Escapade 2011: Idea Frenzy

Written by: Siti fatimah

Singapore Polytechnic’s annual Escapade event was held on 19 November this year. As compared to its previous years, this year’s event wasn’t held from dusk till dawn – it was changed to a full day event.

During the opening segment of Escapade, the participants were given a mission – to save our Earth from being destroyed. The way they had to go about doing this was through the process of Design Thinking.

Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes for analyzing problems and coming up with solutions in the design and planning fields. To put it simply, Design Thinking encourages creativity when it comes to approaching and solving problems.

Participants went through a 4-hour session of delving into the concept of Design Thinking. 12 DMC Yr 3s (yay us!) were student facilitators during the session, and our job was to help encourage the participants to utilize their creativity to help save the Earth and mankind.

Despite having to be up early in the morning after a month long of exams, the students I interacted with were nothing short of enthusiastic. Maybe it was the concept of design thinking itself (being as creative as you can to solve a problem) that made them enjoy the session – my group came up with incredibly creative ideas on how they wanted to save the environment and our planet!

After a half hour of scribbling and slapping their “wacky” ideas onto post-its, my group decided that their best idea was the conversion of body fats into an alternative fuel source. How insanely awesome is that?! If this were a real thing, I’d be one of the first few people to convert my excess (because we still need fats in our bodies guys, let’s not get carried away here) fats into an alternative fuel source. 

Participants bringing their ideas to live!

I was really glad to see the participants actively taking part in the activities – from brainstorming ideas that were “out-of-this-world” to enthusiastically putting up enjoyable presentations of their ideas, I think they learned a lot during the session.

My favourite part of the event would definitely be seeing their ideas come to live during the gallery walk. My group acted out a rather convincing ad for their alternative fuel source product called “Lipofuel” and had everyone in the room cheering for them (YAY). Now who says we Singaporeans aren’t a creative bunch!

Some participants with their student facilitators!

TEDx Youth Day 2011 – A Celebration of Youth

By Nicholas Teo

As my classmate Ian and I hiked through the concrete jungle of the Central Business District of Singapore, we realised that we were hopelessly and undeniably lost. Giant sky-scraping buildings towered all around us and neither of us knew how to accurately read a map.

A picture of towering buildings in the Central Business District of Singapore - - Photo: http://jorbb.com/blog/2008/09/grade-office-rents-in-cbd-slide-for.html

How did we land ourselves in this situation?

It all started with an individual assignment from Ms Pam, our DMC lecturer teaching the social media module.  My entire class had to attend one event and engage in “live” updating on our social media account.  Check out mine and Ian’s updates at @eatmyfinger and @IanLeong93 respectively, with the hashtag #spsocialmedia and #tedxyouthsg.

Live updating? What is that? Well, it is basically what its name suggests. Throughout the entire TEDx Youth Day 2011 event on 19^th November 2011 at the Microsoft Auditorium, my classmates and I will constantly be updating our Twitter accounts with the details of the event.  See some of the tweets below:

A picture of the Twitter feed from the hashtag #TEDxYouthSG - - Photo: https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23tedxyouthsg

Before I attended this event, I hardly watched any TEDx videos and had no clue as what to expect at TEDx Youth Day 2011. Beyond knowing the confirmed speakers who were going to attend the event, we had no idea what were the topics the speakers were going to touch on. However, the list of speakers looked very interesting and I found myself looking forward to the event!

A picture of the speakers at TEDxYouth@Singapore, with their biography - - Photo: http://tedxyouthday.ted.com/event-details/?id=2381

As the event progressed, the audience and I were enthralled by the gamut of topics, which ranged from the games based learning, connecting creativity and culture and even organising flashmobs to bring together youths of different walks of life.  During the networking and conversation breaks, I even got a chance to meet and connect with the speakers, which led to very insightful conversations.

Apart from the various talks, there was also a performance by Vivian Lim, who performed on her Ukelele and Poetry Slamming by our very own Deborah Emmanuel from Singapore Polytechnic, who ended off TEDx Youth Day 2011 with her powerful and soulful take on giving, taking and creating.

After the event, I learned that there is so much that I can do as a person. The various talks taught me that being a youth should not mean that I have to limit myself on things that I should or should not say. Having so many social networking accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr gave me an advantage as it meant that there is a plethora of avenues and platforms for me to spread my ideas and create my own movements.

If you have missed out on the action at TEDx Youth Day 2011, do check out their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tedxyouthsingapore  or check out the pictures here! http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedxsingapore/sets/72157628059030035/

A group photo at the end of TEDx Youth Day 2011, with the participants and organisers alike posing with the “OK” symbol, representing this year’s theme of “idea + ACTION” - - Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedxsingapore/sets/72157628059030035/