TEDx-Talks Halle 2021:
Swantje Dogunke – “Digital Humanities”
Digital Humanities? For some time now, we have been encountering the term in university teaching, in funding programs, or in “classic” humanities publications. In my talk I would like to give a little insight into the subject area and look at the Digital Humanities from the perspective of a museologist, librarian and information scientist. It’s about typewriters, modelling knowledge systems, turtles, and YouTube. These are topics we find in the Digital Humanities, a new field of research or a new way of thinking in the humanities.
Eva Ullmann – “Humour is more than funny. A serious TEDx talk”
A German expert giving a presentation on humour? That is entirely absurd! Outrageous! Or is it? Well, give Eva Ullmann 20 minutes of your time and then judge for yourself! Since the general opinion attributes very little sense of humour to Germans, she decided to embark on a journey to discover and analyse it. She’s been exploring the fascinating (and surprisingly effective) combination of seriousness and humour. Humour can quickly grab people’s attention, it can decrease stress and can help you to deflect unfair attacks. (These techniques even work with German humour...)
Miho Ohki – “Overcoming Performance Anxiety through Mental Training”
Performance anxiety is something we have all experienced. We have a lot of opportunities to perform in our lives. Whether it’s giving a speech at someone’s wedding, a presentation at work or, of course, in musical performances. It is not only a common issue among amateurs, but also among professional musicians. Miho Ohki, a Japanese pianist, piano pedagogue and researcher of mental training for musicians, provides a way for us to overcome performance anxiety through mental training techniques. Inspired by personal experience, this led Miho down the path of exploring mental training techniques to manage performance anxiety. By applying these techniques, you will feel much freer on stage and start enjoying your performance experience as you were meant to.
Wolfgang von Geramb – “Turn your problems into possibilities!”
When it comes to wishes, ideas, and wonderful dreams, people are great in planning, and then oppps - obstacles and problems are not far away. We might get stuck along the way. Most people fail to turn their dreams into reality because they encounter seemingly insurmountable problems to keep them from succeeding. Entrepreneur and creative problem explorer Wolfgang von Geramb shows an ingenious way to solve these problems with the playful 10:3:1 Solution Machine. "Everybody should have this tool strategy and understand that every problem is a question."
Lies van Roessel – “Pay for Skin or Pay to Win? On Monetization in Free-to-Play Games”
Covering a wide range of topics, styles, and genres, digital games are a multidimensional and complex cultural phenomenon. One specific kind of games that emerged with the introduction of connected mobile devices and app stores are so-called free-to-play games. These games can be downloaded and initially played for free but will try to generate revenue by offering in-game purchases or microtransactions. Free-to-play games often have easy-to-learn game principles that appeal to large audiences from all genders and age groups. Casual free-to-play games are not often (critically) addressed in the public debate, as their graphical styles are typically colourful and harmless. But these games are highly popular and commercially successful and, due to the profound connection between gameplay and monetization, deserve academic and public attention as well.
Michael Böttcher – “How Gene Editing is Changing our Lives”
Cancer is a group of diseases that is driven by genetic alterations, so called DNA mutations, which accumulate in our cells throughout our entire life. Over the past two decades, researchers have compiled a comprehensive catalogue of all the mutations that can be found in human cancers. This tremendous effort revealed, that out of the more than twenty-thousand total human genes, only a few hundred are mutated in cancer. The major challenge that lies ahead of us now, is to make functional sense of the identified mutations. This is where the recently discovered CRISPR system comes in. This game-changing biotechnology allows us to reversely engineer any cancer mutation into the genes of cultured human cells, in order to study the mutation’s functional impact in-vitro. In my talk, I will explain how we use precision genome engineering to translate genetic information into novel therapeutic strategies that will ultimately benefit patients that suffer from cancer.
Armand Zorn – “Rethinking politics”
We need to rethink the way we perceive politics and politicians. Politics is a privilege and shared common responsibility that cannot be fully delegated to lawmakers. Politicians are human being with high and lows. Hence, they can fail. We as individuum and as society need to act as corrective. Political activism is a great way to get involved into the political debate but yet not enough to actively shape politics. We need a better connection between civil society movements, political activism and (party) politics to achieve a more efficient and sustainable policy decision making process.
Henning Thielemann – “Eliminating Programming Errors Once and for All”
Computers are everywhere.
There are no longer only traditional desktop and laptop computers, but smartphones, cars, trains, planes and home automation devices also contain micro processors.
They rely on software and we rely on its correctness. But what is done today to make software correct? Unfortunately, it is mostly about good intentions, a bit of testing, managing error reports, resolving the most severe problems and shipping updates frequently. Can we do better? Can we reliably exclude errors before releasing software?
Actually, many kinds of problems are known for decades, they even got names.
I want to show some of these problems and how we can get rid of them ultimately.