Crowd enjoyed a great day attending TEDx St Peter Port last week. This Guernsey event brought in speakers from around the world to inspire islanders ‘to make positive, innovative steps to improving quality of life on the island.’
Image courtesy TEDx St Peter Port, Facebook.
Speakers covered a broad range of topics including reimagining education, healthcare, journalism and charity. Here’s just three of the day’s great speeches that Crowd wanted to highlight.
Stephen Ozanne & Martyn Dorey – Smart Laws
Image courtesy TEDx St Peter Port, Facebook.
Until recently, machines haven’t been able to ‘read’ law. Only the most powerful computers have been able to analyse and extract real meaning from written language. Stephen and Martyn of Ozoris demonstrated a new software capable of reading and understanding Guernsey law. The pair fed the software a piece of Guernsey’s law, and not only did the machine analyse it, it demonstrated it. In this instance, it understood the speed zones around St Peter Port and did a live simulation of a car driving on Guernsey roads. It knew when the speed limit went up and knew when it went down. All from a machine-read analysis of Guernsey’s law literature. It was exciting to see such technology being developed in Guernsey and such bold steps being taken in these industries.
Ron Finley – A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA
As with all TEDx events, prerecorded TED talks were shared throughout the day. We loved this talk from Ron Finley about how creating communal gardens brought his community together and inspired others to eat healthily.
It reinforced the great work of Edible Guernsey, a new charity project launched last year. Based in the old Sandpiper vinery, Edible Guernsey is an initiative to a) create a community farm, b) publish a definitive Guernsey ‘food directory’ and c) promote the planting of edibles into the wider landscape. Edible Guernsey even hosted its own hedge vedge stall right in the venue at TEDx St Peter Port.
Björgvin Sævarsson – Integrated Infrastructure
Björgvin is the CEO of Ecala Group, a firm that designs and develops urban infrastructure. Ecala develop ‘CityGrids’, an integrated utility system that connect energy, water, waste, IT, and mobility infrastructure into one underground ‘grid’. A system likes this means it’s more cost efficient to run utilities (since they’re all in one place underground), and is an example of a truly renewable system. We loved this idea and thought it might be perfect for new developments in Guernsey. Combined with Ecala’s CityHub, a system like this could especially change the way local parishes handle waste and water management, internet connectivity and energy. A future-proofed system for all new developments.
Videos from the TEDx event will be available later next month. You can read about all of the speakers and their work on the TEDx St Peter Port website.