues of poverty and homelessness in the local community.

March 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2008: University of Waterloo

November 2009:

University of Waterloo & University of Toronto

www.outinthecold.ca launched

November 2010:

Our goal is to apply this model to schools and universities across Canada. Please contact us if you would like to host Out in the Cold in your local community.

Popularity: 11% [?]