Theme: The Future Is Ours

Have you ever wondered that everything we think we know might just be wrong? What the world is turning towards that fast? Is it really getting worse? What is the way out from all this negativism? Where do we come from? What’s out there? What will tomorrow bring? Who are we? (How) Can we change the world? How dare we be optimistic? What is next? What are we shifting to while erasing boundaries between disciplines and what can we take from it? What’s the point after all?
These are only a few questions that we care about. What are yours?

Join us for TEDxVilnius 2014: stand up and raise your own questions, be part of something bigger than yourself, be part of a voyage into the unknown. Gather with a group of the most proactive thinkers and doers from Lithuania and around, people who are crazy enough to think that ideas can change the world and make a shift towards the future!

The future is ours...

Theatre Arena
3 Olimpieciu
Vilnius, 09200
Lithuania

Carl Bärstad

Having gone through conventional education himself, Carl Bärstad tells us the story of how he regained his creative confidence and how he is now using this insight to make technology more fun, engaging and accessible in the 21st century “classroom” through his project Kids Hack Day to foster curiosity-fueled learning and creative thinking.

Carlo De Micheli

The latest project Carlo De Micheli is working on is OSVehicle, a new mindset in the automotive industry: a process that gives everyone the tools to develop his own vehicle. From a single prototype to a full scale production, open source methodologies and simplicity of construction are the principles behind the OSV magic.

Koen Olthuis

Koen Olthuis studied Architecture and Industrial Design at the Delft University of Technology. In his vision today’s designers are an essential part of the climate change generation and should start to enhance their perspective on urban components to become dynamic instead of static. His solution called City Apps, are floating urban components that add a certain function to the existing static grid of a city.

Tomas Dobrovolskis

Tomas Dobrovolskis is a percussionist, multi-instrumentalist, live performer and composer from Lithuania. Besides Tomas’ activities as a music performer, he works with kids and adults as a music teacher at various organizations. He is famous for creating original, new percussion instruments The Brass Globe and Glass to create a new genre and way of performing in regard to solo percussion. After touring from Israel to Burning Man Festival over the past few years, we can’t wait to see Tomas on TEDxVilnius stage to perform his most amazing pieces.

Ieva Sliesoraityte

Dr. Ieva Sliesoraityte, MD Ph.D. upon the completion of her studies in electrical engineering and medicine, qualifying as a certified ophthalmologist, defended her PhD thesis in technical sciences. Ieva received many distinguished international scientific prizes, and has been awarded by the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences twice. Ieva’s latest achievement is EU grant for a Eur-USH project based at the Institute of Vision in Paris where she researches rare diseases in order to cure blindness.

Paulius Lukas Tamosiunas

Alongside his PhD studies in biotechnology, Paulius is busy bringing new opportunities for other young curious minds of Lithuania. He has brought three international science competitions into the country as well as inspiring his team to organize over two dozens of national science events for high schools students. He experienced that the best way to take student into the journey to science is not simulating it with sophisticated technology, but rather encouraging to create a lab in their own kitchen.

Kingsley Aikins

Kingsley Aikins is CEO of Diaspora Matters, a Dublin, Ireland based consultancy company that advises countries, regions, cities, corporations and institutions how to develop strategies for harnessing the power and influence of their Diasporas. He has developed a unique methodology which revolves around face to face networking and building social capital.

Peter Boyd

Peter Boyd brings to the Carbon War Room over 15 years of experience in strategy, marketing, operations, and general management. Peter was integral to the launch of CWR, serving as Launch Director starting with the finalization of the initial concept with Richard Branson and fellow founders in early 2009. Peter joins us for TEDx journey trying to unveil some of the crucial questions about the future of our Mother Nature and all of us.

Peter Madsen

Peter Madsen has been facinated with adventures under the sea since his childhood and in 2001 he designed the midget submarine "Freya". Peters dream was as much to be under water, as it was to experiment and build a fantastic underwatership. During the summer of 2001, the small submarine took shape and by Spring 2002, Mr. Madsen became the first private submarine captain in his country as he took command of Freya during her fist test dive.

Giorgio Metta

Giorgio Metta is director of the iCub Facility department at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) where he coordinates the development of the iCub robotic platform/project. He is member of the board of directors of euRobotics aisbl, the European reference organization for robotics research. Giorgio Metta research activities are in the fields of biologically motivated and humanoid robotics and, in particular, in developing humanoid robots that can adapt and learn from experience.

Gabe Zichermann

Gabe Zichermann is the chair of GSummit where top gamification experts across industries gather to share knowledge and insight about customer & employee engagement and loyalty. He is also an author, highly rated public speaker and entrepreneur whose next book, The Gamification Revolution (McGraw Hill, 2013) looks at how leaders are leveraging gamification strategy to crush the competition. His books have helped define the industry’s standards and frameworks, and continue to be key reference materials today.

Liudni Slibinai

LIŪDNI SLIBINAI (en. Sad Dragons) is a theatrical music band created by the Lithuanian actors of the new generation. Fusing together classical Lithuanian poetry with the modern sound, these musical hooligans cannot be pigeon-holed into any conventional genre. The group is well known for its energetic performances, stage antics, positive sadness, witty and self-deprecating irony.

Eugenijus Laurinaitis

Eugenijus Laurinaitis has worked as psychoanalytic psychotherapist and academic teacher of medical students for more than 35 years, teached psychotherapists for over 20 years, and all this time has looked for explanations where all these problems in our life come from. No better insight may be achieved than one given by A. de Saint-Exupéry “All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

Sean Ward

Before founding Synthace, Sean was a Research Associate in Bioinformatics at University College London, where he conducted research into protein folding, protein structure prediction, and gene coding. Sean Wards joins TEDxVilnius | The Future Is Ours to spread his message about the future of genetic engineering.

Mindaugas Pakalnis

As a chief city planner, Mindaugas took part in developing the major development projects of Vilnius city - master plan, approved in 2007, strategic development plan, development concepts of different parts of the city. During the last few years Mindaugas performed different researches in investigating present urban development challenges of Lithuanian cities, stressing discussions on consequences of urban sprawl, lost density, social impacts of segregation on the cities, trying to find out vital models for city renovation.

LowAir | Urban Dance Theatre

Theatre founders and choreographers Laurynas Zakevicius and Airida Gudaite debuted with their first dance performance Feel Link in the Arts Printing House | Young Stage Artists’ program Open Space back in 2011. The Ensemble-debut showed a reflection on the impalpability on feelings in a modern society and were nominated for the highest performing arts award in Lithuania - Golden Stage Cross.

Vaiva Vysniauskaite

Vaiva loves watching the change in others – it’s quite the main reason she joined the program “Renkuosi mokyti!” (eng. Let’s Teach!) and became a teacher in 2011. “These two years of teaching were like climbing mountains – it’s amazing how intensively we can grow, both teachers and students! And that we can witness changes every day – it’s incredible how much children can grow and accomplish if we give them challenges, support, direction. They can climb amazingly high mountains if we talk, listen to them and believe in them.”

Michael Brooks

Michael Brooks, who holds a PhD in quantum physics, is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He is the UK-based author of 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of our Times. He is a consultant for the magazine New Scientist, and writes a weekly science column for London's New Statesman magazine.