My life in KAIST on the 2nd week of May 2013 - Part 2 (6th TEDxKAIST B-C-D)

Now come to the second part of my story on the 2nd week of May 2013.

The Introduction

In this post I will briefly explain about 6th TEDxKAIST event held in my campus on May 11th 2013. As you learned in my previous blogpost, TEDxKAIST is an independent local event held with the spirit of TED: ideas worth spreading. The event I attended was the 6th event of TEDxKAIST since its first installment in 2010. This event was actually my second TEDxKAIST event, but this was the first time I officially registered as participant in TEDxKAIST event. In my previous TEDxKAIST event, I was been a substitute of my lab mates who registered but couldn't attended the event. Even though I didn't attend all talks in 5th TEDxKAIST event, I was amazed by the remaining talks. After participating in that event, I later decided not to miss the registration of next TEDxKAIST event again.

The Theme

Early promotional poster of 6th TEDxKAIST event

That's why when I first saw the announcement of the 6th TEDxKAIST event, I prepared myself to be aware of the registration date. As you can see in the early promotional poster, even though the list of speakers hadn't confirmed yet at that time, the theme of 6th TEDxKAIST event itself was already eye-catching. In their homepage about this 6th event, they posted a quote by Jean Paul Sartre who stated that

"Life is Choice between Birth and Death: B-C-D"

When I first saw this quote it really struck my mind. For me this quote is not only inspiring, blowing my mind, but also opening my mind to face the reality that I fully responsible of my life by all the Choices those I made or will make. I committed myself to attend this event, so at first day of registration I registered at TEDxKAIST homepage and was later notified to be one of 100 lucky participants of the 6th TEDxKAIST event.

The Souvenirs

Souvenirs from 6th TEDxKAIST event. From left to right: Lock&Lock's Balance Tumbler, Pen and Notebook, Smart Phone's Screen Cleaner, Small notes with T-Shirt shape, TEDxKAIST Sticker.

Finally, at the day of the event I went to the designated place and I registered myself before the event started and got this souvenir package. To be honest when first time I received the souvenir bag I was a little bit disappointed because they didn't give the TEDxKAIST's hoodie as they did in 5th TEDxKAIST event. But anyway when I checked the souvenir one by one, I found that they gave me a Lock&Lock's Balance Tumbler with infuser, so I can put tea leaves, brewing them, and take it wherever I go. These souvenirs itself exceeded the amount of registration fee (KRW 20,000), so finally I took them happily (later I heard that hoodie is only distributed as souvenir on the Fall semester TEDxKAIST event)

The Organizer Team

The organizer of TEDxKAIST event are a professional team. The way they handled the event from the preparation, announcement, till the day of the event manifested their professionalism. The event was started at 2 pm sharp, and they didn't tolerate any late participants (the room was closed when the event started and one of organizers guarded the door). In my opinion this policy is made to help the speaker to focus on their talk without any disruption from late participant who entering the room while talk is being delivered. Since this TEDxKAIST event is located in Korea, the main language of the event is Korean. Luckily, since TED event is a internationally-renowned event, there is a real-time interpreter to translate the Korean talk into English. If you're not familiar with Korean, you should ask the organizer while you're registering to give you a headphone. Later during the talk, the interpreter who stays at a special booth inside the room will translate the talk and deliver it to you via those headphones.

The Talks

This 6th TEDxKAIST event was divided into 4 main sections. The first section consisted of two talks from local speakers and one TED talk from TED.com. The first section as designed by the organizer focused on the impact of individual's choices on the individual and/or the environment around the individual. The first two speakers were Sonya S. Kwak (곽소나) & Myeong Seok Oh (오명석). Their complete background can be learned from this link (click the Speakers - Kor/Eng tab to view their background detail). The talk then followed by a TED Talk video of Sheena Iyengar presented in TEDGlobal 2010. The event was then continued by the second session which was a coffee break and an ideation session. After discussion in the ideation session the talks were resumed. In this third session the talk was started by a TED Talk video of Dan Gilbert followed by two talks by Jeong Weon Lee (이정원) & SooA Yeo (여수아). This third section focused on the decisions for the group by the individual and the choice we make for all. The fourth or last session was an after party with dinner provided and interaction with the all speakers were possible. 

Here I summarized the 6th TEDxKAIST event solely based on my own experience and memory, with some additional features from a related KAIST Herald article. Hope you enjoy it

The 1st Section

The 1st Speaker - Sonya S. Kwak

Sonya S. Kwak, the 1st speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event

Sonya S. Kwak is currently a Professor of Industrial Design in Ewha Womans University. She is an alumni of KAIST, Dept. of Industrial Design. She works on the research project related to Human Robot Interaction (HRI). Her talk entitled "The People I Met, The Robot We Made" basically shared her own experience of how she made her robots. She told how the interaction with the people she met led her to decide her robot's design and function. As I quoted from the KAIST Herald article (Vol. 122, Page 4, May 2013) her robots made her famous, won several trophies and exposed to media several times. She introduced us to several robots she created. The first one was "Mung", an Emotional Interaction Robot. This robot can express its emotional feeling by created some "bruising" marks on its face. These bruising marks are made by using LED. Initially this robot was conceived to be a substitute to "swear jar" and applied to young age children to teach them the bad influence of profanity.  For the example, when someone says bad words to the robot, the bruising will comes out indicating that it is hurt. Otherwise, when someone says good word to the robot, the bruising will goes away. This robot is also able to be re-programmed to be "referee" during sport games. As shown in the its World Cup 2010 promotional video, it could detect foul or injury by its bruising.

Mung, Emotional Interaction Robot on World Cup 2010 promotional video

Hangulbot performance

The last robot that she introduced, and also the robot I remembered the most was the "Hangulbot". This robot was inspired while she saw her daughter played Lego. She realized that the shape of Lego could resembles the Hangeul (Korean alphabet) character as the building block. So then she decided to make the Hangulbot, for specific motivation to teach her daughter the Korean alphabet while her daughter is playing (some kind of Edutainment) and to widespread the Hangeul internationally. The basic building block of Hangulbot consisted of five blocks and it can pronounce over 10000 Korean syllables. You can see the Hangulbot's demonstration in the video above. If you want to learn more about Sonya S. Kwak you can watch the following video. She also showed us some funny entertainment video that she directed using the Keepon robot on her previous collaboration work, featuring Korean music group, Peppertones. Enjoy the video.

Interview with Sonya S. Kwak in ArirangTV - The INNERview

Keepon performance (Korean version)

The 2nd Speaker - Myeong Seok Oh

The second speaker was Myeong Seok Oh, currently a student in Korea University. His talk entitled "The Easiest Way to Change the World". How? At the end of his talk he told us about it. During his talk he described his experience when once he almost committed suicide. However, the choice of not killing himself later affected and inspired a lot of people with similar problems. As I remembered from the talk, he made a website where people who has problem can share about their problem, and he will respond to them, urge them not be devastated by their problem and help them find their way to solve the problem. There was one story that a school-girl wrote in the website about her problem and planned to kill herself, and when he responded to the girl, the girl suddenly felt that there is somebody out there that listen to her problem and she didn't feel alone anymore.

Myeong Seok Oh, the 2nd speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event

In summary of this talk in KAIST Herald, Speaker Myeong Seok Oh spoke about his efforts and campaigns to encourage people to speak up at difficult times rather than blaming themselves for not being able to properly cope with the situation. His active and constants works made the city of Seoul awarded him special prize to recognize his effort, made him as the youngest award recipients at that event. At the end of his talk he concluded the easiest way to change the world is by building an "ARK" at one time. He borrowed this passage from his favorite movie Evan Almighty. "ARK" is abbreviation of Act of Random Kindness. What an inspiring talk, isn't it? Let's ry to build "ARK" from now on.

The 1st TED Talk Video - Sheena Iyengar

The following talk was a related TED Talk with the 6th TEDxKAIST's theme, taken from TEDGlobal 2010. The speaker was Sheena Iyengar and her talk entitled "The Art of Choosing". This was a pretty good and inspiring talk. How she conducted her study about how people choose was really interesting. The introduction about this talk as summarized in TED.com is: Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions. Please also find out and enjoy the talk by watching the video below.

1st TED Talk video presented in 6th TEDxKAIST event

The 2nd Section

The Coffee Break & The Ideation Session

After the 1st section we had a coffee break (Dunkin' Donuts sponsored the donuts and coffee) followed by an ideation session. In this ideation session we were randomly grouped into 10 small groups (by special sticker attached to our name tag) and had a topic to be discussed among the participants in the group. I regretted this ideation session because it's mainly conducted in Korean. In my opinion this is a very good session, where we can exchange ideas with the other member in the group. Since the interest of foreigners to attend this event is pretty high, I wish in the later event the organizer will predetermine which group to conduct the ideation session in English or Korean and not directly pre-distribute the participant. I hope they let us the participants to be able to choose which group we want to enter (Korean/English group) with presetting the maximum number of participant in each group. I believe this method will promote good relation among Koreans and foreigners. Anyway, I need to tell this to the organizer, not just complaining here haha... After concluding the ideation session, four participant from different group volunteered to give presentation about what they discussed during ideation session, and there's a prize for best presenter.

The 3rd Section

The 2nd TED Talk Video - Dan Gilbert

The third section was begun by the the TED Talk video of Dan Gilbert whose talk entitled "The Surprising Science of Happiness". This talk was also pretty good and inspiring. He divided the happiness into two, "natural happiness" occurs when we get what we really wanted, and "synthetic happiness" the happiness we choose to pursue when we don't get what we really wanted. The discussion of synthetic happiness brought this talk into the 6th TEDxKAIST because of the similarity to the choosing theme. The summary of this talk as written in the TED.com: Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned. He says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, "Stumbling on Happiness". You can watch his talk by playing the following video

2nd TED Talk video presented in 6th TEDxKAIST

 

The 3rd Speaker - Jeong Weon Lee

Jeong Weon Lee, the 3rd speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event

Frankly speaking, from all  speakers in the 6th TEDxKAIST event, only his talk I didn't really focus and catch the relation to the event theme. It's because either his talk was less interesting than the other or mainly I was sleepy at that time (even though I already had 2 cup of Americano during coffee break). So, I just put the review of his talk as written in the KAIST Herald aricle: Speaker Jeong Weon Lee, senior researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI), emphasized collaboration over teamwork. According to him, Daedok "Teukgoo" (Innopolis) should now rename itself as Daedeok "Japgoo" (looking for workers) to welcome many fields of study as possible. Only then will true collaboration work to produce great creativity ideas.

The 4th Speaker - SooA Yeo

SooA Yeo, the 4th speaker in 6th TEDxKAIST event

The last speaker is currently an undergraduate student in the Dept. of Physics KAIST. His talk entitled "10분으로 만드는 아름다운 세상" which means "10 minutes to make a beautiful world" (according to Google translate). In his talk, he initially described that he previously joined a volunteering program to give tutorial to high school student. However, because the high request of tutorial and sometimes the tutorial location couldn't be easily reached, he started to think alternative way to keep his volunteering work going on. His breakthrough was made by creating the free online resources of pre-university level education namely Chalk Academy.

In my opinion this program is similar to the previously existed Khan Academy, but the approach used in Chalk Academy is a little bit different. He (SooA Yeo) started the Chalk Academy by uploading the tutorial video to the internet, which video shows the tutorial by writing the course material on "chalkboard" (I guessed this is where the name came from). This substitutes the role on previous face to face tutorial method, without  getting rid of the direct tutorial sensation. This method overcomes the problem stated before and starts getting known nationwide. He said the reason he made this online study program based on his believe that the internet service in Korea is capable to reach throughout the country. At last he gave his advice "공부하다가 모른다고 포기하지마" which means "During study if you find some difficulties, do not give up" (maybe he suggested to visit his Chalk Academy website to whom finds difficulty during study)

The 4th Section

The After Party

After the 4th talk, the event was concluded and there was an after party. To join this after party you need to pay additional fee (KRW 10000). The dinner was provided, which Domino's Pizzas and some wines were being served. This section also opened up opportunity to interact among the participant and the speakers. However, because of my another schedule (later told in part 3 of this blog post series) I chose not to join the after party.

The Conlusion

This concludes my summary of 6th TEDxKAIST event. In spite of my little disappointment regarding the souvenirs and ideation session, overall the 6th TEDxKAIST event was really good. I'm really looking forward to participating the next event in the fall semester.

to be continued (part 3)...