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TEDxCairo ..The Passion of the Mad Dreams !

11 May 2010 14 Comments
  • Sharebar

On last Saturday 8′th of May i attended TEDxCairo an independent TED event organized by some great egyptian youth,

who really managed to give a well organized ,inspiring and beautiful day ,and here is my report ;)

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First there was an Introduction of the day by Khaled abou el Naga -who presented all the speakers all the day-, talked about the talks and the schedule and some rules of the day

Then the talks started

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The Difference that Can Make a difference by Hany Mwafy : he talked about

  • The passion of Change and believing in your dreams
  • creative conceptualization ,Some small things can make a difference and how creative ideas can look like using a tomato in a fruit salad
  • The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams

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Experiential learning As a Vehicle for Change by Seif Abou Zeid

  • One of the talks i liked, he Talked about learning by the experience, by involving students or the learning people in the learning process
  • and how he tried it with people and was proved to be many times better than the widely used “one way learning” technique
  • Seif travels with groups of people to many countries like :Thailand and let them learn new things by experiencing new adventures like climbing giant trees and climbing down a water fall ,
  • To lead others you have to conquer your fear and lead yourself first 

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About the magic that is still out there by Dr.Sahar El Mougy

  • بداخل كل منا جزء مجهول ربما يؤدي روتين الحياة و الحرص على عدم الخروج عن نمط الحياة الذي يفرضه المجتمع إلى اختفاء هذا الجزء و اختفاء كثير من الابداع , الابتكار و المرح معه
  • نموذج الانسان المثالي الذي نحاول الوصول اليه لان (دا الصح)  أو لأن (المجتمع عايز كده)  لن يؤدي الى أي تغيير ايجابي في حياتنا و كمثال تكلمت عن نموذج سندريلا المطيعة الهادئة التي تنتظر الجنية لتحقيق أحلامها و تغيير واقعها دون القيام بأي شئ في سبيل الوصول للتغيير
  • التمرد على سندريلا  هو بداية الطريق الصحيح نحو التغيير للأفضل
  • التمرد هو خطوة للأمام !
  • أي أفكار جديدة علمية أو اجتماعية أو سياسية يتم مقابلتها بالرفض من مؤسسات تحاول الحفاظ على الوضع الحالي بدافع الحفاظ على الأمن العام أو خوفا من ثمن التغيير
  • د/سحر تكلمت بأسلوب أدبي جميل جدا يشبه طريقتها في الكتابة
  • One of my best talks of the day

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The Discomfort of our comfort Zone by Wael Fakharany

I Just loved this Talk alot , Mr. Wael who is Regional Manager Egypt, and North Africa at Google

talked about his journey of loving to be happily feeling discomfort !

  • We can be in 2 zones : the Comfort, warm zone where WE can relax ,have less problems but not too much into achieving Our Dreams , Or The Discomfort ,Cold Zone  Where We face troubles, do unordinary things , people around think We are mad to do such things but We feel happy to have the passion of learning new things and achieving our dreams
  • Mr. wael chose the discomfort zone during his work journey even some of his choices looked non-sense for people around him
  • He asked ” Why are we all feeling comfort while we live in a Discomfort Countries here ?!”

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Thinking Big Doesn’t Bite by Amr Ramadan :

  • Amr Ramadan is the Co-founder of Vimov a software development company based in Egypt , he works on new applications

for iPhone, Android and iPad , like iSimulate for iPhone and Weather HD One of the stunning widgets for iPad .

  • The talk was more like an interview , he was asked some questions by Khaled abou el Naga
  • The same Concept you hear all the day is Said : i left my work, believed in my dream to make a big thing although every one thought it’s a crazy thing to do !

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Improving Lives with Emotionally Intelligent Technologies by Dr.Rana el Kaliouby :

The time of WoW :D , i very much enjoyed her talk , Dr. Rana could transmit the passion to me and i think to every one there

  • Dr.Rana is a research scientist in MIT media Lab, she is working on applications to help autistic people to communicate with the world
  • she showed us a Mind Reader API that helps to express and communicate people’s mental states, including emotions, thoughts, and desires , and she tried it on Khaled abou el Naga as you will see in the videos :D
  • Dr. Rana talked about an autistic blogger that her blog is followed by many people all over the world , i don’t remember the name of the blogger ,if you do please comment it
  • one of the quotes i liked is that you must think out of the stereotype way

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Finding Plenty in Nothingness by Ibrahim El Batout :

  • Ibrahim El Batout is a film director and was with his camera in some wars in the world and hard situation here in egypt

capturing and filming a real life drama, he is the director of the awesome film ” Ain Shams”

  • he talked about some experiences he had in his journey and how in the middle of wars , disasters, diseases we can find small good things and moments
  • was emotionally impressed by his always fear to get a call that his Mother or father passed away while he was travelling away

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Learning to Walk On Shifting Sands by Dr. Erma Manoncourt :

Was very inspired by her passion and spirit when talking about helping children every where to have a better life through the volunteer action from the ideas she mentioned:

  • always think outside the box
  • you must work with people who have some fixed wrong habits, traditions or thought in order to help them like the FGM thing in egypt and convince them that changing those habits is a good thing.
  • that made me think about volunteer to work with the UNESCO in egypt.

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Opportunity Beyond Challenge by Dr.Ahmed Darwish :

he talked about :

  • Always see the good thing in the problem or the challenge
  • you have always to set your priorities
  • always find time for doing small things even when you are busy

he talked about his experience as minister in the government in working on enhancing the technology part in the government’s work

but i just hope that we will see a reflect of this on the egyptian citizen’s daily life and his suffer with routine and bureaucracy everywhere  :)

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The third session started with the Percussion show , those guys are really talented i really enjoyed their play :)

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Doodles Vs Digital by Firas Abouzeid

  • The main point i got is that the Digital life with all it’s good technology and social applications we use every day mustn’t decrease the amount of real life we must have .
  • This was the second english talk although the speaker speaks arabic  , me didn’t like this ,we got what he said but it’s an egyptian event and the majority of attendees are egyptians who speak arabic ,so what was the point ?!

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A Timeless Journey by Mina Elhamy samy :

i liked his talk, was an honest nice one, talking about the definition of time that ends that

  • Time is moments of Success, failure, life, death ..etc we have in our life

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Of Phantom Limbs : Sycamores, Towers And The Return Of the Prodigal Son :D by Dr.Tarek Naga :

The  foggy interesting talk , the talk where everyone was starring trying to get and sometimes saying : “HuH !!” , and i think you can imagine it from the talk’s title only :D ,

  • The whole point of the talk is that there are always hidden things we don’t know that worth more than things we know
  • many examples mentioned like the date september 11 that once we hear we only remember the USA 11/9 attacks while this day has another event that we must know :  The liberation of Jerusalem on the day 11/9/284 as i remember -please correct it if i’m mistaken i have a bad memory :) -
  • one of the hidden things are our history and monuments we have 52 pyramids but we only go to visit the 3 in Giza
  • We only know Cairo as it’s found now but originally cairo used to have some phantom limbs that are out of Cairo now ! and he showed us an interesting map , was a long full of information and interesting talk :)

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Why is Cow Smiling by Dr.Ibrahim kareem :

  • i enjoyed the speaker’s way of talking and providing information he made it simple although i never knew about the topic he was talking about
  • he talked about energy lines in the earth ground that if studied well, can provide better environment and architectures
  • ancients knew about this energy lines and built pyramids on lines and dimensions considering those lines also the sultan Hassan mosque is constructed this way

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Racing Towards a Dream by Rami Serry :

  • he talked about his passion in making races in Egypt , one time this got him into some troubles but he is continuing what he loves to do

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The Long Road to Everest and Beyond by Omar Samra :

  • Enjoyed his talk , Samra is the first egyptian to climb Everest , he talked about this experience and all what he faced to continue the climbing
  • After achieving big dreams we may feel “what to do now ?!” and feel depressed so search for other big dreams to achieve and continue your journey
  • The best passion he’s getting now is to help other people who have similar dreams of him to achieve their dreams as any egyptian now knows that he can try and succeed to climb the 8,848 m  long mount as Samra did it before !

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Changing Egypt: Truly , Madly ,Deeply ! by Khaled Abou El Naga

the last talk , was a very nice one , he talked about a story from a village in upper egypt that became the first village without FGM thanks to UNESCO and a woman from the village who helped them Truly , Madly , Deeply , she went with the UNESCO people to houses in the village to talk with them about how Bad the FGM is, which is considered a Mad thing from that woman to do, but that ‘s true , changing egypt will come from true actions that some poeple will consider them Mad but they will have a deep effect on this Country :)

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I met alot of Tweeps friends that day , was a pleasure meeting them all , and i really had much fun :)

TEDxCairo Guys , Thank you ,You Rock :)

*Update : Check the videos :

- Hany Mwafy -

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- Sahar El Mougy -

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Wael Fakharany part 1 -

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Wael Fakharany part 2 -

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- Khaled Abou El Naga and he blinded climbing -

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- Rana El Kaliouby part 1 -

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- Rana El Kaliouby part 2 -

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14 Comments »

  • abdelrahman said:

    I love your post :) this is one valuable feedback for us :)
    Thank you very much

  • Bahy said:

    Thank you very much reem 4 ur coverage & valuable feedback :)

    The blogger is called amanda .. Just search @ youtube for amanda autistic & watch her video .. Sry i cant get u the links as am sending u this msg through my mobile
    btw firas is lebanese .. He tried rehearsing the talks many times in arabic but he failed 2 deliver it properly

  • admin (author) said:

    @Bahy thanx for the blogger name :) i really needed to know it ,
    about Firas it’s ok i enjoyed his talk anyway ..
    Thank u for such a beautiful day and for passing by :)

  • admin (author) said:

    @ Abdelrahman : U R welcome , thank u for passing by :)

  • Saker said:

    Now , you made me regret not going :D

  • admin (author) said:

    :) videos will be uploaded by TEDxCairo people on youtube and i’ll upload my small videos here as well
    and next time you’ll attend isA
    Thanx for passing by :)

  • GaMaL said:

    ممتاز :)

    شكرا على الوصف التفصيلي .. :)

  • أحمد عيسوي said:

    well done, thank you

  • admin (author) said:

    @GaMaL , @أحمد : glad u liked the post , thanx for passing by :)

  • KAM said:

    Amazing ..

    Thank you.

  • admin (author) said:

    Welcome :)

  • Ahmad Alfy said:

    It was great :)
    glad to see you there :D

  • admin (author) said:

    Thanx , glad to meet u there too :D

  • Reem » Blog Archive » a blogging birthday said:

    [...] TEDxCairo ..The Passion of the Mad Dreams ! [...]

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