Theme: High Energy

This year, at TEDxBerlin 2011, we will present some of the leading thinkers, innovators and entrepreneurs from Germany and around the world as they explore the concept of energy, giving us their unique views and vantage points. Please join us on November 21st - 10a.m. to 7p.m. - and be inspired.

Station Berlin
Luckenwalder Straße 4–6
Berlin, 10963
Germany

Alexander Voigt

Born 1965 Master of Science in Physics, Berlin (diploma) In 1985 began research and development of stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) and wind systems. As there was no industry or even market for the field of renewable energy at that time in Germany or in any other country, Alexander Voigt decided in 1986 to found his own company and sold PV panels and solar thermal systems directly to the people. Through various trade fairs and lectures, Alexander Voigt succeeded step by step in raising public awareness of renewable energies and the necessity of creating a market in that field. This work led to the founding of SOLON SE in 1996 as a PV module and cell production company. He began as head of sales and was later named CEO (2001-2006). Co-founder of Q-Cells SE in 1999 Since 2006 a member of the supervisory board of Solon SE CEO of Younicos AG since 2008

Johnny West

Founder of OpenOil Johnny West is a social entrepreneur and writer with 20 years professional experience in and around the oil industry. He began covering energy markets as a Reuters correspondent in the Middle East in the early 1990s. He has consulted to the United Nations, Revenue Watch Institute, Internews and others on oil and the public policy aspects of the industry and published in the Petroleum Economist, Iraq Oil Report, and Critical Resources as well as more general media like the Guardian and Huffington Post. He is a frequent guest commentator on broadcast outlets such as BBC Radio and TV, NPR, Sky News and Al Jazeera. His book Karama! Travels Through the Arab Spring, is the first book-length account to be published of the events now rocking the Middle East. His book on the concept of direct citizen dividends in oil-producing countries, Give It Back! is due to be published in 2012. Johnny was a Classical scholar to Balliol College, Oxford and attended Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. He speaks French and Arabic fluently, has worked in Persian and Spanish and gets by in Hebrew and German.

Verena Delius

Verena Delius is the CEO of Young Internet, Europe’s leading social gaming company for kids, since September 2010. Young Internet is present in 12 countries and has more than 60 employees from over ten different countries working in the headquarters in Berlin. Young Internet develops safe, playful and social games for kids aged 2-12 years old on tablet computers, smartphones and the web. Verena was the head of sales of Bertelsmann’s e-learning-venture scoyo from July 2008 – August 2010. Before that she was the regional manager of DACH and member of the board of management of online-matchmaking company be2. In 2007 she was the winner of the award “CEO of the future” organized by McKinsey & Company. She founded Delius Capital in 2004, a company specialized on the sourcing and conception of closed-end funds. She holds a Master of business administration with a major in finance, accounting and controlling from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Verena is very much interested in the future of digital education, the future of games and new management best-practice in building and running successful companies. She writes about her thoughts in her own blog

J Henry Fair

Photographer J Henry Fair is best known for his Industrial Scars series, in which he researches our world´s most egregious environmental disasters and creates images that are simultaneously stunning and horrifying, and more closely resemble abstract paintings by Georgia O´Keeffe and Jackson Pollock than what the collective views as reality. Mr. Fair´s work has been featured in segments on the TODAY SHOW, CNN, NPR´s Marketplace, and WDR German TV, as well as in most major publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Harper´s Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, and GQ. Additionally, Mr. Fair´s work travels around the world in fine art exhibitions at major museums, galleries, and educational institutions. Mr. Fair has an active lecture schedule, in which he presents photographic symposia to audiences in the US and abroad. Recent engagements include The Collegiate School, Bloomberg, Die Spedition, and Green Mountain College. He gives readers a first-hand look inside the important issues he studies, writing and blogging about art and the environment, and is a regular contributer to NRDC´s OnEarth Magazine and the Huffington Post. In November 2011, Mr. Fair will be guest speaker at the TED Talks conference on sustainability in Berlin, Germany. J Henry Fair supports a number of environmental organizations that share his commitment to changing distructive consumer habits and effecting positive change in our environment. He is cofounder of the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, NY, an organization that is dedicated to the protection of and education about the world´s wolf population. Mr. Fair´s first book, The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crises was released in February, 2011, published by powerHouse Books in cooperation with Random House. Mr. Fair´s work can currently be seen in exhibit at Kunsthaus Nürnberg in Germany, with upcoming engagements at Flo Peters Gallery in Hamburg, Germany, the Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta, GA and SFO Museum in San Francisco, CA.

Wolfgang Kessling

joined Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH, Germany in 2000 and is principal since 2006. He is working as Climate Engineer and expert for integral planning with special focus on low energy – high comfort concepts for buildings in hot and humid climates. Wolfgang Kessling is involved in high profile sustainable projects throughout Europe, Middle East and Asia. He has been project manager e.g. for the Experimental Cloud in Frankfurt, the SAP Call Center in Galway, Ireland, the Gehry building for Novartis in Basel, Switzerland and the Edutainment Center Klimahaus 8° Ost in Bremen. In Asia he was involved e.g. in the innovative energy concept of the New Bangkok International Airport, the first Zero Energy Office in Malaysia and the climate and energy concept of cooled conservatories in Singapore. Wolfgang Kessling is frequently lecturing at international conferences on sustainable design and integral planning. He is founding member and lecturer for postgraduate Masters in Climate Engineering at the Donau University Krems, Austria. Wolfgang Kessling studied and graduated as Diplom Physiker at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, specialized in active solar systems. He obtained his Doctor degree in Physics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg developing a new liquid desiccant system for solar air conditioning.

Katherine Lucey

is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Solar Sister, a social enterprise that provides access to clean energy in developing countries through an innovative market based, women-centered distribution program that provides clean energy technologies to the people who most need it, those living without access to grid electricity. Katherine brings 20 years investment banking and non-profit leadership experience to her role as social entrepreneur. She has been named an Ashoka Changemaker and a winner of Social Venture Network 2011 Innovation Award and a Global Social Benefit Incubator Fellow for 2011 at the Santa Clara University Center for Science and Technology. In addition to Solar Sister, Katherine currently serves on the board of Solar Light for Africa, a not-for-profit corporation that brings solar energy to rural communities in East Africa. Katherine serves on the UN Foundation initiatives Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and Sustainable Energy for All Practitioner Network. She holds an M.B.A. from Georgia State University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Georgia.

Daniela Schiffer

Daniela Schiffer co-founded Changers.com in 2010. The Berlin-based startup introduced a portable solar charging system at the recent Web 2.0 Summit, which aims to end global warming by shifting society to the use of a new currency backed by the sun. The Changers System combines the production of pure and clean energy, consumer desire for more independence and mobility with the revolutionary power of social media. Before starting this adventure, Daniela worked as a consultant at a communications agency where she was closely involved with high-tech companies, specifically in the field of green energy and photovoltaics. Having always been passionate about how the usage of media changes our society, she collaborated on different media art projects during her first years in Berlin, contributing to projects such as reboot.fm and giving lectures in the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Zurich as well as workshops at Radio B92 in Belgrade. Her work has been presented in different exhibitions, amongst others at hack.it.art in 2005, Tesla Berlin, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Zurich and Gemäldegalerie Berlin in 2006. She has a MFA in New Media and attended Freie Universität and Humboldt Universität for classes in sociology and media theory.

Axel Petermann

Axel Petermann is a German criminalist, profiler and book author. He completed his educational training at the police in Bremen and has been a member of the criminal investigation department since 1975. He has worked as an inspector in the homicide division and deputy director of the commissioner´s office for violent felonies. Until today, he has worked on 1000 cases of unnatural death or alternatively led the investigation on homicides. Since 1999, Axel Petermann has critically dealt with the FBI-methods of profiling and started to build up the department of Operative Case Analyzing, which he heads today. He advocates the interdisciplinary criminological approach of profiling, whereby the key to clarify a homicide is the interpretation of the traces and the analysis of the victims personality. Since the choice of the victim and the traces of evidence at the crime scene are based on decisions of the offender, the motive gets clear and there are conclusions to his profile. Petermann also acts as a consultant for the TV series “Tatort” and supports authors with forensic considerations in their publications. He also teaches as a lecturer for Criminology at the School of Public Administration. In 2005, he co-founded the “IFF- Interdisciplinary Forum for Forensics”, a merger of professionals which aims to enhance communication between forensic science and practice. The IFF also works on the analysis of criminal behavior. Axel Petermann is a member of the author group “Syndikat”. His book “Auf der Spur des Bösen – Ein Profiler berichtet” was featured on the Spiegel bestseller list for over 20 weeks. Several episodes from the book now serve as templates for the “Tatort” episodes produced by the Hessische Rundfunk. In March 2012, Petermann will publish his new book “Im Angesicht des Bösen” at Rowohlt Publishing.

Nils Lindell

Nils Lindell is a management consultant working with both Swedish and international clients and co-founder of Baseline Management Scandinavia AB. Nils specialises in change management, project management and marketing and has written two popular management books, so far published only in Swedish. He got his education in economics and behavioural science at Uppsala University. However, in this conference he is invited in his capacity as a father in an ordinary family living in an extraordinary project. While attracting interest from around the Globe Nils and his family set out to reduce their CO2-footprint from the Swedish average of about 7 tons per person and year to the in the, not to distant future, needed one ton. The figure is not chosen by random. It is based on a UN Climate Panel Report showing that within 50-60 years one ton per person and year is the amount our planet can cope with without drastic changes to the climate and every day life as we know it. It is quite a challenging reduction that is needed. The question the family explored was how far you can get already today with existing technology and without drastic changes to a modern life style. The family lived in an energy efficient house, drove an electric car and got a lot of expert help on how to live and eat climate smart. Prof Azar, who is part of the UN Climate Panel, and his research team at Chalmers Technical University, continually measured the CO2 impact of everything the family did in their daily life during all six month. In the end of the project the Lindell family managed to get quite close to the one ton goal and did get a number of valuable experiences to share and insights to what amount of personal CO2 reduction is fair to ask people to contribute already today.

Thimon von Berlepsch

magician and hypnotist – found an old magic book when he was 13 years old in one of the suitcases stored in the attic of his family home, a 630 year old castle near the German town of Göttingen. Since then, he studies not only the Art of Magic but anything that makes people wonder. His style of combining illusions with poetry, hypnosis and comedy makes him unique in his field. Thimon performs at fine galas around the world and also appears in his own shows, SECRETCIRCLE and LE JEU, which are designed for smaller groups of people. Every year Thimon travels around the world to be inspired by people, cultures, nature and silence. The unique moments which he experiences on his trips are captured in his mystical pictures as another one of Thimon von Berlepsch’s passions of is photography.

Habib Lesevic

Habib ist es wichtig, in seiner Umgebung Potentiale zu einer ganzheitlichen, nachhaltigen Entfaltung freizusetzen. Er ist Gründer des systemischen Coachingunternehmens Kontext in London und Teil eines pan-europäischen Kollektivs für ganzheitliche Entwicklung. Habib lehrt Systemtheorie und Sustainable Entrepreneurship an der Cass Business School in London.

Benedikt Foit

Benedikt ist es wichtig, dass sich Menschen im Einklang mit sich selbst und der Biosphäre entfalten können und produktiv tätig werden. Als Coach und Geschäftsführer von Kontext begleitet er Menschen auf diesem Weg. Als Dozent an der Cass Business School in London lehrt er Entrepreneurship und gestaltet als Unternehmer selbst nachhaltige Systeme.

Lehna Malmkvist

Lehna sees a future in which people live integrated within their ecosystems and, to accomplish this, our built environments mimic the processes and functions of nature. As an ecologist and the founder of Swell Environmental Consulting Ltd, Lehna works in multi-disciplinary teams for low impact/green development projects, watershed planning, rainwater management, and ecological restoration, ensuring an innovative, whole system approach is integrated into her projects. She also shares her expertise by teaching workshops and lecturing at professional, community and university events, helping to educate a new way of thinking about our connection to our immediate environment.

Nik Nowak

Nik’s wall paintings and sound objects have made him internationally renowned and he has exhibited his work in museums and galleries in Germany, Austria, Russia and China. His most recent work ’Panzer’, a combination of a caterpillar vehicle and a sound system, triggers a mystifying fascination for the force of sound and impressively demonstrates how sound can occupy space. Nik Nowak lives and works in Berlin. Nik Nowak was born in Mainz in 1981. He studied Art at the Universität der Künste Berlin and continued his studies in New York and Shanghai. In 2007, Nik finished his university education in Prof. Lothar Baumgarten masterclass and was awarded the Georg-Meistermann-Scholarship in 2008.

Studnitzky - Performance 2011

Studnitzky... ...plays trumpet and piano in the first league of the international jazz and electronic scene (Jazzanova, Nils Landgren, Mezzoforte). He writes for symphonic orchestras in crossover projects between jazz, pop, worldbeat and electronic. He produces soundscapes for unusual events and installations like Germanys most successful exhibition "Magic Places" in the Gasometer Oberhausen. There are no borders for his output. There is a unique sound, a special type of emotion as well as a certain minimalistic character in it. Even if he is almost constantly on tour, playing for big festivals and clubs all over the world, it is silence that inspires him the most. STUDNITZKY is co-founder of CONTEMPLATE-music - an international 360-degrees music-network, which explores ways of communicating high quality music in the post-record-business era.

Rune Nielsen

Rune Nielsen is co-founder and partner of the Danish design office Kollision that for more than eleven years has combined project-driven research and research-oriented practice within the field of a human-centered perspective on new technologies integrated into our surroundings. His works seeks to push the boundaries of what is possible in relation to combining communication and interaction design with physical design, architecture and the urban space. Lately he has been working in large scale of buildings and the city itself with making intangible and abstract aspects of our daily life easier to communicate and grasp through experience-oriented media facades that engage people on the street in playful interaction. Rune is an architect with specialty in interaction design and has been involved in a series of research projects challenging spatial interaction; among them his PhD project New Use of Interactive Technologies in Spatial Design. His work is to be found in temporary as well as permanent installations and exhibitions; among them at EXPO 2010 in Shanghai, The Architecture Biennale in Venice 2010, and large scale installations in HQs of companies and organizations. Rune is frequently giving talks about his work.

John Perry Barlow

John Perry Barlow is a former Wyoming rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. A co-founder of EFF, he was the first to apply the term cyberspace to the "place" it presently describes. He has written for a diversity of publications, including Communications of the ACM, Mondo 2000, The New York Times, and Time. He has been on the masthead of Wired magazine since it was founded. His piece on the future of copyright, "The Economy of Ideas," is taught in many law schools, and his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" is posted on thousands of websites. In 1997, he was a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and has been, since 1998, a Berkman Fellow at the Harvard Law School. John works actively with several consulting groups, including Diamond Technology Partners, Vanguard, and Global Business Network. In 1999, FutureBanker Magazine named him "One of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Services." He writes, speaks, and consults on a broad variety of subjects, particularly digital economy.

John Perry Barlow

John Perry Barlow is a former Wyoming rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. A co-founder of EFF, he was the first to apply the term cyberspace to the "place" it presently describes. He has written for a diversity of publications, including Communications of the ACM, Mondo 2000, The New York Times, and Time. He has been on the masthead of Wired magazine since it was founded. His piece on the future of copyright, "The Economy of Ideas," is taught in many law schools, and his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" is posted on thousands of websites. In 1997, he was a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and has been, since 1998, a Berkman Fellow at the Harvard Law School. John works actively with several consulting groups, including Diamond Technology Partners, Vanguard, and Global Business Network. In 1999, FutureBanker Magazine named him "One of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Services." He writes, speaks, and consults on a broad variety of subjects, particularly digital economy.