On Wednesday July 13 the first TEDxTheHagueLIVE will take place at Igluu Den Haag.



The speakers

As an educator, coach and a champion of Public Speaking you can imagine how excited I am about this event. Not only because it will be the first, and hopefully not the last, bigger TEDx event in The Hague, but because we will have seven local speakers who will give their first TED Talk live in front of what I hope is going to be a diverse audience. Our seven live speakers cover a wide spectrum, from music & science to art, agriculture and the significance of food, eating & movement on our quality of life. The speakers themselves are diverse in terms of age, they range from 70+ to 20+, four men and three women. Their background is equally diverse: some of them are well-known, even famous, others have asmaller local following. Most of them are Dutch with the exception of Kathy Voyles who comes from New Zealand. She has been a long-term resident of The Hague. Eva Maria Westbroek travels the world and has sung before large, international audiences at big opera houses in Europe and the USA. Some have spoken only before much smaller groups in Dutch. All speakers share an enthousiasm for TED and are excited about being part of the first larger TEDxTheHague event. In addition to Eva Maria and Westbroek and her father, Professor Peter Westbroek and Kathy Voyles you will meet:

Merlijn Twaalfhoven, composer/conductor

Martin Sjardijn, virtual reality artist

Rachelle Eerhart, urban garderner & no impact activits

Richard de Ruijter, fitness specialist


TED Talk, the talk of your life

What makes TEDxTheHagueLIVE so special is that this diverse group will be giving the Talk of their Life, at a TEDx event. They will be filmed by Edo van Santen, from Talk&Do.TV, a super professional who brings with him a whole crew of volunteer filmers. All live talks will be uploaded to the special YouTube TEDTalks where they will be shared with the worldwide TED audience of millions of people, all across the globe. The videos will be seen by the people behind TED, most notably Chris Anderson, the curator, who selects the speakers for the two large TED conferences held every year, in the USA and the UK. There is a possibility that some of our local speakers may eventually be speaking on a much larger, international podium. To date this had only happened to a few select Dutch TED speakers; Christien Meindertsma and Marcel Dicke. They both spoke at TEDGlobal2010 in Oxford after having presented earlier at TEDxAmsterdam in November 2009.

Public Speaking in The Netherlands

Other Dutch TEDx speakers haven't made it to those larger TED conferences. Why? Did their presentation not pass muster? Was it the content not orginal enough? Or did their delivery lack in fluency and panache? Who knows? We do know that TEDx speakers have to have a compelling idea or story, an engaging style of delivery and a passion for their topic. Their speech can be quirky, humorous, serious, radical, original or thought provoking.This is why TED Talks are so incredibly popular all over the world.

A tall order?

Yes indeed.

Words

Speaking in front of a group is not for everybody. It requires a lot of hard work and practice. Somebody said, the shorter the speech, the longer it takes to prepare. In that sense a speech is like a sculpture. A sculpture made of words. The words are strung along, shifted about, edited, added and subtrackted until every word counts and all superfluous words are omitted.

Delivery

Then the work on the delivery starts. The shaping of the sounds, the intonation, rythm and pacing. The pauses and the tempo. Body language, facial expressions, movement and breath all play a role in a delivery. Yes it is a Talk, but it is much more than that, it is a performance, a piece of art.

The TEDxTheHagueLIVE speakers have a whole month to prepare. They are also given the opportunity to work with a speech coach who helps them with the organization and the delivery of their talk. The speech coaches are all experience toastmasters who are themselves excellent speakers and know the ins and outs of creating compelling stories in English.They all have put in the 10.000 hours it takes to become proficient.

The TEDxTheHague speakers podium

So I am excited to be able to offer a podium to these seven people who all have an important and compelling message having to do with The Stuff of Life. I do know they all feel passionate about their topic. I know they will dazzle the audience and, if all goes well, they will dazlle a lot more people beyond the 200 or so lucky ones to be there in the room while they speak.

TEDxTheHagueLIVE; a co-creation by an enthusiastic team

And so, in organizing this TEDxTheHagueLIVE event, together with an enthusiastic team of volunteers and helped by geneours sponsors like Igluu, Berg Kleijn Communicatie, Edo van Santen, Kathy Voyles and many othes, I feel confident that we will be able to have some of our local speakers make it to the next round in TED land. It fits closely with my personal passion to elevate the Art of Public Speaking to a higher level. I am happy to be able to provide a podium for some of the most interesting and passionate people in our midst and I know it won't be the last time TEDxTheHague will do so.

If you haven't already, please request an invitation to TEDxTheHagueLIFE here: Notifications will be sent out by July 7th so don't wait too long to indicate your interest.