Our journey starts in august 2010 when me and a few of my friends and collegues had attended a TEDx event in the Netherlands. The question was why there was no TEDx in Delft. None of us could come up with a good answer. “because it takes time and effort” was one, “because there are other TEDx events already” was another.

Delft is a medium sized city in between Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Delft has a very rich history of creators and creations, of Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek, of Senz umbrellas and Plakkies flipflops, of quantum mechanics and satelite experts. Delft has a top ranking University of Technology, a city centre that is a treasure of cultural heritage. Delft has Delft blue pottery, royalty, design, Delft knows how to win solar power races (or almost). Delft is all about Ideas Worth Spreading. Delft is all about Creating History.

Simone de Jong and me decided to explore the idea of bringing TEDx to Delft. Although we both work for TU Delft, we wanted TEDxDelft to be something for and about the city as a whole, not just for the university. We believe that if it’s good for the city, it’s good for it’s university and the other way around.

The first thing we did is form a project team of people from TU Delft, Delft local government and two companies in Delft. Then we formed an independent non-profit foundation with representatives local government, university and Delft business. The organization is responsible for the event, its finance etc. This seems like a far-fetched construction but it helped us a lot because of the independence from large organizations. It also allowed us to spend time on TEDxDelft within working hours: this made the founding allies sponsors of the event.

We formed an advisory board with Jim Stolze of TEDxAmsterdam in it, a few speakers from other TEDx events and other event organizers. We asked for their advice on all kinds of matters throughout the process.

We started looking for sponsors and speakers. Because it was going to be our first event it was not always clear to potential sponsors what a TEDx was. Luckily TEDxAmsterdam en TEDxRotterdam paved the way for us but finding sponsors without having an event yet is tricky. Building an event without proper funding is a challenge as well.

We have put a lot of effort in finding the right speakers in the time slots we chose: 6, 12 and 18 minutes. I think we spoke to double the amount of speakers after we had already screened them online and by asking outlines for their idea worth spreading. We reserved one (6 min) spot in our program as a wildcard. A group of students organized an award event two weeks before ours: the prize was being on our stage.

We found volunteers, sponsors (most of them in-kind) and a venue. We could use TU Delft’s main auditorium for free (including technical staff and all infrastructure inside) which can house up to 1100 people. We wanted our first event to be huge but we thought 800 was enough so we closed down a few sections. The event was sold out a week before the actual event.

We are very proud of our host of the day, professional comedian and holding a PhD degree: Jasper van Kuijk. He did a very good job keeping the speakers to their max timeslot and was able to put some humorous remarks in without being to much present himself.

Of course some thing could have done better by us. Our registration procedure was slowing down quick entrance of guests for instance. Some of the in-kind sponsors were too demanding and put too much stress on the organizing team. The English pronunciation could have been better.

Concluding our first event: we had a great time preparing, a wonderful time on the day of the event and everyone had a fantastic time experiencing TEDx in Delft. I’ll leave you with the closing words from our host Jasper van Kuijk. He summarized TEDxDelft in a poem (one of the speakers (Bauke Steenhuisen) idea worth spreading was that poetry says more than most management reports).

Do not prozify


Have a goal

Or none at all

Electrify

Build, tinker


Create life, and nurse it


Seek beauty in complexity


Find elegance in calculations


Caress a book


Listen


But never to design briefs

Think upside down

Become an astronaut

Democratize, power the people


Feel, don’t deny your emotions

Compose


Take fiction out of science fiction


Make it rain


Make music


Hold on to your dreams


Go beyond the current context

Make things