Our first TEDxWestlake explored the accelerating change in the world around us. This change is largely driven by the power of the digital infrastructure built over the last few decades. William Gibson has remarked: “The future is already here — it’s just unevenly distributed.”
While we can’t predict the future, we tried to uncover and mine some of these veins. We were lucky to have speakers from a wide array of disciplines, from kinetic art to philosophy to hybrid social ventures, to come share their stories with our audience of business students and innovators, and help us wonder about what might lie ahead. Dylan Evans is the founder of Projection Point, the global leader in risk intelligence solutions. He has written several popular science books, including Risk Intelligence: How to Live with Uncertainty (Free Press, 2012) and Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (Oxford University Press, 2001). He received a PhD in Philosophy from the London School of Economics in 2000, and has held academic appointments at King’s College London, the University of Bath, the University of the West of England, and the American University of Beirut. 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.