A number of TEDxWaterloo satellite live webcast viewing parties have been organized by TEDxWaterloo enthusiasts! More information can be found below.

TEDxWaterloo Live Webcast @ St. Jerome’s University, University of Waterloo – Room 3014

TEDxWaterloo Live Webcast @ University of Waterloo hosted by Arts Student Union

TEDxWaterloo Live Webcast @ University of Guelph (Guestlist Registration Page)

If you are interested in organizing a TEDxWaterloo satellite webcast viewing party, please email info@tedxwaterloo.com

Thank you to all who attended and watched TEDxWaterloo online on February 25, 2010! We’ve collected a few reactions in the video above. We’ll be linking to the talks as soon as they are available online.

Thank you to everyone who donated to TEDxWaterloo. We are still accepting donations to help cover the costs of running the event. If you would still like to donate to help offset the costs, you may use the secure PayPal donate button below.

Terry O’Reilly began his career as a copywriter for some of Canada’s top creative ad agencies. In 1990, he co-founded audio production company Pirate Radio & Television, now in Toronto and New York City.

Terry has won awards around the world for his writing and directing. When he’s not creating advertising, he’s talking about it as host of the award-winning CBC/Sirius radio series, “The Age of Persuasion.” He’s
co-written a best-selling book based on the radio show, published by Knopf Canada, which hits American bookstores this year.

The advertising industry has given Terry three lifetime achievement awards, even though, to the best of his knowledge, he only has one life.

He has a wonderful wife and three lovely daughters.

Who like some of his work.

To say Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a writer, filmmaker and radio host does not do justice to the variety and sheer innovation behind her creative endeavors.  The New York Times said this about her work: “Her books radiate fun the way tulips radiate spring: they are elegant and spirit-lifting.”

Rosenthal has published 12 children’s books (and 8 forthcoming) including The New York Times bestsellers Duck! Rabbit! and Cookies: Bite Size Life Lessons. Duck! Rabbit! was selected as Time Magazine’s best children’s book of 2009.  As for her adult work, Amazon named her Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life one of the top 10 memoirs of 2005.  Amy is also the creator of YouTube sensations such as “17 Things I Made” and the international film project, “The Beckoning of Lovely: A Feature Film Featuring You.”

Raymond Laflamme is originally from Québec City, where he studied Physics as an undergraduate at the Université Laval. After surviving Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge, he completed his PhD on aspects of general relativity and quantum cosmology in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) under the direction of Stephen Hawking. Laflamme and his colleague Don Page are responsible for having changed Hawking’s mind on the reversal of the direction of time in a contracting universe (see Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time).

From 1988-1992, Laflamme held a Killam post-doctoral fellowship at UBC, and a post-doctoral fellowship at Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge. From 1992-2001, Dr. Laflamme worked as a research scientist at Los Alamos Research Laboratory, where his interests shifted from cosmology to quantum computing.

Since the mid-1990’s, Laflamme has developed theoretical approaches to quantum error correction, and has given experimental demonstrations of these techniques. In collaboration with Emmanuel Knill, Laflamme gave conditions for quantum error correcting codes, and established the fault-tolerance threshold, thereby showing that quantum computing systems could be practically useful. He went on to perform the first experimental demonstration of quantum error correction.  With colleagues, he has developed a blueprint for a quantum information processor using linear optics, and devised and implemented new methods to make quantum information robust against corruption in both cryptographic and computational settings.

In 2001, Laflamme returned to Canada as the founding Director of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), and as a founding member of the Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics. Dr. Laflamme is the founding Scientific Director of QuantumWorks, Canada’s national research consortium on quantum information science, and has been Director of the Quantum Information Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) since 2003, and a CIFAR Fellow since 2001. Dr. Laflamme holds the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information, and is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Laflamme’s group holds the world record for the largest quantum computer achieved to date, at 12 qubits.

Madhur Anand is an internationally-recognized scientist and professor with over 45 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Ecological Change at the University of Guelph. Her research in forest ecology, ecological modeling and biodiversity spans several countries including Israel, Europe, India, China, Brazil and the USA.  She serves on several journal editorial boards and granting panels and is currently President of the Sigma Xi Scientific Society (University of Toronto Chapter).

Dr. Anand is also a poet. Her poetry has been published in CV2, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Room, Grain, Interim, Vallum and Maple Tree Literary Supplement, anthologized in The Shape of Content: Creative Writing in Science and Mathematics (2008) and nominated for a Pushcart prize (2007).

She is co-editor of the anthology entitled Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry (2009; Your Scrivener Press), the “first anthology of contemporary poetry about the environment and environmental concerns”, a project that was inspired by the regreening of Sudbury.

She lives in Guelph with her husband and two small children.

Paul Saltzman is a two-time Emmy Award winning Toronto-based film and television producer-director known for over 300 productions.

After briefly studying Engineering Science, he did congressional civil rights lobbying in Washington, D.C., and voter registration work in Mississippi. He began his film and television career in 1965 at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a researcher, interviewer and on-air host, and then moved to the National Film Board of Canada. In 1967 he interviewed American inventor and visionary Buckminster Fuller, who would later say that Saltzman changed his assessment of the ‘60s generation.

Early in 1968 he learned meditation at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in India, an experience that changed his life. While there, he photographed the Beatles, Mia Farrow, Donovan and Mike Love.

In 1968-69 he assisted in the birth of a new film format as second-unit director and production manager of the first IMAX film, produced for the Osaka 1970 World’s Fair.

In the summer of 1969, he attended the original Woodstock Music Festival; and in the early ‘70s he produced a Leonard Cohen live concert tour. In 1972 he produced and directed his first film, a half-hour documentary on Bo Diddley.

In 1973, Paul founded Sunrise Films Limited. He produced and directed documentaries for the next decade, including the acclaimed series Spread Your Wings. His work included producing, directing, writing, editing, cinematography and sound recording. In 1983, he turned to drama, producing and directing the premiere of HBO’s Family Playhouse and a special for American Playhouse. In the same year, he co-created and produced the family action-adventure television series Danger Bay. The hit CBC-Disney Channel series ran for 6 years and 123 episodes.

Since then he has produced television series like My Secret Identity, Matrix and Max Glick, as well as miniseries and movies of the week. He co-produced the feature film Map of the Human Heart, an international epic directed by Vincent Ward, starring Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud, Patrick Bergin, John Cusack and Jean Moreau. He also executive produced Martha, Ruth & Edie as well as Sam & Me, which received an Honorable Mention in competition for the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2000, Paul released his first book, The Beatles in Rishikesh, through the Viking Studio, Penguin Putnam. In early 2006 he self-published his second book, a deluxe Limited Edition Box-Set, The Beatles in India, complete with a Limited Edition archival chromogenic print, an original CD and an original DVD.

In 2008, he made his feature-film directorial debut with the documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi, with Morgan Freeman, which premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, 2009. He is currently editing his 2^nd feature, the documentary Return to Mississippi, with Harry Belafonte, the KKK and Morgan Freeman. Paul is a member of the Director’s Guild of Canada and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. He loves travelling, skydiving, scuba diving, and plays ice hockey, often. He has one daughter.

TEDxWaterloo is pleased to announce our final two confirmed speakers for February 25, 2010. Our full list of speakers can be found here.

Speakers include:

Caroline Disler

A master of translation with working knowledge of ancient languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Edomite, Ancient Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek.

Michael Sacco

Chocolatier and social entrepreneur promoting the diversity of production of organic cacao through a structure defined as “horizontal trade”

Apply to attend TEDxWaterloo today! Application deadline has been extended to February 9, 2010.

Caroline Disler is a master of translation. With reading knowledge of many modern languages such as  Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Polish, modern Greek and Arabic, as well as working knowledge of ancient languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Edomite, Ancient Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek, she has unique perspective on the sources of human thought. In addition to translating modern books and academic papers from German, French, Dutch, and Italian, her work and teaching reveals how we come to think the way we do, examining the largely unexplored role of translation itself in ancient history. Drawing from original source material such as pagan Ugaritic epics and original Moabite, Babylonian, Syriac and Coptic texts, her studies of history, society and translation at York University explore inter-cultural transfer of information from the dawn of writing to the present day.

Her personal interests, apart from the pleasures of family and friends, range from woodworking to calligraphy, from water skiing to ice hockey. She has raised six children and counts motherhood among her greatest accomplishments.