TED talks Archives ⋆ The Teenager Today https://theteenagertoday.com/tag/ted-talks/ Loved by youth since 1963 Wed, 08 Feb 2023 08:19:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 https://theteenagertoday.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/cropped-the-teenager-today-favicon-32x32.png TED talks Archives ⋆ The Teenager Today https://theteenagertoday.com/tag/ted-talks/ 32 32 Richard Saul Wurman: Architect of Ideas https://theteenagertoday.com/richard-saul-wurman-architect-of-ideas/ Wed, 08 Feb 2023 08:19:36 +0000 https://theteenagertoday.com/?p=24348 Labelled as an “intellectual hedonist” with a “hummingbird mind”, Richard Saul Wurman has always sought ways to make the complex clear.

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Richard Saul Wurman

Labelled by Fortune magazine as an “intellectual hedonist” with a “hummingbird mind”, Richard Saul Wurman has always sought ways to make the complex clear. When people sell their expertise, he sells his ignorance. Having written, designed, and published 90 books on topics ranging from football to healthcare to city guides, he likes to mention that they all spring from the same place — his ignorance.

Born on 26 March 1935 in Philadelphia, Wurman’s parents were Morris Louis Wurman and Fannie (Pelson) Wurman. His father habitually questioned his children on current events at the dinner table. Wurman spent much of his early life following his father’s curiosity. His first love was architecture. He received a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in the field at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1959 with the highest honours.

Over the next six years, he worked as a project architect in the U.S. and London, during which time he also began his work as an author.

Cover of the February 2023 issue of The Teenager Today featuring Veronica Fusaro

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Sunita Bhuyan: The Joy of Music, The Joy of Giving https://theteenagertoday.com/sunita-bhuyan-joy-of-music-joy-of-giving/ Wed, 21 Dec 2016 04:26:09 +0000 http://theteenagertoday.com/?p=6935 Sunita is an indo-fusion violinist and vocalist par excellence. She has contributed to building bonds between India and the world through music. Whether it is London, New York, Kuala Lumpur, Glasgow, Dubai, she has been sharing how music can be a powerful change agent.

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Sunita Bhuyan playing the violin at sunset

I was recently at a week-long youth festival speaking to youngsters who had taken part in a singing competition. Their obvious love and passion for music was very evident as they performed. Music is a language that can bring people together, enable people to get in touch with their emotions, can break cultural barriers and build bonds — it is life-giving! The organizers of the festival (all youth) had also decided to give away part of the proceeds of the ticket sales to an NGO, they had also given of their time to work for the less privileged. There seems to be a unique strength and something magical about ‘giving’ and ‘music’!

At THE TEENAGER TODAY, we were very excited when we got a chance to interact with acclaimed violinist and Joy of Giving Ambassador Sunita Bhuyan. Sunita is an indo-fusion violinist and vocalist par excellence. She has contributed to building bonds between India and the world through music. Whether it is London, New York, Kuala Lumpur, Glasgow, Dubai, she has been sharing how music can be a powerful change agent. As an HR professional, she introduces corporate leaders to wellness and leadership change through music. Sunita has been invited to present and give talks at international forums such as TED Talks, Scotland Society Edinburgh, Commonwealth HRICT, Gartner Leadership Forum New York , Marcus Evans KL, Indian Consulate Dubai, Women Leadership Forum of India to name a few. She is also the ambassador for the South Asian Women’s Fund in Sri Lanka.

Sunita works very closely with underprivileged children, cancer patients and people with disabilities. Her work led to Don Bosco, Guwahati, inviting her to be the brand ambassador of their programme ‘Joy of Giving’ to celebrate the canonization of Mother Teresa.

She is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards including the Priyadarshini Award for Excellence, Giants International Award for Women, REX Karmaveer Global Award, and recently an Award from His Holiness Pope Francis at the Vatican for her work on music therapy with underprivileged children, cancer patients and people with disability.

Excerpts from the interview:

Sunita Bhuyan performs at the Joy of Giving programme in Guwahati
Sunita Bhuyan performs at the Joy of Giving programme in Guwahati to celebrate the canonisation of Mother Teresa.

Tell us about your first memory of music and the impact music has had on your life.
Music is a journey that has been a part of my life since I was 8 years old. It was a gift painstakingly given to me by my mother. At that time I did not realise the depth of the subject. As a young girl I looked at it as something that took away time from my fun and friends. It was a blessing that I got to learn the right technique at home thanks to my mother, my guru, and was able to generate a few sounds soon after the initial years. My childhood was a flurry of school exams followed by music exams, visits to Kolkata to Pandit V.G. Jog’s classes, evenings at concert halls either to watch my mother perform or other great musicians from different gharanas and styles. It was as though a way of life and the only religion! The other strong influence was my convent education in Little Flower School, Dibrugarh, Assam and my brother’s being in Don Bosco.

It wasn’t until my early twenties that I realised the impact music can have on one’s life and the environment. As I went through my academic life, management education, and then joining a corporation, I gradually started experiencing the multidimensional benefits of this medium on one’s personal, social and professional life.

How does music help us lead better lives? What are the lessons and skills that music teaches us?
Art is an ongoing journey that does not have fixed milestones like an academic course or a career path. It is continuous and fluid and there are very rare moments that can define specific arrival points. Eventually art and life blend together as one, each getting influenced by the other, which is often referred to as the ultimate aesthetic experience.

MUSIC and WELLNESS: Melody has been proven to scientifically heal the mind and the body. Sound waves from the musician reach the target and as the brain responds to the stimulus, it sends signals to different parts of the body. This relaxes the nervous system which helps in de-stressing and redesigning fatigue. When the mind and the body are calm and composed we have happy human beings. Happy individuals are healthy individuals and thus they have more energy to focus on learning, social skills and relationships which ultimately define their success quotient.

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION: Music is one of those unusual crafts that has an equal combination of structure and creativity. Hence it is referred to as an “art within a science”. Indian classical music has specific texts, structures, patterns and guidelines. Melody teaches us to work with various structures and patterns of the seven notes while rhythm is completely mathematical. Thus an engagement in music gives an opportunity to the human mind to think out of the box, innovate and thus come up with solutions and approaches that are unique to the situation.

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TEDx CRCE 2016 https://theteenagertoday.com/tedx-crce-2016/ Fri, 16 Sep 2016 06:58:02 +0000 http://theteenagertoday.com/?p=5987 Based on the mission of “Ideas Worth Spreading”, TEDxCRCE 2016 brought together 12 fascinating thinkers across all spheres of life to share their experiences.

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Rahul Arya, India's first sand animation artist
Rahul Arya, India’s first sand animation artist

Based on the mission of “Ideas Worth Spreading”, the second edition of TEDxCRCE was held on 23 July 2016 in Mumbai. Committed to spreading ideas, the global platform brought together 12 most fascinating thinkers to share their experiences and lessons across all spheres of life at Fr Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Bandra, Mumbai.

World-renowned dancer, Siri Rama
World-renowned dancer, Siri Rama

The theme for the event, “Presents for the Presents”, celebrates all the considerations that not only make our future fruitful but aim at making our today rewarding. TEDxCRCE curator, Shriya Kumar, said, ”A lot of events talk and ideate for the future. What we fail to realize is that the present is what we are living and that’s our gift. We need to create a belief ecosystem in which we cherish the current time in hand rather than bother about the unseen future.”

Bittu Sahgal, Founding Editor of Sanctuary Asia
Bittu Sahgal, Founding Editor of Sanctuary Asia

This year’s TEDxCRCE witnessed an eclectic line-up of speakers. The event started with mesmerizing sand artwork by Rahul Arya, India’s first sand animation artist, who left the audience spellbound with his performance on ‘Incredible India’. He is an engineer turned designer and sand artist who created his first sand art light box himself after which he found his calling and has now given more than 700 shows globally. World-renowned dancer, Siri Rama, spoke about the correlation between physics and dance. She demonstrated Tarangam which is Balance, Motion, Time with a unique plate dance displaying extreme balance and skill. Klugtek co-founder, Sneh Vaswani, spoke on our future interaction with robotics and how they will track our behaviour and moods acting as our personalized friends and companions. Bittu Sahgal, Founding Editor of Sanctuary Asia spoke on how we have damaged the environment and what considerations we need to do to make the earth a better place.

Singing sensation, Nilanjanaa Jayant
Singing sensation, Nilanjanaa Jayant

Next up was 13-year-old Nilanjanaa Jayant who recently became a singing sensation in America winning The Golden Voices of America competition. She will be performing at the legendary Royal Carnegie Hall in New York in October 2016. This venue has seen greats like Zakir Hussain and Pandit Shivkumar Sharma perform. She started the next session with a tribute to her idol Whitney Houston followed by her own compositions and ended with Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me To The Moon. This song had made her the only Indian to win The Golden Voices of America. Sameer Ganapathy, Head Interactive, Disney India spoke about human interaction with virtual reality and gave a tech-powered talk on how gaming influences us.

Adhitya Iyer
Adhitya Iyer

Adhitya Iyer who has travelled the country seeking out the untold stories of common engineers spoke on the gang wars and suicides popular engineering exams have caused across these coaching capitals and how our education system impacts the life of a teenage student in India. He brought out instances in Kota and Kanpur of many hostel runaways and suicides due to the pressure they are under for securing top ranks in their engineering examinations. He called out to parents to let their children choose the career they best prefer and let them explore their creativity.

Akshayapatra’s Shridhar Venkat spoke eloquently on the mammoth task of feeding 1.5 million students daily through the mid-day meal and how he did not want to patent this technology as he did not believe in capitalizing on hunger. He believes that children are the future and providing them with a safe and quality education is our primary concern. Through the mid-day meal programme, more students have incentives to attend school and ultimately undergo the basic education they require to build the nation.

TEDxCRCE also hosted an Innovation lab that saw various corporates like Tata Consultancy Services and many students participate. Co-organizer Wayne Pereira when quizzed said, “TEDxCRCE believes in getting the best talent — both established and novice on a platform that foster the exchange of ideas. The Innovation Lab is one such attempt to acquaint people to ideas that are being honed by top corporates as well as start-ups”. The lab hosted rapid offline streaming, soil testing which assists farmers with cultivation across the nation and solar projects with the potential to light up the whole campus in the coming months. It brought together corporates and students on a single platform reaffirming the fact that Fr Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering is a centre for innovation.

Bollywood stuntwoman Geeta Tandon

The last session witnessed Geeta Tandon, Bollywood stuntwoman and marital rape survivor, tell her story. She was abused and left to fend for herself with two young children and no finances. She roughed through all adversity and went on to become a stuntwoman in Indian blockbuster movies. She now lives happily, sustains her children and reaches out to other women in need of help.  Equal rights activist Harish Iyer spoke on how this movement is often misunderstood in India and how parents should encourage children to talk about their likes and dislikes.

Model-actress Sarah-Jane Dias spoke on how body shaming must end and presented her life story where she too was bullied for either being too skinny or too fat. “I was taken off a show in 2008 because I had put on too much weight and I was not cast in a film in 2016 because I was told I had lost too much of weight,” she told the audience. She asked us to find our perspective of perfection and look at ourselves as “I’M PERFECT” and not “IMPERFECT”. The evening ended with a scintillating dance performance by Kanaka Sabha Dance Group showcasing kuchipudi and bharatnatya dance forms.

Model-actress Sarah Jane Dias
Model-actress Sarah Jane Dias

Principal, Dr Srija Unnikrishnan, said, “Fr CRCE always encourages events that bolster our mission of moulding engineers who can build the nation. TEDxCRCE is one such initiative that allows us to work in tandem with international organizations like TED and it is a matter of privilege for us to host a TEDx event”.

TEDxCRCE videos will be available online on the TEDx official channel on YouTube and on www.tedxcrce.com

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