Call: 214.302.7750
Email: info@cohabitat.us
Call: 214.302.7750
Email: info@cohabitat.us
Good afternoon. Ajay Waghray here, I was live-blogging for the TEDxSMU event yesterday. I hope everyone either enjoyed following the posts yesterday during the day or reading them today after everything is all said and done. It was a great deal of fun, I hope it shows.
Last night a friend of Cohabitat mentioned to me at the TEDxSMU after party that I should post something about my experience after I’ve had some time to meditate on it for a bit. I thought about that, mulling it over before ultimately deciding it was a great idea. (more…)
TEDxSMU on Saturday felt like someone took a hunk of liberal California and dropped it into the buckle of the Bible belt. But my experience at TEDx got me to thinking. Why is it that the kind of thinking that is embraced and encouraged by any TED event is so different from the prevailing thinking typically associated with the southern part of the US? Are southerners stupider than the rest of the country? No, of course not. A paper published by Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006 proved that IQ is relatively the same across all states. Some would say that it is a religious thing. Alright, fine, let’s look at that. (more…)
TEDxSMU Owens Art Center
Overall, I had a really great experience attending the TEDxSMU event. I had a chance to blog interviews that I gave to some of the guests and speakers as well as tweet some of the presentations. I also had a chance to meet and socialize with a lot of great people from all professions. Two of my favorite speakers at the TEDxSMU was Tanya Pinto, founder of the charity group Baal Dan and former army general and now the Chair of the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering and Bobby B. Lyle Professor of Leadership and Global Entrepreneurship at SMU, Jeffrey Talley. These two individuals took the time to help those who are in need of help and I commend them both for their courageous and generous efforts and I hope those who attended the TEDxSMU and listened to these two were inspired to do the same. (more…)
TED, in their own words is “an intellectual circus for ideas. Presenters don’t lecture but rather amaze, entertain and present ideas in 18 minutes or less.” So to distill it is to strip it of its meaning … meaning that what I’m about to do is a woefully inadequate substitute for the real experience. It’s like when you tell that joke and nobody laughs, you shrug and say, “I guess you had to be there.” Well kids, you had to be there. (more…)
5:57pm: Kapow! That blew by fast. Hope y’all enjoy the live coverage of TEDxSMU on the Cohabitat blog. This quite honestly one of the best things I’ve ever decided to do, I’m glad we could share the ride together. I’m sure this won’t be the last time we see each other. Feel free to follow me on Twitter until next time at http://twitter.com/ajaywaghray/. I’ll keep you up-to-date on what’s going on with me since we’re such good friends now. In the meantime, I’m gonna try to see if I can sneak my way into the TEDxSMU after-party at Reel FX Studios. Take care, until next time!
- A-Slice
5:19pm: POLYPHONIC SPREE!!! Side note, I saw these guys at ACL in 2003. They’re awesome, I can’t wait.
5:16pm: If you guys have been enjoying this blog, I’m going to have some of my own stuff up soon. Feel free to follow me on Twitter, @ajaywaghray. Shameless plug over. P.S. TEDxDubai has 1,000 attendees. WOW!!
5:11pm: Sorry I didn’t post for a while, Turk really roped me in. He was discussing what he did for a school in Africa, planting trees, building rainwater collection systems, and a high school for the kids to continue their education.
“It’s not hard to changed the world. Just pick an issue you care about, and take action.”
5:03pm: “Women grow 80% of the food in the world and own less than 10% of the land.”
5:00pm: “The cameraman that took this picture told me that I looked like a human q-tip.” (more…)
Bryan Mealer author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
My interview with Bryan Mealer was also brief but I liked the fact that he is like a modern day adventurer. He is actually the author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, the actual inspirational story of William Kamkwamba, the boy who built the windmill at age 14. (more…)
3:07pm: Break time! Tom Riley’s thanking all of us for coming, nice pink glasses! See you in a bit after I charge my laptop.
2:55pm: Kim Corbet’s up!
2:54pm: “We need science teachers that really believe they’re scientists.”
2:52pm: Aaron Reedy’s up now, trying to get his kids more interested in biology. Fund for Teachers is what he’s focusing on, trying to get his out there learning. We can never have enough great programs like this! Apparently he asked for funds from this Fund to row up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Took samples of water to determine different quality of water. One thing they weren’t expecting was so much water. 15 feet above flood stage! Flow rate of 1 million gallons per second!
2:48pm: Demo time! Field filter? This girl has the cutest Texas drawl, and a great product. Water goes in gross, comes out completely clear. Well done young lady!
2:41pm: He’s doing the 5-digit square! There’s all kinds of stuff coming out of his mouth right now. He’s adding things to “tennis” and “mover”…huh? Wow, he got there. It’s incredible. (more…)
William Kamkwamba and his homemade windmill
I was very impressed with one of the speakers that presented at TEDxSMU and that’s William Kamkwamba. Why do you ask? Well, at age 12 he actually taught himself how to repair radios and understand the functionality of a generator. He was inspired by a picture of a windmill in a 8th grade science book to build his own to help generate electricity for his village during a very serious drought. With just scrap parts he built a wind mobile that produced enough volts to power 4 light bulbs and charge mobile phones and even a second windmill that pumped water. (more…)
The author with Hamid and Anousheh Ansari
Anousheh Ansari is the world’s first female space tourist. That’s what she’s famous for but it isn’t the greatest of her accomplishments. I spent a few minutes talking with Anousheh and her husband Hamid during lunch at TEDxSMU. The Ansaris are serial entrepreneurs. You may have heard the name through their sponsorship of the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million prize to be awarded to the first non-governmental group to launch a craft into space twice within two weeks, a prize won by Spaceship One.
CoHabitat:
Why are you speaking at TEDxSMU today?
Anousheh:
Change happens when individuals start something that they feel passionate about and take action toward it. I’m hoping that people here won’t just see problems that need solving and complain about it, but will actually do something about making a difference and changing it.
William and Bryan (photo by afromusing)
As of today, The Boy Who Harnassed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope is #10 on Amazon’s bestseller list. It is the story of William Kamkwanba who overcame incredible challenges to provide hope for his family and village in Malawi by building a windmill to produce electricity and pump water. I talked with William and his co-author, Bryan Mealer.
CoHabitat:
The theme of today’s TEDxSMU is “What will change everything?”. So I’ll ask you that question. William, what will change everything?
William:
Education and communication. Change starts when people know more. So we need to educate people. But people cannot do things alone. So we need the ability to communicate to bring people together and the ability to get the information to the people. (more…)
TEDxSMU before the event
This morning I had a chance to attend the TEDxSMU over at SMU campus and interview some of the people there. So far, there has been a lot of socializing and it is a pretty big group that’s here to listen to some very notable speakers. I actually had a chance to interview a of the people here. I actually saw one of my university professors here so I hope I have a chance to talk to him. (more…)
Well hi there. I'm a hidden paragraph. Who are you?
