Theme: Unconventional Wisdom

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).

The Bridgewater Hall
Lower Mosley Street
Manchester, Manchester, M2 3WS
United Kingdom

Alex Partridge

Co-Founder of Unilad

Alex Partridge is one of the pioneers of social media content the way we know it today. At age 21 in 2010, while a student at Oxford Brookes University, he created, designed and wrote Unilad, one of the most popular social news and entertainment internet company in the world with an astonishing following of 40 million people around the globe. In 2017 Alex was involved in a major legal dispute over the ownership of the company – he had left his editorial role in 2013 while remaining a stakeholder – and won the case. Regarded as a ‘Facebook genius’, Alex is now an acclaimed professional speaker.

Andrew Szydlo

Scientist

Chemistry is not an Olympic sport, but if it was, Andrew Szydlo would undoubtedly be our reigning gold medallist. Andrew is an internationally acclaimed chemistry teacher and holds a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from UCL. He has a particular expertise on the history of alchemy and his 1994 book ‘Water Which Does Not Wet Hands’ is considered to be the standard reference work on the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius. But his polymath spirit extends beyond chemistry: he’s a violin, bugle and accordion player, as well as a professional photographer. Throughout the years Andrew has wowed audiences all around the world with his pyrotechnical approach to teaching and demonstrating chemical sciences on stage and has appeared many times on TV.

Anthony Warner

Food Science Evangelist

Anthony Warner is a professional chef and writer. A regular contributor to New Scientist and The Pool, his articles have also been featured in the Guardian, Mail on Sunday, The Sun and many more. He writes the regular Angry Chef column for The Sunday Times, exposing food myths and misunderstandings. In 2017, he was named on the Telegraph’s Food Power List of tastemakers changing the way we eat and drink. His first book, The Angry Chef – Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating, won the Hearst Big Book Awards Health and Lifestyle Category in 2018 and was double-nominated by the Guild of Food Writers in the same year. His second book, The Truth About Fat, will be published by Oneworld in January 2019, and will definitely upset a lot of people. He lives in Nottinghamshire, blogs at angry-chef.com and you can follow him @One_Angry_Chef.

Chris Bailey

2-time Best-Selling Author on Productivity

Chris Bailey was recently described by TED as possibly “the most productive man you’d ever hope to meet”. He is the international bestselling author of Hyperfocus and The Productivity Project, which have been published in sixteen languages. Chris works with organisations around the globe on how they can become more productive without hating the process. To date, Chris has written hundreds of articles on the subject of productivity, and has garnered coverage in media as diverse as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, The Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review, TED, Fortune, Fast Company, and Lifehacker.

David Nihill

Involuntary Authority

David is the Founder of FunnyBizz Conference, bestselling author of ‘Do You Talk Funny?’ (published by Benbella/Persius) and the winner of the prestigious 43rd annual San Francisco Comedy Competition (past finalists include Robin Williams, Dana Carvey and Ellen DeGeneres). His work has been featured in Inc., Lifehacker, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Irish Times, and Forbes. A graduate of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School he calls San Francisco home when immigration officials permit, and was named on the 2017 Irish America 100 List, which recognises the accomplishments of the best and the brightest Irish-American and Irish-born leaders.

Emer Maguire

Science Singer-Songwriter

Emer Maguire is an award-winning science communicator, BBC radio presenter, and a singer-songwriter. In 2015 she was named the UK’s best science communicator winning the FameLab competition. In 2017, Emer won the International Science Stars competition as well to prove her first victory wasn’t just a fluke. She combines her love of science with music and comedy to be irresistibly winning with her audiences. With topics ranging from “Why do we fall in love” to “The Mystery of Music (according to science)”, Emer inspires audiences to find science as captivating as she does. Emer is currently spreading her love for science and tech by presenting her BBC radio show, “Science and Stuff with Emer Maguire”. When she’s not on air, she’s performing at science festivals and events throughout the UK and Ireland.

Ged King

Charitable Barber

Steve Jobs is famous for saying “the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Mancunian barber, Ged King, is on a mission to help make Manchester and the world a better place one haircut at a time. Growing up in a tough neighbourhood outside of Manchester, Ged found happiness and success serving in the military. He went on to establish a successful barbershop in but despite his success, Ged began to wonder how he could create impact in the world around him. In 2015, Ged started offering free haircuts to the homeless in Manchester, and what started as a passion for helping others became a mission to give disadvantaged people a chance to improve their lives. Ged, alongside his successful barbershop team, set up the Skullfades Foundation. In 2018, they travelled to refugee camps, bringing haircuts and hope in unfortunate conditions. Despite the barriers of language and culture, they discovered the power of the haircut needs no translation.

Jon Carmichael

Astronomy Photographer

New York-based photographer Jon Carmichael shot to fame in 2017 when he captured an astounding photo of a total solar eclipse from an airplane at 39,000 feet flying above the Snake River in America. His photo series was launched at the Twitter HQ in San Francisco and went on to be described by some as “history’s most amazing photo”. In the past 10 years, self-taught Carmichael has developed a number of signature shooting and printing techniques that create a level of detail, depth and colour accuracy, unmatched by others in the same subject. Taking a liking to astrophotography, Carmichael aims to push the envelope of photography technology to unveil parts of the universe that simply cannot be seen by the naked eye. For nearly a decade, Carmichael’s Contemporary work remained unseen and was never printed or sold. In 2015, he produced his first set of artist proofs which were seen and discovered for the first time by Sir Elton John.

Katherine Ormerod

Social Media Maven

Whether you be young or old, single or a parent, many of us today are concerned about the impact of social media on our lives and communities. Katherine Ormerod is the author of the Amazon bestseller, Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life’. Written in 2018, she addresses her experiences working in new media and the problematic implications of social media. In her research she speaks with psychologists, plastic surgeons, global influencers and others to get a meta-level view on the scope of the problem and what we might be able to do about it. Katherine brings a wealth of reporting experience with staff roles at Sunday Times Style, Grazia and Glamour, specialising in fashion and social media culture. She’s also written for the FT, The Telegraph, Harper’s Bazaar and The Mail on Sunday.

Maisie Williams

Game of Thrones actress turned Tech Entrepreneur

Margaret Constance Williams, known as Maisie Williams, is an English actress. She made her professional acting debut in 2011 as Arya Stark of Winterfell in the HBO world phenomenon Game of Thrones. Selected among 300 British actresses, she plays the role of a tomboyish young girl from a noble family for which she won numerous awards. Her broad artistic life led her to co-found Daisie, a social media aimed at creative people in the world of arts, fashion, tv, film, photography, music, and literature. The aim of the app is to bring individuals from across industries together, to help foster collaborations with other artists and provide an alternative route into creative industries. Maisie said “Our main goal is to have a community of artists that are collaborating, uploading their work and sharing their projects.. helping others create their careers.”

Moon Ribas

Cyborg Artist & Activist

Moon Ribas is a Catalan avant-garde artist and a cyborg. She is best known for developing the Seismic Sense, an online seismic sensor implanted in her feet that allows her to perceive earthquakes taking place anywhere in the planet through vibrations in real time. Ribas transposes the earthquakes into either sound or dance. Ribas’ seismic sense also allows her to feel moonquakes, the seismic activity on the Moon. She believes that by extending our senses to perceive outside the planet, we can all become senstronauts. Adding this new sense allows her to be physically on Earth while her feet feel the Moon. Since 2007 Moon has been experimenting with the union between technology and her body to explore the boundaries of perception and to experience movement in a deeper way. In 2010 she co-founded the Cyborg Foundation, an international organisation that aims to help people become cyborgs, defend cyborg rights and promote cyborg art.

Mostafa Nabawy

Bio-Mimicker

Who said that nature and technology can’t help each other? Mostafa, innovative research leader in aerospace engineering at The University of Manchester, is seeking to understand how insects locomotion can help us design the next generation of micro-robots and how advanced engineering techniques can help us better understand insects behaviour. With a sustained track record in researching aerodynamics and designing micro air vehicles, he has made significant contributions to our understanding of insect flight, and has recently developed a broader interest in designing insect-inspired micro-robots by bringing through biological inspiration together with engineering practicality. Mostafa was featured on BBC news and had radio interviews with BBC radio 5 and talkRADIO. His research has attracted global attention including BBC, Nat Geo, The Telegraph, The Times, France 24, Le monde, Der Spiegel, Fox News, Forbes and NewScientist.

Rory Sutherland

Vice-Chair of Ogilvy UK and multiple TED speaker

Rory is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy and one of the best-known proponents of behavioural economics and science in the business world. He founded Ogilvy Change to advise clients on how to employ behavioural science or ‘nudges’ to create massive returns with small changes in their business practices. He is the author of The Wiki Man and Alchemy, The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense, to be published in the UK and US in March 2019. Rory has also hosted two Radio 4 series examining psychology and business including “Marketing: Hacking the Unconscious” and “Thought Cages”. Rory has spoken previously at multiple TED Conferences and his TED Talks have been viewed more than 7 million times.

Sarah Carlick

Tech for Good Innovator

While all of us dream of a better world, some of us are busy making it a better and safer place to live in; Sarah Carlick is one of them. She is the founder of MeSafe, a social-care tech startup that created the world’s first safeguarding digital platform to protect children and young people. Sarah’s dedication to the industry began much earlier: in 2007 she founded ‘The Athena Programme’, a successful safeguarding training and consultancy company that helps organizations to be safeguarding compliant. Starting her career as a social worker and then a probation officer, she has gained an incredible amount of experience in the public, private and voluntary sectors in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia, backed by her rigorous academic background. She has a diploma and degree in Social Work from Lancaster University, an MA in Arts-Health from the University of Central Lancashire and has recently obtained a PhD studying the use of creative technologies in the safeguarding industry.