If I were to ask you, Bengalureans (and others), what your Sunday plans on a Wednesday, you'd probably think I'm crazy. But if attending Bengaluru's fourth edition of TEDx isn't a part of your plan on February 25, 2018, then I wonder who is truly crazy.
With 15 speakers from different backgrounds, this year's conference is all set to kick up a storm with the theme ‘Unbreakable’. "As always, we have speakers who've been working in different sectors, but this year, all of them will be talking about one common angle — what changes need to be brought about to transform Bengaluru," says Sartaj Anand, the event's curator.
A long-time, regular TED Talk attendee, this entrepreneur was one among the few who brought TED to Bengaluru four years ago. "This is a platform for ideas and action, and comes very handy especially to those who are a part of the tech community," says Sartaj, who is also the founder of Egomonk. Then later, when the TED organisation introduced TEDx, he thought it would be a great idea to bring it to his city.
Sartaj was first introduced to TED by his friends, who would attend it every year. "They would always recommend that I attend one, so one year, I decided to try it out. Then I found myself attending it every year," he recalls. One talk that changed his life was the one that Monica Lewinsky delivered a couple of years ago. "She spoke about how she was mercilessly trolled across all online platforms for an incident that involved her and ex-US President, Bill Clinton. I could relate to her so much because I was trolled too, for the content that I produce online. She made me realise that trolling is a part of life and one should learn not to take it very seriously," he says.
Now, after the six-month-long preparation by the team, Bengaluru is all set to meet TEDx again. What about you?
Raiheth Rawla
A fashion catalyst, her designs focus on the cultural implications of clothing with respect to the third gender community in India.
Karim Sultan
The director and a curator at Barjeel Art Foundation, his interests are focused around developing fluency with art history and contemporary approaches to modernism in the Arab region. In addition, Karim is also a practising and performing artist who works with sound, music, photography, video and installation.
Aanchal Malhotra
She is a oral historian working with memory and material culture. Her main area of research has been to archive the objects and belongings that refugees brought across the border with them during the Partition of India in 1947, in order to create an alternative lens to understand displacement and migration.
Nishant Srinivasaiah
An elephant biologist, he is currently pursuing his doctoral studies on the behavioural decision-making in Asian elephants in a changing ecological and anthropogenic environment around Bengaluru, from the Animal Behaviour and Cognition Programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.
Aaron Sherinian
Aaron Sherinian joined the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in June 2017 as its Global Communications Director. Prior to this, he helped build some of the most talked about milestones in digital global engagement around UN issues and causes.
