‘Did you hear about TEDx Bournemouth University; Did you go to the event; TEDx was fantastic; I cannot believe we actually had TEDx in Bournemouth’-these were all the expressions I was hearing from different people while making my everyday route to the university. So, my curiosity let me to Elena Dimitrova, who is the main organiser of Tedx Bournemouth University, the curator and the licensee.
What is so unique about Tedx Bournemouth University you might wonder? This event is the epitome of a five-year-old dream that Elena has been pursuing. A dream that represents how failure is not an option for someone ready to combine creativity, motivation and love in order to reach his goal as Elena has been rejected at first when applied two years ago for a Tedx license.
Elena Dimitrova, a final year business student, came up not only with the idea of organising the first ever Tedx at Bournemouth University, but also with a unique term, which was at the heart of the event as a main theme-‘creativity illumination’. ‘I thought a spark of creativity is nice, because it is like an association you make into your head, but then I thought illumination would be a huge amount of creativity, which I think is what BU is all about, because we have all these amazing Media school courses, so I thought this is what we stand for,’ explains Dimitrova.
Even though the theme is ‘creativity illumination’ all the twelve speakers are coming from completely different backgrounds and are quite multinational, therefore, no talks are similar to one another. What brings an archaeologist, a designer, business owner, artist, jazz musician, and student together is their idea, which is TEDx motto ‘idea worth sharing’. Essentially, the concept of the event was to bring people who are really passionate about technology, entertainment, and design.
‘For me each one of us has some creativity in ourselves, but we just sometimes need a little push to just showcase it. And for me we need to illuminate to show the creativity. I thought by organising this event people will get inspired to create something, to design something or try to write a poem, just make something really interesting and new in their own lives,’ says Elena.
What is even more impressive and unique about TEDx Bournemouth University is the fact how a student with such a creative idea in his mind can attract so many international speakers coming from all around the globe, united around the idea of sharing their expertise and passion. For instance, Nuno Almeida, who is a founder of Nourish, which is a product design company, focused on providing innovative, disruptive solutions to support social and health care services, made a very interesting connection between social care and technology, subject that you would never think of. On the other hand, Dr Bryce Dyer, who is a senior lecturer in product design, was discussing prostatic limps and how they can help people perform better in sports.
After the event, Elena had an outstanding feedback from all participants, guests, university staff members and general public. For them TEDx was an event that everyone should attend, because it is a great experience and opportunity to network with inspiring people. ‘I hear explanations such as “ professionally organised event; inspiring; fun; thought provoking;’’ and I think people were very pleased by quality of the speakers, because you can see their passion, their knowledge,’ says Elena.
