TEDX AMSTERDAM
2009, Amsterdam
TEDx Amsterdam was a huge success for Butterfly Works, Mark Kamau of NairoBits spoke, !SYOU, a new brand we have been co-developing was launched and Emer and
Hester were there to get inspired!
Mark Kamau, one of our first NairoBits students gave an excellent presentation on his life and its relation to the debate on development aid.
!SYOU, a new brand we have been co-developing was launched.
Approximately 4500 people wanted to attend the event which had a massive buzz beforehand, yet there were only 500 places, thus expectations were high. On the day we heard only positive things about the inspiring speakers, the great atmosphere and the meticulously well run event in such a great location.
Mark Kamau’s TEDx talk
Mark called himself the Slumdog Manager and used graphs to illustrate his point. Mark recieved a standing ovation and his speech was reported on by influential website Wired.Watch mark's speech at TEDx here
The talk went down very well, not only did Mark give an unusual spin on his rags to riches story but he also drew an interesting parallel to the life cycle of development aid and the fact that there is much criticism on this.
Mark said that the time might be right to use the NairoBits model which he calls 'Intelligent Engagement' in development aid life cycle planning.
Intelligent Engagement
Mark identified the ingredients for Intelligent Engagement, they are as follows:
Respect
Challenge
Support
Giving Responsibility
!SYOU
Another great Butterfly Works success was the !SYOU Goodie bag, all the way from Burkina Faso.!SYOU is an international sneaker concept combining on-the-edge style and the finest materials with a new way to think about sneaker design.
We call it co-design.
Co-design is a unique collaboration between emerging local talent - drawn from a diverse selection of proud nations - and established fashion designers to create a small revolution. Butterfly Works is proud to be founding father of this new concept.
There was a film of the production process shown, the bags were made in three weeks from design in Burkina Faso to production in Amsterdam and were handed out to every attendee. The positive response was fantastic.
Read more about !SYOU here.
In closing, a big ‘Congratulations!’ to Monique Dusseldorp, Jim Stolze, Marianne Spier, Anne Cramwinkle and the rest of the Tedx event for putting on a fantastic event. Thanks and we are proud to have been a part of it.
