Managing director of red onion GmbH.

Stephan Balzer is the founder and managing director of the communications agency red onion GmbH in Berlin. The trained media consultant is one of the pioneers of the German new media scene. During his studies, he worked at Pixel Park from 1991 to 1996 in various positions. In 1996 he founded the Agency lava which is responsible for many innovative formats and has implemented award-winning customer projects. In 1998 he was co-founder and creative director of the Berlin festival BerlinBeta – a festival that focusses on future topics and on exploring new technologies and upcoming trends. In 2009, Stephan Balzer became the first German TEDx conferences licensee and was recently appointed as the TEDx ambassador for Europe by the American TED organization.

A short conversation about TEDxBerlin with Stephan Balzer:

Tell us about the TEDx Berlin story that impressed you the most.

Balzer: The TEDx Berlin story that impressed me the most was Fabian Hemmert’s “Change of Life” talk at our first TEDx Event. After his talk, which was featured online on ted.com, his life changed: he got jobs offers, received international invitations to speak all over the globe and is now seen as one of the key thinkers when it comes to the mobile future.

As a TEDx host you travel around the world a lot and meet hundreds of people that organize TED and TEDx conferences as well – what is the deeper meaning of the TED spirit?

Balzer: I think the strength lies in a shared spirit and understanding of "change", of a joint future and the belief that ideas can change this planet- we just have to connect the dots.

You are owner of the communication agency red onion – which other projects are you involved in and how do they fit in with TEDxBerlin?

Balzer: They fit in in terms of our communication projects such as the interview project with David Lynch as well as our sponsorship consultancy for large brands. We leverage the knowledge that we have accumulated in the last years as much as we can in order to make TEDx possible.

What are your personal „investments“ in TEDxBerlin? What are your ambitions and your goals for upcoming events?

Balzer: It’s all about expanding the community and inviting more people to participate in this exciting journey of changing the world a little bit through the power of ideas - and there is a lot to do and many things need to change!

Journalist and Publisher of 365_oneworld.

Beate Wedekind, born in 1951, is one of Germany’s best-known female journalists. As former editor-in-chief of magazines such as ELLE and BUNTE, she founded her own company in 1995, producing TV-shows like the Golden Camera Awards and events like the Sony Grand Opening on Potsdamer Platz. She has written several books, one of which is the international bestseller NEW YORK INTERIORS. Beate has been working as a volunteer for the German Government in Ethiopia since the mid 1970s. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Karlheinz and Almaz Böhm’s foundation “Menschen für Menschen”. She is currently publishes her own annual magazine, 365_oneworld.

A short conversation on TEDxBerlin with Beate Wedekind:

You were editor-in-chief of several German magazines, you publish your own magazine called 365_oneworld, you are very busy on Facebook and you have written seven books. You live between Addis Ababa and Berlin. You know how to tell stories, how to spread ideas and information. What’s special about TED and TEDxBerlin for you?

Wedekind: To me TED and the international TEDx extensions are a powerful global trust of ideas, a melting pot of chances, challenges and changes, of perspectives and possibilities. Due to the fact thatBerlin gets a tremendous amount of global attention, TEDx Berlin plays an important role as interpreter. 

What would you say is the most important difference between common online media and TED/TEDx?

Wedekind: The amount and the quality of global knowledge that TED/TEDx makes available is amazing. TED/TEDx is a unique, well-structured search machine, an online guidebook to the future development of our planet. TED/TEDx is an open source of change.

What was your favorite TEDxBerlin Talk?

Wedekind: Each TED/TEDxBerlin offers a variety of topics and speakers. It’s hard to pick a favorite. During the last TEDxBerlin I was nevertheless especially impressed by this young entrepreneur Guya Merkle, who, working in the luxury industry, tries to find new ways of humanity and sustainability in the world of gold, one of the most cruel and exploiting industries there is. She left a strong footprint, also due to her very personal and emotional approach.

What are your personal „investments“ in TEDxBerlin? What are your ambitions and your goals for upcoming events?

Wedekind: I want to bring in my personal global network and my experience of working for more than 30 years in the media. My personal goal is to put Africa on the agenda of the European middle class and young Africans as professional partners on eye level and not as beneficiaries of donations. I will try to identify and introduce new topics to the upcoming TEDxBerlin events. 

Serial Chief Technology Officer.

Thomas Schindler was born in the US and grew up in Europe in an environment dominated by natural sciences. Unfit for a scientific career, he directed his focus onto the internet, leading to a series of successful and unsuccessful projects and ventures ranging from collaboration platforms to mobile couponing systems, least cost routing services and e-commerce platforms. This led to a passion of exploring the social and technological edges of new possibilities offered by technology.

A short conversation on TEDxBerlin with Thomas Schindler:

What does the X mean for you?

Schindler: X over EGO. The X provides an umbrella under which it is easy to share ideas and collaborate on putting them into action and at the same time passing ownership to a community that is unaffected by ideology.

At the TEDxSummit 2012 in Doha you experienced how more than 600 TEDx organizers from all over the world came together for the first time – what would the world be without them?

Schindler: They would still be there. But their impact would be limited if their energy wasn’t  channeled through one platform. They are entrepreneurs in the truest form: they undertake what is only imaginable. The world will become a better place and will be faster with them working in it.

You call yourself serial CTO, chief technology officer. What exactly is your job?

Schindler: I help teams to build beautiful technology by integrating the budgetary and technological boundaries while keeping an eye on the goal. But if I were to specify on this, I'd need to write a long and boring text, lol.

We read that  as a CTO you are primarily concerned „with long-term and big picture" issues.“ Recently we had a huge TEDxChange event in Berlin which was convened by Melinda Gates and was headed by the motto „the big picture“ – do you have a comparison?

Schindler: The biggest possible picture I can imagine is the optimization of the way we interact on the most basic level: connecting resources and needs - also called the economy.

Some major flaws in the design of our current systems lead to social and environmental problems that could easily be solved by redesigning our currencies.

It is easy to understand that cutting the lawn with a pair of scissors is not effective and cutting your hair with a lawnmower is dangerous. It is less obvious that we are doing the equivalent of the latter when it comes to our economy.

If we agree on the assumption that the most fundamental purpose of economy is to enable the flow of resources to where they are most needed and we also agree on the the fact that resources and needs are highly heterogeneous in their nature, the obvious begins to emerge.

What are your personal „investments“ in TEDxBerlin? What are your ambitions and your goals for upcoming events?

Schindler: After speaking with TEDx organizers from the Middle East and Africa and experiencing what TEDx means in their environments, I want to bring their sense of urgency for the need of change into our lives.

Cultural Anthropologist and Co-Founder betterplace.org

Joana Breidenbach is co-founder of betterpace.org, Germany’s largest platform for social initiatives, where she heads the betterplace lab. betterplace lab is a think- and do-tank seeking to improve the social sector through the use of digital technologies. Joana studied anthropology in Munich, Berkeley and London and received her PhD in 1994. Since 1992 she has written many books and articles on cultural globalization, such as “Tanz der Kulturen” (with Ina Zukrigl), Verlag Antje Kunstmann, Munich 1998, “Maxikulti” (with Pál Nyíri) Frankfurt/M. Campus 2008 and “Seeing Culture Everywhere”, University of Washington Press 2009. She has also published contributions in brand eins, GEO and Current Anthropology.

A short conversation on TEDxBerlin with Joana Breidenbach

You are an anthropologist by profession. On your homepage you say  that at the point when – as a consequence of globalization - everybody around the globe could eat burgers, cultural diversity seemed to be threatened.. Now an X goes around the world. Everybody can join, participate in TEDx events or follow online. What do you think about that?



Breidenbach: As an anthropologist I know that globalization doesn't necessarily threaten cultural diversity. Instead we see that the global spread of ideas, goods and institutions often leads to a new diversity, because people worldwide adapt and appropriate the "global" and use it to "become more like themselves". Thus consumers in Shanghai or Moscow may associate very different ideas with their local McDonalds and use it for their own ends, transforming the meaning of Big Mac&Co. But diversity per se is not necessarily good, it’s great when emancipatory and innovative ideas spread. And TEDx is a way for them to do so. 



The globalised world is a digitalized world. You are very engaged in online projects that set goals of humanity and fundraising. In what way is the internet important for the spreading of ideas?



Breidenbach: I find it exciting that with TEDx, innovation is not only associated with the West, but we can see that people everywhere have great ideas worth spreading. Some are just applicable to their own context, but many have the potential to spread. The internet opens up the possibility for people who haven't had a chance to be heard before and are now given a voice. This is happening in the crowdfunding space as well: at betterplace.org, which I co-founded, many small and medium-sized local organizations suddenly have the chance to present themselves in the same space as the more traditional western NGOs.  Humanity has many big problems. Ask a group of people to name some of the most urgent ones, and everybody will come up with some. But ask the same people to name possible big solutions to these problems and very few people will have an answer. I believe TEDx is especially great for the spreading of solutions. People use the online space, especially online videos, to learn from each other. Nobody described this better than Chris Anderson in this TED talk.



What makes TEDxBerlin special as a platform for you?

Breidenbach: It's exciting to be asked to spot local (in our case German and Continental European) talents and ideas worth spreading and to have the possibility to give them a stage.

What are your personal „investments“ in TEDxBerlin? What are your ambitions and your goals for upcoming events?



Breidenbach: I find myself looking at the world with TEDx-glasses, i.e. I am constantly looking for good ideas and speakers who can present them in an authentic way. But I feel that I can still become a much better idea-spotter, as we usually don’t have enough German speakers and not enough women!

Co-Founder of the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance and betterplace.org.

Professor Breidenbach has worked as arbitrator, mediator and third party in other forms of ADR in a large number of both national and international business cases over the past 15 years. Professor Breidenbach teaches Civil Law, Civil Procedure and International Economic Law at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) and is Co-director of the Mediation Masters Program and the Forum for Negotiation and Mediation at the Europe University Viadrina. In addition, he is professor for Mediation and Business Mediation at the University of Vienna, Austria and has held Visiting Professorships at the Renmin University of Beijing (China), the University of Klagenfurt (Austria) and at the University St. Gallen (Switzerland).

Breidenbach is founder and Dean of Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance in Berlin, a platform for societal innovation. He is also co-founder of betterplace.org. One of his fields of expertise is innovative financing mechanisms for social organizations. He is also one of the initiators of the Social Stock Exchange Association.

In 2002 he was awarded the Sokrates Prize for his outstanding services to the development of the theory and practice of dispute resolution in Germany.

A short conversation on TEDxBerlin with Stephan Breidenbach:

Is TEDxBerlin a better place? Why?

Breidenbach: TEDxBerlin stands for innovation and inspiration. What could be a better place than that?

Betterplace.org is an online fundraising platform you co-founded along with the Humboldt Viadrina School of Governance. You are a lawyer and carry a doctorate degree, you work at Viadrina Frankfurt, at the University of Vienna and as a mediator in conflict areas all over the world – which speaker that you have seen on a TEDx Berlin stage was able to impress you?

Breidenbach: As curators, we take great care to choose the right speakers and artists. Therefore I don’t want to single any one of them out as outstanding. Let me just highlight one video which influenced all of us: Sir Ken Robinson on education.

What makes TEDxBerlin special to you as a platform?

Breidenbach: TEDxBerlin is one of the rare occasions where exciting and meaningful ideas from a broad range of sectors are presented by people who devote their lives to them. And they present them to an audience which consists of people who could be on stage presenting their own ideas themselves. That is indeed special!

What are your personal „investments“ in TEDxBerlin? What are your ambitions and your goals for upcoming events?

Breidenbach: As a co-curator I try to find speakers who stretch our imaginations and maybe even outdo the people who presented ideas before them.

CEO of M10 GmbH.

Jörg Rheinboldt is a serial entrepreneur. While studying management in Cologne, he co-founded the Internet consulting company denkwerk and later alando.de, a marketplace which was later  acquired by eBay. After the acquisition, Jörg served as Managing Director of eBay in Germany for five years. Today he focuses on early stage investments in groundbreaking Internet, telecom and media businesses as Founding Partner of M10 GmbH. Jörg Rheinboldt is founding donor of betterplace.org, a platform for social projects. In addition, he is an advisor to companies and governmental institutions and teaches strategy at the Humboldt Viadrina School of Governance. Jörg is co-author of SimplySeven, a guidebook to internet business that was released by Palgrave in 2011.

A short coversation on TEDxBerlin with Jörg Rheinboldt:

One can read about you that you are a „social entrepreneur“ and „one of the most important doers of the German internet business“. Credit market place „Smava.de“ is one of your babies and you are involved in the social community „Spickmich“ and the online finance company M10 – how does TEDxBerlin inspire you?

Rheinboldt: TEDxBerlin inspires me in many ways: working with the board and team and thinking about the speakers and ideas worth spreading is always very inspirational. With TED you almost always think in a very free manner, and if you see any boundaries, the ideas of the people overcome them or eliminate them. What I especially like is the fact that I get to meet so many great people. Because after all, every great idea worth spreading needs a brain to be born. And brains are in people's heads.

What was your favorite TEDxBerlin talk? Why?

Rheinboldt: I honestly have several favorite talks. One is definitely Peter Eigen, who had a great idea right before going on stage. He changed the script in his head and then delivered a great talk.

In which way does the change in the start-up landscape effect ideas?

Rheinboldt: In a lot of ways. It's getting easier and easier to start companies based on great ideas, and with the internet spreading these ideas, it’s happening faster than ever. Social networks spanning the globe are only "limited" by languages and the ability of the people to understand what they are about. With the internet providing access to these ideas and businesses all over the world, we of course need to make sure that everyone gets the chance to take part in the digital world - but with new networks and devices, my personal opinion is that we are in general on the right path.

What are your personal „investments“ in TEDxBerlin? What are your ambitions and your goals for upcoming events?

Rheinboldt: Together with the board we find people with ideas worth spreading. I see it as quite a challenge to find great people with brilliant ideas. Meeting people and reading a lot is what I "invest". Experiencing excellent and mind boggling talks on stage together with great people attending TEDxBerlin and TEDxHamburg is my goal.

Founder of Musiol Munzinger Sasserath and Partner.

Marc Sasserath is founder of the brand consulting company Musiol Munzinger Sasserath and partner of the branding group supermarque. From 2001 to 2007 he was CEO of Publicis Sasserath and CSO of Publicis Germany. He studied roman economics and humanities in Germany, France and Great Britain and started his career at the global advertising agency network Saatchi & Saatchi before becoming head of strategy at BBDO and MD/chief of strategy at McCann's. Sasserath is also an advisor for gut.org and betterplace.org. Furthermore, he acts as a member of the supervisory board of the international market research and consulting company vocatus AG and is a proud supporter of the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance.

A short conversation on TEDxBerlin with Marc Sasserath:

How could TEDxBerlin improve its brand marketing ;)?

Sasserath: TedxBerlin is a gorgeous brand. It should retain its purity whilst creating even more buzz.

Which one is the most important letter to you: T, which stands for technology, E for entertainment or  D for design? Why?

Sasserath: The beauty is the combination - there isn’t just one single predominant letter.

What does the x mean to you/what do you associate with the x?

Sasserath: x is for multiply. Multiply inspiration and ideas.

What are your personal „investments“ in TEDxBerlin? What are your ambitions and your goals for upcoming events?

Sasserath: Time, network, heart and brain. Find more inspirational nuggets.

The Director of the School for Design Thinking/Hasso Platter Institute