Team:Greece United/Communication/TEDx
The Devil is in the details! Or not…?
A Workshop in 2021 DUTH TEDx.
In spring of 2021, we were delighted to receive an invitation to organize
a workshop in 2021 TedXDUTH, an independently organized TED event by the Democritus University of
Thrace.
The thematic of this year’s event “Antithesis: the expression of the opposition of two or more
ideas”
challenged our team to dig into the one and a half year of our collaboration to identify a real-life
antithesis:
The Devil is in the details! Or not…?
As humans we observe the smallest of changes in our immediate environment. This springs from when we
had to
survive in the wild; however, sometimes it may prove a bit problematic in today’s human
environments.
Same as when we get the “lucky pinata” in efood and we end up feeling sick from the huge quantity of
food we
have ordered, every day we consume details from an infinite menu of posts, emails, video, messages,
articles
and advertisements. And we pay for that with our most valuable possessions: our attention and time.
The iGEM NOUS workshop was designed to help participants understand ‘detail’ and build a strategy to
discriminate
between useful and useless details of everyday life!
TEDx advertisment on our speech.
The inspiration came from reflecting upon the team’s course: how different it would have been if we
had not
consumed ourselves in details that later ended up being meaningless; and how different it would have
been if
we had paid more attention in details that later proved to be crucial. There lied an inspiring
antithesis.
So, we summed up all our experiences into 5 rules and created a structured interactive presentation
to discuss
the antithesis around ‘detail’ with the 2021 DUTH TEDx audience.
Our 5 rules of thumb to help determine whether a detail is worth investing time, energy and
attention at any given moment:
1. Comprehend the situation and you position in it. Divide a situation in
subcategories if that is needed.
2. Understand if it is the right timing to engage in this situation. The starting
point does not affect the whole course.
3. Consider the Value for Time fraction when engaging with a detail.
4. Does a situation loses its meaning if you skip a detail? Do many situations
lose their connection?
5. Do not forget the big picture!
Here are the slides we used during our workshop (unfortunately in Greek)..
The workshop was advertised on 2021 DUTH TEDx facebook page.