Recent blogs
Kasun Gunasooriya: Hacking the carbon cycle using computers
Read moreImagine a world where we can turn the exhaled CO2 into high-value products. From waste we can produce petrol or diesel, plastics, diapers for babies, or even a world-famous beer. As a chemical engineer, Kasun works to make this possible and break the vicious circle of using fossil fuels to run our society. To cite an alarming fact: a typical
Jan De Cock: Tea party with perpetrators and victims
Read moreDo you think human beings are “makeable”? Is a terrorist born a terrorist? Can you change people’s minds, and is this the task of the individual or of the community? By spending one year in prisons voluntarily, Jan De Cock went on a search for the human face of detainees. His stories tell about the man that saved the life
Gert De Geyter: Understanding the universe by recreating nature’s intelligent composition
Read moreWherever we look in nature, we always find some sort of intelligence. Think of the way ants optimize their route from the nest to food source, how large groups of birds fly together without ever colliding with no communication, how evolution shapes animals to adapt to their environment, and so much more. Gert De Geyter explains in a powerful talk
Abre: Stay open
Read more“Absolute truth – the one thing we all have in common, yet a few things divide us more. To create constructively, we need to combine as many perceptions as we can. We need to speak up and we need to listen. That is why we make music. To open up and share, so the world will open up to you.
Hassan Al Hilou: From radicalisation to talent development
Read moreHassan, born in 1999, stood in front of the audience not as the youngest consultant of Belgium, but a young, driven changemaker. In his childhood, images of war and terror were put into perspective by his loving family, yet he still got radicalized. Attacks darkening the days of Brussels prompted him to act, to understand how people of his age
Maarten Boudry: What if false beliefs make you happy?
Read moreWhen given the choice between a comforting lie and the unpleasant truth, most of us believe that we need some degree of illusion to cope with the harshness of reality. However, these false beliefs often come with side effects and eventually cause more harm than good when they collide with reality. As part of Flanders’ skeptics movement Maarten dissects these
Alex Dunnett: Filmmaking’s obsession with Superheroes
Read moreWhat does Spiderman have in common with activists of the Arab Spring? For Alex Dunnett, they are all Superheroes! But how do you tell a compelling story on ‘real’ heroes and make the audience care about the subject? As head of Production at Corniche Media this is a topic Alex often discusses with activist film makers – and now with
Bruno Delepierre: Together we can cure capitalism
Read moreBruno is an “entrepreneurial happiness economist” immersed in behavioural economics, positive psychology, cognitive science & medicine to coin a new term: happonomy. In his talks, he shares his findings about how happiness and economics are linked and not mutually exclusive. He seeks to understand a fundamental question: what do we find valuable? Scientists provided answers which boil down to five
Martine Reyners: Harmony through singing
Read moreYour body is the harp of your soul and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.’ Martine Reyners, professional opera singer and voice coach, is convinced: We are all singers! Considering that most of us feel embarrassed hearing our own voices from a recorder this sounds far-fetched but according to Martine, all it takes
Caterina Rindi: Blockchains, Burning Man and Bravery
Read moreCan you imagine a life without banks? A life with instant transactions, where it does not matter where you are and to which country you want to transfer money to? In 2008, just after the financial crisis, when trust in banks and governments vanished, bitcoin entered the stage, a digital currency, developed anonymously under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin enables