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 , 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
• 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