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).

MuziekGieterij
Boschstraat 7
Maastricht, Limburg, 6211AS
Netherlands

Golden X Speaker

She is currently a high-school student attending the United World College in Maastricht.

van Duin

Adrian Midwood

Adrian Midwood is a passionate change-maker coming to Maastricht all the way from Fiji! Here Adrian strives to work on conservation on the topic of waste in island nations, as managing director of the Ocean Ambassadors program. He believes that the conception of waste plastic remediation should be changed and has shown this can be done by engaging hotels, corporations, governments and the local community to make effective changes when tackling marine debris, by for example creating jobs and processing local waste of plastics, and setting up a clothing line made from these waste materials. Adrian is founder of Leisure Activist Clothing, a closed loop recycled material apparel, and is still an active Captain leading campaigns worldwide.

Bert van Son

He has the ambition to sell 1 million sustainably produced jeans. And he is definitely working hard to achieve this goal. After 30 years of work, businessman Bert van Son has seen how dirty and unfair the fashion industry really is, and decided this was something he wanted to change. Bert took initiative to set up a new sustainable fashion business model, striving to change the fashion industry. He came up with a new concept: lease a jeans. Besides producing the jeans with organic cotton in fair trade factories , the idea is that people can rent their jeans. Customers change from being the owners to being users, and when they stop wearing the jeans the jeans are returned thus using the raw material again in a recycle process .

Erik Arbores

Erik Arbores is a Dutch DJ considered among the best DJ’s in the world. At only the age of 13 he completed his high school diploma, winning an award with his final piece about Quantum Mechanics. He later decided to pursue music as a career, receiving a contract from Armada Music. So far, within his career he’s started producing an album and was even given the opportunity to play during the Amsterdam Dance event in 2011.

Esther van Duin

Esther van Duin is a Youth Representative of UNESCO. She finished her Bachelor Arts & Cultures at Maastricht University and as of September 2015 she will be a student International Development studies. She focusses upon cultural diversity, heritage and education. Esther speaks to thousands of young people concerning these topics, is very involved with current affairs and policy change. A young student passionately representing our generation, Esther strives to use her voice to stand up and make a change!

Henk van Houtum

Henk van Houtum is professor of political geography and geopolitics at Radboud University and Bergamo University. He is co-director of the master specialisations on 1) Conflicts, Territories and Identities and on 2) Europe: Borders, Identities and Governance. He publishes on global justice, borders, migration, identities, cartography and the geopolitics of football. He is also a columnist for the Dutch national newspaper, Volkskrant.nl, and Dutch regional paper, De Gelderlander.

Jacqueline de Loos

Jacqueline is a passionate secondary school student attending the United World College in Maastricht.

Maayke Damen

She strives to make the world a place where raw materials in the society are used in a sustainable way: Maayke Damen developed a system to use raw materials in a more intelligent and fair way. She promotes a circular economic model, where she focuses on production methods, origins, quality and reuse methods. Maayka has been engaged in many important decision making processes, together with youth and youth organisations in The Netherlands she has set up the biggest Dutch youth coalition ever for the UNFCCC conference!

Mark Tigchelaar

Mark Tichelaar is an expert in speed-reading. He has trained over 70,000 people to gain more from their brain in areas such as reading faster, showing to stay concentrated, how to remember information longer, etc. Through working with these people, he has been able to draw a conclusion. In a sense, the human race is illiterate again. People tend to half read, skim or sometimes even entirely skip entire articles. Nowadays, people are easily distracted when reading which leads to people reading entire pages from books without having processed a single word they read. We are also unable to remember information. In fact, on average we forget about 70% within 1 day! His talk will be called, “The illiterate society” in which he will use his 10 years of experience in Neuroscience and software he’s developed helping people to absorb information much more efficiently.

Martine Oh

Martine Oh is a passionate high-school student

Midas Kwant

Midas Kwant is a young and passionate gymnasium student. In primary school he discovered that there is a world beyond his hometown. As a 12-year-old boy he started to learn to develop his own apps at home to not only make a small scale but a large-scale difference. After designing his first app he was invited by Apple to visit the Head Quarters in Cupertino. He also attended their annual conference in San Francisco and in the summers of 2013 and 204 he went to Stanford University to attend several classes. Midas is currently preparing for his move to the Silicon Valley as he was admitted to study at Stanford University in the next 4 years.

Natascha Kooiman

Natasha Kooiman

Robert van Hoesel

Robert van Hoesel is the co-founder of Crowded, a software that allows communities to have their own social network, the co-founder of Woodify.nl, a sustainable company selling wooden sunglasses, and is the founder of Young Creators, a community with over 3,500 teenagers and students creating apps. He’s passionate about enabling people to build new connections and build things together.

Tom Pathuis

A sustainability professional with experience in working with major global players in the pharmaceutical, technology, home furniture and consumer healthcare industries in improving environmental performance within the supply chain. Anne-Tom has a keen interest in the application of Information and Communication Technologies on questions of sustainability in order to achieve both positive business- and environmental impacts. He currently works for Ecodesk, a sustainable supply chain solutions business based in the United Kingdom.

Wim Hof

Wim Hof is a Dutch world record holder, more commonly known as the Iceman, due to his unique ability to withstand extreme cold. He is best known for his twenty world records including the longest ice bath, staying immersed in ice for over 1 hour and 13 minutes. He describes his ability as being able to “turn his own bodies thermostat up” through the power of his mind. Some of his other impressive feats are climbing to 7.3km altitude at Mount Everest wearing nothing but shorts. He’s also completed a full marathon above the polar circle in Finland wearing, yes you guessed it, nothing but shorts. Just through the power of his mind, he was able to run a marathon through the Namib desert without water. It’s been scientifically proven that Wim is able to directly influence his Autonomic Nervous and Immune System.