11.Feb.2010 TEDx: Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Funky House Music at UF - Shaan

This weekend we received a last minute request to spin at the TEDx conference here in Gainesville.

For those of you that don’t know, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. In the words of the website, it is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. They basically film experts in various subjects speaking on interesting topics, ranging from the science of love to how mushrooms will save the world, and put the videos online for anyone to watch.

UF held its own TEDx conference at Pugh Hall with our brightest professors speaking on the impact of bugs in society, the future of space study, the evolution of the music industry, improving global infrastructure performance, the impact of dance in a global society, and the relationship between music and architecture. We recorded some of the talks from our DJ booth. Not all of them were that interesting from our vantage point, so we’ll only post up the two most entertaining. I’m sure the talks will be on UF’s website sometime in the near future if you’d like to see all of them in their entirety.

Here is Scott Wilson demonstrating what is sure to be the future of digital music:

You can also check out Dr. Barfield’s humorous lecture on bugs and society on our youtube page. It’s still uploading as I post this, so if you don’t see it, check back later.

This was definitely one of the most interesting gigs we’ve ever had. We also found it particularly interesting that everyone LOVED the funky house set we were playing, from professors to freshmen. We attempted to record the set, but accidentally used the wrong line-in settings, so it ended up not recording. However, you can still check out our previous mixes on our “Tunes and Mixes” page, and check out some of the jams we played below:

I kind of wish this event was promoted harder here in Gainesville. TED is one of the more groundbreaking educational platforms in the world, and every university in the United States should host its own TEDx conference. We’ll post an update when the official vids go online, but enjoy our little sneak previews for now.

What’s your favorite TED video?
Are electric trumpets the new keytar?
Do you wish there was a funky house music night somewhere downtown?