Theme: Dare to be

It takes courage ans persistence to accomplish anything of importance. There will be others telling it is not possible. Or it is not worth the effort. Or that you will be ridiculed or frowned upon. But when you dare to go your way, you will be followed, and the change can be started. Dare to be you. Dare to be brave and strong. Dare to be sharp, but when appropriate, dare to be funny. Dare to be.

Splendid Palace
Elizabetes iela 61
Riga, Rīga
Latvia

Āres music band

Āres play together since 2014 and they are planning to publish their debut album in 2016 — the year of their TEDxRiga appearance.

Kinoblogeri

Founders of a national entertainment movement #kinoblogeri, Sergejs Timoņins and Sergejs Musatovs founded a film distribution company and film festival Spektrs which rebels against established genre traditions with the aim to enhance and transform the modern cinema experience.

MNTHA

Together with three other talented musicians, Marija is involved in another project Melancholia. MNTHA’s inspiration comes from everyday situations, colors, art, and most of all, her dreams that reflect the deepest thoughts of her subconscious. The artist’s biggest influence and inspiration is David Bowie’s personality, art and daring. Marija studies at the Art Academy of Latvia, Faculty of Audio-Visual Media Art.

Sergejs Timoņins & Sergejs Musatovs

Founders of a national entertainment movement #kinoblogeri, Sergejs and Sergejs founded a film distribution company and film festival Spektrs which rebels against established genre traditions with the aim to enhance and transform the modern cinema experience.

Stanislav Yudin & Asnate Rancane

Stanislav is inspired by ethno music, Asnate — by improvisation. This is how these two musicians meet and understand how much they can give to each other. Compositions by Stanislav, knowledge of folklore by Asnate and the ability to improvise turns into very unique style of music. When improvising, they supplement each other with different special techniques. Stanislav Yudin is known as the jazz and improvisation bass player. He often participates in projects of experimental music. Most recently he's been composing and he came to realize that inspiration can be found in his homeland, only then the real music will be created. Asnate Rancāne is the researcher of ethno music, she's multi-instrumentalist and is managing a vocal folk group. She's been very actively involved with folk music since she was a child and most recently her inspiration is in improvisation. The results of her improvising are very special as she's using her knowledge from her experience with ethno music.

Alisa Kazarina

Alisa Kazarina is a microbiologist whose desire is to explore how microbes influence human health and how investigating ancient human-related microorganisms could help researchers to study these relationships. In her job at the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Center, Alisa investigates the remains of ancient human-related microbes that can be found within archaeological material with the help of a new multi-disciplinary area of research – biomolecular archaeology. In parallel, Alisa Kazarina is working towards her PhD thesis investigating the evolution of human-related microbial communities (i.e. human microbiome) and to detect and study ancient human pathogens like Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Alise Joste

Alise started writing songs when she was 20 years old as a means of self-expression. She published them in a local social network, and her fragile, soothing vocals and delicate guitar playing soon caught the attention of a popular radio DJ. Not long after that Alise established herself as a well-known artist in the Latvian music scene. She has since recorded and released two critically acclaimed albums, toured around Europe, while her approach of creating music has remained just as effortless and honest as when she started.

Austeja Landsbergiene

Austeja Landsbergiene has been awarded by the President of Lithuania and the King of Sweden a Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the enhancement of Lithuania’s education system through implementing new concept of teaching and for being an inspiring role-model, showing of how passion and knowledge can be turned into a successful business.

Danny Doucette

As a physics and maths teacher, Danny seeks to understand why science is challenging for students, and works to develop better ways to learn. He believes that scientific thinking empowers everyone to better understand their world.

Egils Grasmanis

In addition to running a board games publishing business, entrepreneur Egils Grasmanis has spearheaded various social activities. In 2015 he founded the Facebook group “Gribu Palīdzēt Bēgļiem” (I Want to Help Refugees) which has evolved into an active movement, trying to help refugees in Latvia and breaking the existing stereotypes.

Ernest Jenavs

As the co-founder of the EdTech startup Edurio, Ernest is seeking to help schools tap into the power of feedback, thereby improving the quality of the education they provide.

Gunita Kulikovska

Deeply involved in both architecture and fostering technology startups, Gunita Kulikovska seeks to expand the limits of communication between client and architect, with every modern medium at hand. With this mission in mind, she founded Go VR Studio, where she experiments with bleeding-edge technology.

Ivars Austers

Professor of Social Psychology Ivars Austers is interested in human ability of perspective-taking, namely, under what conditions people are good enough in guessing what other people have in their minds. His research interests are in social identity, perspective-taking, human decision-making, and traffic psychology.

Ivars Drulle

Ivars sees his work as a form of story-telling. The themes include controversial topics from our recent past and subjects we try to avoid publicly but discuss in our kitchens. Most of his projects are either large scale or tiny miniatures and maquettes, often incorporating elements of sound. But don't misjudge the playful, toy-like figurines of his creations, they reach much deeper than it might seem. "We don't really know who we are and who we may become" could be the essence of his research of the human soul.

Janis Jatnieks

Janis Jatnieks is one of the creators of a new artificially intelligent 3D modeling software, which enables mass customization of designs based on a 3D scan. Janis is a co-owner and CEO at Baltic3D.eu which is the leading 3D printing service bureau in the Baltic States, providing wide range of technologies and solutions. The company has established leading role in industrial 3D printing offering high quality service and the best in class additive manufacturing equipment.

Jonathan Howard

Jonathan is an advertising consultant, startup mentor, and improvisational theater teacher. Starting his career at Saatchi & Saatchi in London as a strategic planner, Jonathan’s career has moved through the worlds of theater, TV, startups, politics and renewable energy. He works with many different kinds of groups, from politicians to young offenders, to help them open up their imagination and solve problems in original, unexpected ways. He created the world’s first live, interactive TV drama for the BBC, and has worked on many award-winning advertising campaigns. He is certain that everyone can be creative and people can unlock their creative energy step by step practicing simple but powerful methods every day. Jonathan believes that creativity is a tool that when used wisely can solve some of the world’s biggest problems.

Lena Hercberga

Lena has been helping people within established organisations find meaning in what they do. She assists people who make up large complex organisations to make sense of complexity they work in by engaging them in a dialogue with the rest of society. Increasingly, she is interested in exploring new ways of organising within conventional corporate settings and in the wider collective, driven by social technologies, the rise of civil society and its call for more sustainable alternatives to the way the corporate economy currently works.

Linda Curika

Linda is one of the first and most recognizable Latvian feminists. For more than 10 years she has observed and written about the ways the media stereotypes gender and minorities. Recently she has stopped writing and started talking, by way of stand-up comedy. During her spare time Linda writes stories. Mostly these are not published as Linda is considering the option of being one of those writers who are 'discovered' after their death.

Maria Golubeva

Maria Golubeva is a policy analyst and historian from Riga. She has studied History at Cambridge University (PhD, 1999) and has worked in Latvian public administration, in a public policy consultancy in Brussels, and at the think-tank Providus. She has published a number of policy studies and the book "Models of Political Competence" on history of political ideas in late medieval Europe.

Martins Otikovs

Mārtiņš Otikovs is a structural biologist. He is particularly interested in the application of nuclear magnetic resonance to study the role of biomolecules in a variety of processes occurring in nature.

Mauro Martino

Mauro leads IBM’s Cognitive Visualization Lab. He is a distinguished Italian artist, designer, inventor, and educator who investigates the impact of artificial intelligence on design. His projects have been shown at international festivals including Ars Electronica, TEDxCambridge Thrive, and Art Galleries including The Serpentine Gallery (London), GAFTA (San Francisco). His work has been featured on the cover of Nature and PNAS, as well as Nature Communication, Nature Physics, Popular Science, The Economist, The Financial Times, WIRED Magazine, The Guardian, BBC News, MIT News, and Harvard News. He is Research associate at Harvard University. Explore more about Mr. Martino at his website http://www.mamartino.com/

Mikus Abolins-Abols

Mikus Āboliņš-Ābols studies birds to understand how animals respond to social and environmental challenges. He believes that his work on birds can bring about fundamental insights into how stress and risk affect our social and sexual behavior.

Modris Opelts

Modris was born in 1990 in Liepāja. When he was 4 years old, he started dancing Latvian national dance but when he turned 17, he became assistant dance teacher at 'Auseklītis'. After, when he was 19, he was the Artistic Director of the National Dance Collective 'Laine' and two years after graduating secondary school, he learnt to become a dance teacher and choreographer of contemporary dance. At the moment Modris is a dancer and choreographer of the contemporary dance collective 'ĀRĀ'. He's also been a movement consultant at Daile Thatre performance 'Possible Meeting' (directed by D.Petrenko), and he's performed at the Latvian National Opera performance 'Macbeth' (directed by V.Meikšāns).

Rūta Ronja Pakalne

Rūta Pakalne is in the beginning of her professional career, with the experience in many fields: dance, film and production. Many know her as Ronja and that her energy goes in many different levels and layers, it shows in the ways where her interest goes, she is always on the move. She has graduated BA program in dance and choreography at Latvian Academy of Culture, studied at the dance school P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, currently taking a MA program in dance/theater at Latvian Academy of Culture.