Welcome to TEDxOtemachiLive 2019!

This April, you will have the chance to join an unforgettable gathering of minds and souls from Tokyo, Japan while engaging in the amazing experience of TED2019 Conference (Vancouver, Canada).

TEDxLive event is a global initiative to make the TED conference more open, more global, and its impact more immediate. Communities around the world can engage with, as well as build on, the TED Conference experience as it happens live. At TEDxOtemachiLive, we are to watch the official TED Conference through a webcast, then listen to live speakers whose powerful ideas will intellectually stimulate, emotionally connect, and genuinely inspire.

The theme of TED2019 is "Bigger than us". Together let's explore the endless possibilities of tantalizing technology, compassionate human systems & important values that drive a more sustainable future, shed light on our search for deeper meaning.

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY

Technological change is the driving force of social change and economic growth. We’ll be exploring technologies that evoke wonder and tantalize with superhuman powers, mind-bending science that will drive the future of abundance and sustainability.

REINVENTING THE SYSTEM

When each technology matures they will combine to become a system that scales exponentially. Thus, we need innovative solutions, active collaboration, proactive design for sustainable cities & communities and effective governance to build powerful human systems that determine our lives. Otherwise, undemocratic, random and malicious forces will shape the future of technological system and their impacts on people.

SEARCHING FOR MEANING

The political and technological turmoil of the past few years has had unexpected consequences, causing us to ask bigger, deeper, more challenging questions. Where is this heading? What really matters? Is there more I should be doing? More than ever we need to ask ourselves these philosophical questions and make values a feature, not a bug of new technology.

LIVE SPEAKERS

Shinya

Umezawa

Biophilic architect

Biophilic Architect born in Gunma Prefecture in 1980. Brand Manager / co-founder of famous Space design brand "parkERs".

Telling us about his first trip to the Kenyan Savanna, Umezawa san said: "I felt rumbling inside, and I realized how myself is truly a living organism". This was a life changing experience, since he then resigned from his job in IT industry and entered the new world of space design. Using plants and natural elements (Biophilic design), he has created a unique business model which then thrives in Japanese market. His works include Haneda Airport ANA SUITE LOUNGE, Starbucks Coffee Omotesando Hills, 2020 Tokyo Olympic Marathon Course (Asakusa area), etc.

x

Kazutaka

Inoue

Concentration researcher, eyewear enthusiast, author

Mr. Inoue is Division Manager at famous Japanese eyewear brand JINS Co., Ltd. in charge of JINS MEME, the world's first eyewear that lets you see not only what is in front of you, but also allows you to look inside yourself, by showing shifts in your emotional state, activity logs, as well as your health.

The JINS MEME measures blinks and postures to visualize the state of concentration. Normally, people blink about twenty times in one minute, but this is reduced to three or four times when they are concentrating on something. The force of the blinking also stabilizes the more relaxed and calm you are.
https://jins-meme.com/en/concept/

He is also the Director of Think Lab, a unique workspace design for concentration. https://thinklab.jins.com/

Mr.Inoue has ranked fourth in Asia for the Arithmetic Olympics. Recently he wrote "How to work to increase concentration by 300 times".

x

Yi

Zhu

Business ethnographer, researcher

Born in China, received education in Japan, China and Hong Kong, she is currently based at the University of Tsukuba as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business Sciences. She is a business ethnographer, and interested in organizational culture, cross-cultural communication as well as corporate ideology and identity. Yi Zhu teaches Human Resource Management and Business Anthropology at the University of Tsukuba, Japan.

x

Keisuke

Igarashi

Cellular agriculturist, meat grower

Mr. Igaashi received a Ph.D. research on cytoplasmic male sterility in rice at Tohoku University Graduate School of Agriculture. He joined Shojinmeat Project from 2016 and started research on cultured meat.

Cultured meat is meat grown in the lab rather than from slaughtered animals. Various efforts has been made by scientists, entrepreneurs and corporations all over the world to create cultured meat that has quality of real meat (color, texture, taste, etc.), as well as scale up production to meet the need of commercialization. The bottle neck is: the serum critical in culture process is very expensive. Shojinmeat has thus worked on a way to substantially drive down the cost and democratize the technology.

Mr. Igarashi has recently found an NPO on cellular agriculture. At the second Cell Farming Conference, he taught a team of elementary and junior high school students and developed a fish primary culture method.

x

TED2019 SPEAKER LINEUP

SEE MORE
Highlight talks and sessions from the official TED2019 「Bigger than us」 streaming from Vancouver will be webcast in English, and talks by live speakers will be delivered in Japanese.

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.