TEDx@Bonn Smart Cities? Smart People! Good Climate!

Quiet, clean, green – that’s what the city of the future will look like. Does this sound utopian? Well it is. Or has been, till now. Smart City describes a vision being developed in individual projects, inititiatives and collective action worldwide in order to make our cities more efficient, more technologically advanced, more climate-neutral and more socially inclusive. For some, it is a perfect symbiosis of sustainability and digitization, for others a neo-liberal surveillance nightmare. But one thing is certain: the question of how we want to live is more urgent than ever.

The search for an answer needs clever visionaries, empathic concepts and creative planners. At this year’s TEDx Talk in the Telekom Design Gallery we are bringing together international experts from the worlds of science, technology, art and from society at large who will be providing altogether unusual answers to the question of how we want to live. They are all courageous enough to think outside of the box and they inspire people worldwide.

For good ideas change the world – that is the basic idea behind TEDx, the legendary discussion format, which, thanks to its international presence on the web inspires millions of people every year. Come and meet innovative thinkers, creative minds, unusual experts in the futuristic ambience of the Telekom Design Gallery.

TEDx Bonn is taking place as the visionary harbinger of COP24 in Poland. In association with the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Germany, Deutsche Telekom and SAVE THE WORLD e.V. on Saturday, 17 November, at 7.30 pm in the Telekom Design Gallery .

Milo Rau (*1977 in Bern) is an author, film and theatre director. In 2007, he founded the IIPM - International Institute of Political Murder, which specializes in the multimedia processing of historical or of socio-political conflicts: Among other things, the production company staged the shooting of the Ceausescu couple ("Die letzten Tage der Ceausescus") and the Rwandan genocide ("Hate Radio"), and in 2013 launched a completely new theatre format with two multi-day judicial spectacles ("Die Moskauer Prozesse" and "Die Zürcher Prozesse"). Most recently, the IIPM provided for this with the internationally acclaimed productions "Das Kongo Tribunal" (2015), "Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs" (2016) and the "Europa-Trilogie" (2014-16), developed over a period of three years. His artistic work, which is one of the most influential of our time, has received numerous awards, including the Radio Play Prize of the War Blind, the Prize of the International Theatre Institute (ITI), the Berne Literature Prize and the 3sat Prize. In his new position as artistic director of the National Theatre in Ghent, he staged the world premiere of "Lam Gods", which premiered at the end of September. He has just been awarded the European Theatre Prize.
Conny Runner (Peng!) is the author of the Critical Campaigning Manifesto, a political scientist who explores new tactics and strategies of political influence through art, hacking and activism. He is co-founder of Peng! (also: Peng Collective), a group of artists, activists, craftsmen and scientists from Berlin. As "masters of civil disobedience", the Berlin activist collective draws attention to social grievances with satirical actions and advertising campaigns. Together with Peng!, Runner has already posed as press spokesman for Google and Vattenfall in spectacular actions, started a weapon recall in the USA in the name of "Heckler und Koch" and organized a drop-out club for secret service employees. His works have been shown at the Berlin Biennale and the Athens Biennale, among others, and in 2018 he was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize together with Peng!
Alanus von Radecki is head of the Competence Team Urban Governance Innovation at the Frauenhofer IAO and head of the innovation network Morgenstadt: City Insights. In addition to his activities in project coordination and management, his work focuses on urban governance, systems analysis and complexity research directly related to urban systems. Von Radecki has been working closely at the interface between urban institutions and the private sector for many years. Parallel to his role at the Frauenhofer IAO he is the Lead Expert for the URBACT network SmartImpact and advises cities such as Stockholm, Manchester, Eindhoven, Porto, Dublin, Zagreb and others on the transformation of the governance system within the city administration and beyond. In 2017 von Radecki founded the Smart City marketplace BABLE and currently acts as CIO.
Elma Hot (*1993 in Bijelo Polje, Montenegro) is a data scientist who loves both, science and bees. In 2016 she founded BeeAnd.me, a monitoring system for bees, and supports beekeepers with state-of-the-art technology to master the traditional challenge of beekeeping. system measures the amount of collected honey, the health of the bees through sound, local humidity, the intelligent monitoring and temperature. The data analysis informs beekeepers when something happens to their bees. Elma Hot is enthusiastic about the numerous possibilities of data mining and would like to draw attention to the life-threatening situation of bees and prevent their extinction. BeeAnd.me has been awarded as an innovative project with impact by the World Summit Award.
James Yarker is Co-founder and artistic director of the British theatre company (Birmingham). Their radical productions regularly tour Europe and beyond, helping audiences see the world around them from a new perspective. Last year Yarker showed his installation "What When / Was Wenn" at the World Climate Conference (COP23) in Bonn. This installation impressed as a "silent demonstration" and Stan's Cafe Theatre showed protest signs of the last hundred years. James regularly works with schools on creative learning projects, is asked to teach at universities and premiered in England on 27 October with Stan's Cafe's new big show, "The Capital". He will travel to Bonn by train from Birmingham, but otherwise does not feel that he is doing a great job "Saving the World".
Sander Chan (PhD) is a political scientist at the German Development Institute/ Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and adjunct assistant professor at Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. Sander is an advocate for global governance towards a greener, fairer and resilient future for all. He currently conducts research on the role of networks, non-state and local actors in global sustainability and climate change governance.