Tabula Rasa

October 24, 2010. Auditorium CC Timur ITB is the silent witness of the inaugural of TEDxBandung. About 80 people present, mostly drawed from universities in Bandung, not to mention some of the attendees that come from Jakarta and even Garut. They gathered in sharing the atmosphere of “ideas worth spreading”, the spirit of TED and TEDxBandung.

We invited 4 live speakers, they are: Qamaruzzaman, lecturer at School of Electronics and Informatics ITB, on Renewable Energy, Witarsa from RW 07 Cipamokolan, about what they did to make their neighbourhood a “zero waste” one, Mira Kusumarini, Indonesian Representative of Ashoka, on Social Entrepreneurship, and Tita Larasati, lecturer at Faculty of Fine Arts and Design ITB, on Bamboo Design. We also play 4 recorded talks from TED.com.

And the outcome (as I see it) is great. People gathered up, discuss about the ideas they just get, approaching the speakers to explore further, and some even tweet TEDxBandung and taking pics, proud that they part of an innovative movement.

Yes, TEDx is an innovative movement. A worldwide one. Started as TED in 1984 when Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks organized a conference to explore newest discoveries in fields of “Technology, Entertainment, and Design” (hence the name of TED came), it became a worldwide phenomena. Every year, for four days, world’s leading scientists, authors, thinkers, and leaders gathered up in Long Beach, CA, and meet up with a crowd of carefully selected. Can’t facilitate to make more or larger events, the TED team (with Chris Anderson as Curator, serving from 2002) decided to encourage public to hold their own TED-like events: independently organized, under the brand of TEDx. As I wrote these, there are more than 750 TEDxes held worldwide.

Rolling back about 3 months, TEDxBandung was just an idea. A friend of mine, Febri, asked me to help to organize TEDx event in Bandung. And we together spread the words, and some of our friends even asked us to join the team. As the initial responses were good, we decided to attend 5^th TEDxJakarta, one of the pioneer of TEDx in Indonesia. We talked to Arief Aziz, the curator: We want to organize TEDx event in Bandung. He pleased to hear that, and promised to help our team as a mentor.

And in our 3 months journey, we face many challenges, like no-sponsor-at-3-weeks-from-the-event to the whole problems that showed up at the D-Day. But thanks to our great team, we can solve them all, make an excellent times, and as Arief speak to us (that we invite to attend our inaugural event), “You did it guys!”.

I am proud too to have an amazing team: Pritta as Program Director, Samia and Atiek as admin, Fikri, Andra, and Arya as Multimedia Team, Rian and Tunjung as Creative Team, not to mention our friends that offer their services for free: Primus, Modje, and the LPM team for recording the event, Ayu and Nadia for translating the TEDTalks. Me myself serve as Curator (Jokingly said, like “Great Leader of The Revolution” when you call Soekarno) and Febri as Producer. I was a thrilling journey with you guys, and I am most happy to gathered up again and planning to hold next TEDxBandung. Ciao Bravo!