To all who attended TEDxPhilly 2011…

The TEDxPhilly team is sending a very big THANK YOU VERY MUCH your way for attending and participating in TEDxPhilly: The City. We’re also writing to share with you photos from the day, let you know when you can expect to see videos of your favorite talks, and ask you about your experience.

The enthusiasm, passion and energy shared at TEDxPhilly was truly awe-inspiring. We have been buzzing ever since. Have you?

The speakers’ talks were absolutely amazing, but so was the audience – YOU.

We can’t tell you how many thought provoking and reinvigorating conversations the team had with attendees throughout the day and following the event. You are an impressive group of individuals and we were so lucky to have you be a part of the conversation.

Did you know that TED wants to hear from you? We hope you will take a few minutes to answer the TEDx Audience Questionnaire and tell us all about your TEDxPhilly experience. Your feedback is invaluable, as we continue to evolve and improve the program. Learning about what you loved (or didn’t) and what you’d like to see more of (or less) is crucial. Fill out the TEDx Audience Questionnaire right here, right now!

Photos!

Hundreds of photos have been sorted through and the official TEDxPhilly photo gallery is up. See a visual recap of the day on Flickr. Thank you for being a part of such an amazing day!

We hardly remember posing for these, but let’s just say photo booth pics from the reception are on Facebook. You guys are silly.  Smile at the photo booth images. Big thanks to CJ Dawson Photography for helping us all let loose after such an exhilarating day of talks.

Videos!

Editing is happening! Each TEDxPhilly talk was professionally filmed and we’ll have videos of the talks rolling out as they are completed. You can soon re-watch your favorite talks and share with friends the ideas that resonated with you most. Stay tuned!

Stay Connected!

If you wrote a recap of TEDxPhilly or a reflection on the day, share it! If you were inspired by a particular talk, tell us! If you’ve found that you’re drawing from your experiences of the day in your life and work, we want to hear all about it! Email us at info@tedxphilly.com.

The TEDxPhilly team worked for months and months to plan the one-day conference on the theme, The City. Since the event, the team needed some serious decompressing from the full day of high energy exchange, and we’re finally entering the reflection stage ourselves. For us, a renewed sense of community grew out of the day’s interactions. In addition to the survey, please do stay in touch and keep the conversation going.

Don’t forget! You + TEDx Audience Questionnaire = Better future TEDxPhilly events! Tell us about your experience.

With much appreciation and admiration,
The TEDxPhilly Team

Engage. Transform. Converge. Reveal. TEDxPhilly: The City is today, Tuesday, November 8 at Temple Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia!

If you didn’t make it to the event, we’ve got you covered! Tune in today at anytime to watch the action live from the TEDxPhilly stage full screen. 

To access a live stream of the entire program visit tedxphilly.com/live.

If you’re in Philadelphia and looking for a group experience, check-in with our friends at National Mechanics in Old City who are once again offering a very special free live stream. Throughout the day, National Mechanics will offer guests bottomless coffee, all-day happy hour specials, free Wi-Fi and special lunch features, as the TEDxPhilly program across town streams live on the large screen in the bar. National Mechanics is located at 22 S. 3rd St.

By The Free Film Collective

Will you be there?

TEDxPhilly Tuesday November 8, 2011 at Temple Performing Arts Center.

The global water industry is estimated at a whopping $350 billion, and while Philadelphia might be an unexpected leader in this burgeoning field, The Water and Environmental Technology Center headquartered at Temple University, is quickly becoming recognized as a global technology hub.

In partnership with the University of Arizona and funded in part by illustrious grants from the National Science Foundation as well as investments from the private sector, Dr. Rominder Suri wants to change how the world sees, and values, Earth’s most precious resource: Water.

While this innovation is local, the implications are global, as covered in Flying Kite’s article on the subject, Philly’s water world attracting investment, innovation:

Think about [water] treatment plants, with infrastructure built many years ago, and ill equipped to handle some of the chemicals that now show up in every stream. Dr. Rominder Suri, Director of the Water and Environmental Technology Center, studies emerging contaminants and develops technologies to identify and treat a wide range of chemicals in water. Caffeine, for example, is everywhere. In every stream, you will find traces of the stimulant. A far greater regional threat is runoff from coal mining and natural gas drilling operations. Concerns about fracking are on the rise, and a big reason is the effect on water quality.

“There is not only a shortage of water but the quality of water is generally not good,” explains Suri. “Industry needs high purity water for manufacturing purposes, which are on the increase due to globalization” (hence the development and commercialization of water treatment technologies). The supply of water is finite, and with simple population growth, water becomes less and less available per capita. Water efficiency is a major issue globally, yet the dynamics and factors that go into each region are different.

The mission of the WET Center is to “develop technologies and methods to detect, understand, mitigate and/or control emerging contaminants (ECs) as well as other traditional contaminants in the environment that can adversely impact water quality and the environment. The vision of the WET Center is to minimize any adverse effects of ECs and other contaminants on human health and/or the environment.”

Since speaking at TEDxPhilly in 2010, Nic Esposito a farmer, community organizer, storyteller, and now, self published author(!) has been quite busy! His first book, Seeds of Discent which came out in April 2011, was cultivated by the community through a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign. Parting from the typical political and instructive tone of the genre, this novel instead tells the human story of living sustainably.

Nic is already working on his next book focused on soil management and what he has coined “habitat change” which will “take these ideas a step further from global warming and focusing on the ideas of resource and soil depletion that are just as detrimental.”

Get Inspired and Check Out Nic Esposito’s TEDxPhilly 2010 Talk:

How do you sow the seeds of change? Nic Esposito speaks emphatically to the audience at TEDxPhilly about urban farming happening right here, right now. Nic has set up community gardens in West Philadelphia, where residents take control of their own food security and local economy through the production and sale of agriculture.

Nic has created a bunch of grassroots organizations in Philadelphia. We blame his green thumb. He co-founded Philly Rooted, which pretties up those pathetic empty lots. He also founded and runs Philly Corner Stories, helping Philadelphians tell their corner stories.

Wanna be on film?
The Free Film Collective and TEDxPhilly are looking for engaged Philadelphians who want to be filmed / photographed with the TED ‘X’ on October 7, 8, 9 & 10 in front of some of Philly’s most well-known landmarks. You’ll be featured in a short film and online. Is that you? It’s not to late, Sign up here! »

Call for Artists
We are accepting submissions to be featured in our printed program until October 10th. If you or someone you know creates artwork that relates to our theme, The City, then we want to hear from you! Read the full details on our blog »

TEDxPhilly Happy Hour
Wednesday, Oct 12 2011, 5:30p.m. – 8:00p.m.
You are cordially invited to a TEDxPhilly Happy Hour to celebrate our growing community, get psyched for the day, and mingle with one another (and a few speakers!) There will be special ticketing opportunities too. Discounts and other enticing incentives will be offered as well as drinks from our friends at DrinkPhilly!

Bring your friends, your pals, your coworkers, your compatriots — hell, bring your Mom! Tell them to bring their friends, colleagues, comrades, etc. We have a few treats up our sleeves and we want to share them with you AND your wallets.
Pass it on via the Facebook Event Page or Ticketleap

Sponsor TEDxPhilly
There are so many ways we can highlight your business or organization at TEDxPhilly! See our growing list of sponsors and learn more about how to contribute: tedxphilly.com/sponsors

Will we see you there?
Time sure is flying! We can’t believe it’s October already, and TEDxPhilly is just over one month away. We’re so beyond excited about this year’s speaker lineup. We’ll be confirming a few more, but check out our current list to date:
tedxphilly.com/speakers

We can’t wait to share the day with you, grab your ticket today!

Forbes Magazine recently featured Philadelphia’s farmers’ markets, particularly Headhouse Market, in an article titled The Summer Bounty from Farm to City. When it comes to local and sustainable food markets in America’s consumer culture, the numbers are astounding, with over 7,175 markets serving 125,000 customers annually.

These markets provide affordable, convenient and healthful access to fresh fruits and vegetables. They promote good health and nutrition…They also play a key role in developing local and regional food systems that support the sustainability of family farms, revitalize communities and provide places for farmers and consumers to meet.

Rittenhouse Square Market, Greensgrow Farms and Fairmount Farmers Market were also highlighted as some of the best local and sustainable Farmers Markets which can be found every day of the week in many areas of Philadelphia. Will we see you at one this week?

From Flowing Data:

World population is estimated to be 6.9 billion people, and while that is a lot of people, it suddenly doesn’t seem like that much in these maps by Tim De Chant of Per Square Mile. Simply imagine that the world lived with the same density of a real city, and see how much area they take up. If we all lived like they do in San Francisco (space-wise), we’d take up just under 398k square miles, or rather, only four states. Same density as New York? We’d all fit in Texas.

New York was planning to tear down the High Line, an abandoned elevated railroad in Manhattan, when Robert Hammond and a few friends suggested: Why not make it a park? He shares how it happened in this tale of local cultural activism.

Lilium Urbanus is an amazingly beautiful animated short by Anca Risca and Joji Tsuruga which ilustrates that all great things, even cities, start small and often in the most unexpected of ways.

 
 
This is what the creators had to say to the folks over at Scientific America about the making of the film:

We embraced the idea of urban growth and saw it as something uncontrollable, having a mind of its own. Like a growing flower, a small town constructs larger buildings and becomes a flourishing city with skyscrapers for leaves, airport runways for petals, and airplanes for seeds. Our goal was to show that a city is like a living being, constantly growing, changing, and spreading.