Ha, September,
It is again that time of the year.
It’s that time of the year when we take a look at the state of the union and speak out, boldly, on what has been and is still to come.
It’s that time of the year when an impulsive spring and weary summer give birth to a mature autumn.
It’s the appropriate moment to reach out to well-rested souls, attentive for fresh ideas.
On September 14th, we therefore organised our very first TEDxGhent Network Event. A group of 50 TEDxGhent fanatics and interested partners came together in the offices of Profirst Ghent, looking out over the OdeGand festival.
Leo Bormans, former TEDxGhent speaker, introduced his new project for which he spent two years analysing the scientific research on “love”. For his World Book of Happiness he gathered the knowledge of 100 researchers in order to find out what we know about love. He explained how our own knowledge about love is mostly based on presumptions. Apparently, he himself found the truth about love in an Italian newspaper.
For the closing talk, Bart Van Aken took the floor. As owner of the bookstore Paard van Troje, he is the first Flemish shop owner to win the “Book Salesman of the Year” award. By focusing on the books and themes that he strongly believes in, by upholding authenticity, he was able raise profit again and turned his bookstore concept into a story of success.
In order to inspire possible partners we teamed up for a Q&A with the people of Corelio Connect. They talked about how they want to support the work of the numerous TEDxGhent volunteers in trying to bring fresh and inspiring ideas on stage in Ghent. They explained how they want to help TEDxGhent to reach out to inspiring speakers and start a dialogue with a TEDx audience.
So, yes.
There was passion, guts, story, dialogue, and the sharing of (knowledge about) love. The evening had all the ingredients of a genuine small-sized TED-like event.
Thanks to some fortunate planning, it even had fireworks..
Some #fireworks after the talks #tedxghent pic.twitter.com/zVMhsLQxKj
— TEDxGhent (@TEDxGhent) September 14, 2013
Now, is this a one-of-a-kind event?
No, we are already planning a second network event. We will keep you posted on our blog, on Twitter and on Facebook!
Click here to take a look at the photos of the evening.
