In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

Berlin
Germany

Simon Berry

Simon Berry is the founder of Cola Life, which is a charity that aims to use Coca Cola’s distribution channels to provide remote communities in third world countries with essential medication and water cleaning tablets. He came up with this idea in 1988 while working on the British Aid Program.

Sebastian Dittmann

Sebastian Dittmann was born in 1980 in Plauen, Germany. He has worked in the fields of media, IT and virtual worlds. After his graduation in media economics at the technical university of Ilmenau he founded Audanika GmbH, a company dedicated to creating digital virtual music instruments. At their core these instruments transform complex harmonic concepts into easy to use graphic user interfaces so users are not required to understand these concepts anymore in order to use them intuitively.

Caroline Fetzer

Caroline Fetzer is 22 and has studied software development at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam since 2007. The Berlin born student has been instrumental in the development of “Multitoe”, a touch sensitive floor that can be controlled by the foot.

Norbert Hillinger

Norbert Hillinger has led the Berlin office of Trend ONE since January 2010, and is mainly responsible for the organization’s Digital Entertainment Unit. TrendONE is one of Europe’s central agencies for the spotting and research of Micro-Trends – innovations and developments in marketing, media, technology and lifestyle. With the help of a worldwide network of Trendsocuts, TrendONE discovers and publishes news of over 300 Micro-Trends each month.

Tino Keller

In February of 2007, Tino Keller co-founded the internet community and teacher-review site spickmich.de, along with his friends Manuel Weisbrod and Philipp Weidenhiller. Spickmich is the best known network of school students in Germany, and dominates conversation in the schoolyard. On spickmich, students can create profiles, and rate their teachers and schools. They are also able to give anonymous feedback to their teachers, giving them the opportunity to create a fairer school environment for the benefit of all.

Ben Kleinhues

15 year old Ben Kleihues is a student at the Evangelistischen Schule Berlin Zentrum, where he is active in a number of projects. The two he spoke about at TEDxYouthBerlin 2010 are Projekt Verantwortung and Projekt Herausfordung. Through Projekt Verantwortung, every student in grades 7 and 8 is given the opportunity to take a position of responsibility, such as helping look after children, visiting the elderly, or teaching computer skills. Projekt Herausfordung is run for the ESBZ in grades 8, 9 and 10, and sets each student challenge to be completed in three weeks. Each takes place outside of Berlin, and every participant is given just 150 € with which to complete their project.

Mark Miller & Romel Lindsay-Douglas

Mark Miller is the curator of Young Tate and Romel Lindsay-Douglas is a member of Tate Forum, Tate Britain's longstanding youth advisory group. They create small and large scale events such as Loud Tate to generate dialogue, interpretation and connections to visual culture.

Maciej Sudra

Maciej Sudra was the coordinator of Africa Goal 2006 and 2010, a traveling HIV & AIDS awareness campaign coinciding with the recent FIFA World Cups in Germany and South Africa. Harnessing the excitement of football and the FIFA World Cup, Africa Goal used the tournament as a platform to disseminate HIV and AIDS information to target audiences in 9 African countries.

Team Munditia

Nicolas Heger, Vanessa Raaff, Florian Schnitzler, Dominic Stefer and Antonia vom Dahl are ‘Team Munditia’, a group of forward thinking students who competed against 9 other teams to win the Cologne regional competition of business @ school, an initiative of the Boston Consulting Group. "Munditia" is a water valve with built-in soap dispenser: as soon as you hold hands under the tap, soap is dispensed, followed immediately by water. Thus, no unhygienic contact is required, and "Munditia" increases the number of people using soap when washing their hands. The judges were so impressed that they even bought the prototype.

Laura Werling

Laura Werling is 24 years old and works for the Berlin-based organization " “Freunde fürs Leben e.V.” (‘Friends For Life’). The association is involved in suicide prevention in children and adolescents. Since 2010 “Freunde fürs Leben e.V.” has been working with Aktion Mensch on a project known as “frndTV”. frndTV speaks with celebrities about their personal crises, with experts who are able to explain various concepts in mental health, and acts as a platform to offer advice and support to those watching. The organization uses the web, television, and school workshops to encourage people to speak more openly about mental health. Each year more people die in Germany through suicide than by traffic accidents, AIDS and drugs put together – the taboo on discussion about mental health is deadly, and needs to be broken.