A rivetting and authoritative speaker, Vinay deals with many topics that most people ignore, as is well illustrated by the video above. He is currently curating a massively crowdsourced collaborative publication called ‘The Future We Deserve‘ which is ‘a place to create and share our visions of the possible future for the people and the planet… collecting 100 visions of the future, both dreams and practical technical realities, in a sourcebook for creating a new future.

Vinay has also devised The Hexayurt, an Open Source solution costing less than $100 and which could be the ideal solution for providing better accommodation for a variety of natural disaster situations.  It is made by ‘putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon. Cut six more sheets in half diagonally, and screw them together into a shallow cone. Lift the roof on to the wall with a large group of people, then fasten it down with more screws. Seal and paint it for durability.‘

We look forward to hearing Vinay tell the TEDxOrenda audience about Open Source solutions to everyday problems.

playmakers video 01 : alex fleetwood and the sandpit from thinkpublic on Vimeo.

Alex Fleetwood is Director of Hide&Seek, he also produces film and games. He founded Hide&Seek with Gideon Reeling in 2007 after attending Come Out and Play in New York. As well as Hide&Seek Alex works with artists and broadcasters on lots of things, including The Eternity Man, a film opera for Channel 4, and The Soho Project, for the London Games Festival.

Alex‘s latest venture which has just arrived in time for Christmas, is the Boardgame Remix Kit, which takes tired perennial games such as Monopoly, and reboots them in ways that make them far more exciting.  This is typical of Alex‘s innovative work which taps into our willingness to rediscover the joy of playing – a Hide&Seek event at a Late Night for Adults Only at the V&A Museum in March 2010 saw an incredible turnout of around 4,500 people turn up to participate.

We look forward to hearing Alex tell the TEDxOrenda audience about rebooting old ideas.

Melina Sydney Padua is the creator of the 2DGoggles blog which featuring her animated account of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace & Babbage – which imagines what it would have been like had the world’s first computer programmer and the man who invented the first computer joined forces to become a crime-fighting duo. The comic is actually based on Sydney’s thorough research on the biographies and correspondence between Babbage and Lovelace.

Sydney has worked as character animator on well known films including: Clash of the Titans, The Golden Compass, The Iron Giant & Prince Caspian. This sample of Sydney’s work shows her painstaking attention to detail.

We look forward to hearing Sydney tell us about the importance of research when creating new products at TEDxOrenda.

In keeping with the festive spirit prevalent at this time of year, and by way of creating excitement for the forthcoming TEDxOrenda, we’ve decided to unveil our speakers 1 at a time on each of the next ’12 days of TEDxMas’.

So without further ado, its my honour to announce that our FIRST speaker will be none other than Tom Watson MP.

As Wikipedia states, Tom rose to prominnence in most people’s minds when he passionately “Tom Watson led a small number of MPs in speaking out firmly against the Digitial Economy Bill as the bill was being passed through parliament in April 2010 during the ‘wash-up’ period before the election. He took part in a protest against the bill outside Parliament on 24 March 2010“.  And as such he spoke for the layman as it was clear that the actually ‘gets’ the technology that he so passionately spoke about, compared to many other MPs who did not seem to fully understand the implications of this new act.  This event saw him going ‘against the whip’, which, as he Tweeted at the time, made him feel ‘utterly sick‘.

To those that follow him on Twitter, Tom is an engaging raconteur with a deep interest in the way that technology affects our everyday lives.  Any MP that includes the line ‘We know that you’re too busy fighting off your biological urges and being l33t hax0rs to Get Involved, but politics is cool, m’kay?‘ in his blog,  is certainly someone to take note of.

Tom‘s awareness of technology today is epitomised by the biography in his own blog which states: ‘One day he’ll do it [update his biography].  One day.  It can’t be worse than his Wikipedia page, after all’.

Tom is always an engaging speaker and we look forward to hearing him talk at TEDxOrenda with great anticipation.



Gail is a television presenter, having worked on shows such as Top of the Pops, The Big Breakfast and The Gadget Show. In 2005 she began to suffer from alopecia areata, causing her to lose much of her hair. She refused to wear a hat or wig, deciding instead to maintain a public profile and raise awareness of the condition. She became Ambassador for the Little Princess Trust, a charity which provides wigs to children with hairloss.

Gail will talk about making the most of what life throws at you.

We’re really excited that Gail has agreed to talk at the event. The full list of amazing speakers is available here.

We have a few tickets left for the event, and you can obtain them, for free, here.

Caroline Bosher (@carolinebosher)

A Special Agent on a mission to transform businesses through exceptional branding and connections.  Caroline has a passion for infiltrating high calibre networks, uncovering remarkable customer experiences, and working with her team to co-ordinate all components required to create strong brand attraction.  Working in London, Sydney and New York she ‘cross-pollinates’ ideas across industries, cultures and entrepreneurs to ensure her clients stand out from the crowd and build their tribe of raving fans.

Caroline will use her experience of working with Ed Hardy (fashion chain) to highlight the importance of ensuring your organisation protects its identity.

Dougald Hine (@dougald)

Dugald works with ideas – exploring and developing them, and collaborating to put them into practice. This involves writing, speaking, bringing people together from different worlds to find common narratives, then helping to steer the ideas that come out of those conversations into reality.

In 2006, he co-founded School of Everything: a Web 2.0 startup that makes it really easy to find people near you to teach or learn with in your local area. The site won a New Statesman New Media Award and a Prime Minister’s Catalyst Award in 2008, and was an Official Honoree in the 2009 Webby Awards.

He is still involved in School of Everything, but now spends most of my time on other projects. These currently include:

Space Makers – an online and offline network, connecting people involved in creating collaborative spaces, including co-working, hack labs, arts spaces, social centres and temporary use of empty shops

The Dark Mountain Project – a new literary movement for an age of global disruption.

Dougald will talk about the importance of community involvement in making a project happen.

Maz Nadjm (@mazi)

Maz Nadjm is responsible for Sky Portal’s social media strategy and implementation. The Sky Portal has over 1 billion monthly page impressions and many millions of unique visitors. Maz works closely with each Sky site, providing on-going technology and strategy assessment within the context of the competitive landscape and Site needs.

In addition to his role at Sky, Maz has launched the Times Online commenting system. Prior to Sky, Maz co-founded Rareface and InfieldParking.com, a social networking site and growing online community of NASCAR racing fans in commercial partnership with its most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Maz is a mentor for start ups, video blogger for Sky News TechTalk, founder of www.Mazi.TV and CozyTweetup.com.

Maz will talk about ways in which communities can be given a voice, and how this should be handled.

Sadly the following speakers are now no longer able to attend. We are hoping that they may provide us with videos to be shown on the evening: Michael Acton Smith, Paul A Smith and John Carnell.

As the term ‘Orenda’ came from the book ‘They have a word for it’ written by Howard Rheingold, Howard can be safely described as the inspriration for this event, albeit unwittingly so.

We are proud to announce that Howard has agreed to be the Honorary Inspirator & Instigator for TEDxOrenda, and in support of this he has agreed to make a short introductory video for us which will be shown at the start of TEDxOrenda. This is a great honour as Howard is widely credited with inventing the term  ‘virtual communities’.