Saturday 10th of October 2009, if you lived in Dubai and had one thing to do this day, it was definitely attending the 1st TEDxDubai conference.

Put together by Giorgio Ungania and his team, the event was a huge success: fantastic speakers, perfect organization and an overwhelming crowd made it a big win for Dubai.
All the talks were trully fantastic, inspiring and a relief in the doom and gloom era we’re experiencing in Dubai.

I left the conference with more hope into the city, its people and what makes us staying in here than I had entering the Palladium.

Thomas Lundgren gave a brave speech telling how his struggling childhood led him on a personal quest to change the world.

Dr. Naif Al Mutawa, master of THE 99 project, is a great story teller. From a writer to studying business and finally getting back to its roots by creating an islamic superheros comic book series, Dr. Naif gave a lively story of his fight for his ideas.

As an entrepreneur in the internet space, I really appreciated the insights of the VC model from Joichi Ito. He also spoke a length about the Creative Commons project and its impact in the sharing economy.

Paul Bennett from IDEO was both entertaining and an eye-opener in how design thinking can overcome basic business problematics.

Big win for the arab and muslim  world represented by Mohammad Gawdat, the Al Awadhi brothers, Masarat Daud, Khulood Al Atiyat, Mohmmed Saeed Harib.

In short, every speakers shared a lot of emotion, knowledge and hope.

The production, logistic and whole setup was uber professionnal. Should I want to organize a large event in here, I wouldn’t work with anyone else.
I look forward to seing some positive outcome of this first conference.

Some side observations from the talks: Google is the Internet, Facebook is the Social Network, Twitter is ubiquitious and IPhone is the device.

I’m excited to attend the next TEDxDubai: the bar is high, but so is the ambition of people wanting to move the world.