TEDxKazan-2016: an attorney in red cape, a Shaolin monk, and obvious facts
A TEDx conference has recently taken place in Kazan. Its mission is to spread unique ideas through the short lectures from interesting speakers. The correspondent of Realnoe Vremya attended TEDxKazan and assessed the speeches of various bloggers, Shaolin monks and the leaders of climate reality, who promote their unique ideas.
Confessions of Monica Lewinsky and a lecture from Kapitsa
TED is a private nonprofit foundation in the United States, known for its annual conferences, where different speakers of varying degrees of fame discuss science, art, politics, new technology, business and many other things.
Over the years of the project existing, such well-known figures as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Nobel laureates James Watson, Murray Gell-Mann performed before the curious audience seeking to broaden their horizons. Even Monica Lewinsky shared with the audience how she coped with a hate campaign after the incident in the Oval Office.
In its turn, TEDx is a TED project, which is engaged in similar activities in various countries (besides the USA), cities, universities and communities. At this lower level, the speakers are generally 'weaker': often it is bloggers, 'famous' attorneys and psychologists, travel-photographers, travellers and so on. Sometimes, of course, really unique people speak here. For example, a TEDx in Perm in 2009 managed to attract Sergey Kapitsa.
5000 rubles for obvious facts
TEDxKazan took place in the Kazan International School, where offspring of the local VIP-parents study (for example, children of a player of FC Rubin Gökdeniz Karadeniz). The list of participants initially gladdened the eye: a secular monk Shaolin Walter Gjergja, the first on the planet professional man-cyborg Evgeny Chereshnev, who, by the way, gave a brilliant interview to Realnoe Vremya, a researcher at the Skolkovo business school Andrey Shapenko…
Good reputation of the project, as well as its competent promotion, left no doubt that the speakers would share with the audience truly unique content, and, as a result, every viewer would be a bit 'levelled up'. However, after when a 'successful lawyer' Yekaterina Dukhina in red superhero cape ostentatiousy started speaking about the fact that all people lie, because 'God created us different', all illusions vanished like smoke.
A short lecture by Dukhina was full of obvious and well known facts. Perhaps, for only few attendees it was a revelation that people lie when they want to please someone or make a good impression. Other unique information (which you can find on the Internet in three seconds) from the speaker is a sign of deception: a person looks away to the left, frowns, in other words, shows signs of being in a state of stress through facial expressions, postures or gestures). After the demonstration of videos, in which officials lied to camera, giving promises, there was a brilliant result summed up: 'Take a liar in absolutely quiet way, because it means that the person wants to impress; try to identify what is true and what is a position of the person, and build further relations strategy on this basis of that; do not quarrel with a person you caught in a lie.'
Be disciplined and eat healthy!
The long-awaited Shaolin monk was to tell the audience about how to generate the best ideas regularly, using spiritual practices. But it so happened that Shi Xing Mi (in the world — Walter Gjergja), sitting on a colorful pillow, announced a few steps that you need to do to achieve a goal. The monk advised to admit your mistakes, to admit in your life discipline, to live for today, to focus on a journey but not a destination, to stop procrastinating and to get rid of inner barriers and fears. After teaching the audience some simple patterns (includes a deep breath, waving fists and screaming), which helps to release emotions, Walter left the stage for the next speaker, Olga Zinovieva.
The founder and Director General of ELEMENTAREE (a service for delivery and selection of useful and homemade food) gave a lecture under the intriguing title 'How not to die from food?' However, in this case it was already a usual scheme — a great title, good 'wrapper' and lame content. At the time of the unique lecture, everyone has already long known that fast food is bad, and that monosodium glutamate will lead to no good and we should consume only natural products and homemade food. The overall impression from the performance was smoothed by the fantasies of Zinovyeva about our bright food future, in which people will grow fresh fruits and vegetables on windowsills, roofs and walls of houses, and farms will flourish.
About how British humour saved TEDxKazan
Of course, such event couldn't do without an art performance. A Kazan dancer and choreographer Nurbek Batulla together with a musician Islam Valeyev prepared a performance 'Shift of DNA' (or how the elements of Tatar choreography can complement contemporary art). Broken movements under something similar to dubstep just caused a bewilderment of the audience, but when the hard melody shifted to a Tatar songs, and Nurbek performed a Tatar dance, the audience started to applaud and whistle approvingly. However, after a couple of seconds again dubstep sounded, and the applause stopped.
Apparently, in order to show how powerful TED actually can be, the audience was periodically shown the records of the performances of foreign speakers abroad. One of the lectures was read by scientists, who managed to transform all the clips of speeches at TED in the text, and also collect all of the comments under these videos on YouTube in order to highlight the main issues discussed by experts in the framework of the project. This large study helps to understand what topics are of concern to modern society.
The other video literally saved the first section of the conference. A British man spoke ata TED in standup format, telling about how he spent several weeks of his life communicating with spammers. The British humour lifted the spirits of the participants of TEDxKazan, followed by a long-awaited break.