Intelligence Illuminated: a TEDxBocconiU Event
The different facets of intelligence will be the theme of Intelligence Illuminated, the TEDxBocconiU to be held on Friday, 4 May. Expectations are so high that the event is already sold out.
The event, divided into two sessions exploring natural and artificial intelligence, will be attended by eight speakers: a computational linguist (Dirk Hovy), a social entrepreneur (Rakhi Mehra), a neuroscientist (Paolo Fabene), a fashion photographer (Nancy Fina), an artificial intelligence theorist (Riccardo Zecchina), a venture capitalist (Nader Sabbaghian) and the two Bocconi students who won the TEDxBocconiU Student Speaker Competition (Vanisha Sampat and Alain Bouwman).
At TEDx, one of the spectacular events licensed by TED to independent organizers, in addition to the University is working an association that includes 17 students, engaged in the last period more than 20 hours per week. They are evenly split between Italians and foreigners, with students coming from the Netherlands, Ecuador, Turkey, Philippines, Pakistan, Austria, and Greece, but all have in common something more important than their birthplace: the push to disseminate big ideas.
The TEDxBocconiU student association is at its fifth year and has been able to overcome the turnover problems all student associations are prone to. The "eldest" students, such as Antoinette Zuidweg, the President, or Alejandra Ycaza, Head of Communication, are at their second TEDxBocconiU and all of them decided to join the association after the exciting experience of attending TEDx events elsewhere or watching them on the Internet. "I attended one in Utrecht, where I got my BSC degree, and one in Rome during an exchange", Antoinette says. Alberto Frison, the media designer of the group, participated in Portland, Laura Crestani, from the team that selects and trains speakers, attended the TEDxBocconiU last year and was amazed both by the passion she could feel and by the results she saw, while Alejandra even chose Bocconi because of the TEDx she watched on YouTube.
With so many different national backgrounds and so many Bocconi programs the students are enrolled in, diversity is the hallmark of the association. "We have different views and different ideas, but we discuss and we always come up with creative ideas. The process may be more complicated, but the solutions are better", Alejandra says. And that's just what happened when they faced the two most critical moments of their experience: the need to change the date of the event after speakers had already confirmed their presence and the cancellation of a speaker after the publication of the program.
Participating in the organization of a TEDx is a long-term commitment. The students kicked off in September brain storming about the theme of the event and, then, each of them started working on their tasks (event management and communication, speakers team, fundraising and partnership, treasury). Only now the pieces of the puzzle are falling together, "and we are excited to understand we've given a contribution", Laura says.
As the event comes closer, expectations rise (the TEDx is already sold out) and the sense of responsibility for having chosen such an important theme increases. "For us", Antoinette says, "Intelligence Illuminated means illuminating the quest for knowledge that defines us all as human beings".