Becoming the Press at TEDx: the hoopla around it

Green bordered Press Passes and RESERVED written on red velvet seats...its nice being the Press! Cookies and koffie; polaroids being taken to give some kind of instant energy feeling; long-bearded men, probably all eco-warriors or physicists... spotted! Admittedly, as we blog away with our Apple computers in a row (with every other minute checking Facebook), we're deeply concerned about more pressing issues such as what we should do with our goodie bags post conference when we go for the after-party to Chicago Boom! Such are the troubling times we live in.

Other issues do seep in such as what can we say about someone whose claim to fame is that she is the great great granddaughter of Charles Darwin...ok, but what about it? And of aliens on stage...er? and fake snow falling on a man who has come from Africa in his native costume, saying that this is the first time he has left his hometown and he receives unanimous applaud...because??? One is tempted to see this as condescending, and sensational but we resist for we're "Press" and as reality goes, we're representing TEDx that is representing Amsterdam/ The Netherlands that is representing a host of sponsors from Philips to Sonoma to Microsoft. And such struggles are punctuated by umpteen cups of coffee and organic sandwiches packed with biodegradable forks and knives and recycled napkins. Even the garbage cans seem to communicate some holistic citizen kind of message like Save the Planet or some such, disorienting us and compelling us to debate on whether we should drop our empty bottles of water into it lest we get accused of well, misusing disposal bins.






And if this isn't enough, TED speakers share the stage with a man in a box of ice, aka the IceMan, Wim Hof, the world record holder, adventurer and daredevil who immerses himself regularly in ice. And he does so again, but this time on the TEDx stage for an audience and Press who have been over this day, trained slowly but surely on becoming accustomed to the strange, the weird, the different...and as our host aptly calls him, the icecube on a stick!