XJTLU holds first open mic to select speakers for TEDxSuzhou

Eighteen XJTLU staff and students delivered speeches on the topic of ‘Urban Future’ at the first open mic for TEDxSuzhou Speaker mass selection organised by XJTLU Museum.

Aiming to discover the unique perspectives and innovative ideas of staff and students from XJTLU, Xin Xu from XJTLU Museum said: “This event also aims to select distinguished speakers for the TEDxSuzhou 2018 Annual Conference to be held at XJTLU on 31 March 2018.”

Speakers shared their unique and diverse insights while describing the future development of cities including: urban migration, development trends, community relationship, artificial intelligence and smart cities.

Mark Sinnott from XJTLU Language Centre and Xinxin Xu from Chinese Cultural Teaching Centre were the stand out competitors and have been invited as guest speakers at the TEDxSuzhou 2018 Annual Conference.

Xinxin Xu (pictured above left) added: “The concept of a city is more to do with time than space. Like human beings, a city also has its own memory because many generations have created the history of a city and engraved their memory into it.”

She also mentioned that even with the background of urbanisation, modernised cities still need to be connected to tradition. The awareness of traditions is different from nostalgia and they should become a necessary part of people’s lives.

Mark Sinnott (pictured below left) said: “If we embrace diversity, optimism, innovation, sharing and concepts of livability, then our future urban spaces will truly be ‘home’.”

Judges for the open mic were: Dr Xin Bi (pictured below first from the right), deputy director of Centre for Knowledge and Information at XJTLU, Jade Zhao, initiator of TEDxSuzhou (pictured below second from the right), and Cole Li, organiser and planner of TEDxSuzhou (pictured below first from the left).

Xin Xu concluded the event by saying: “XJTLU, as a partner of TEDxSuzhou, hopes to encourage more staff and students to stand on this international and diversified stage and express their opinions.”

by Yanzi Wu and Yaqi Fu, photos by Liping Tian

translation by Guojuan Wang and Wangjie Qian, edited by Jacqueline Bánki