a laundry list of impressions from tedx copenhagen

my head is spinning and i'm still processing the whole TEDx Copenhagen experience, so this is just a quick post to check in and make a little list of all the things i want to remember to tell you about. most important is that a tweet i tweeted during the event has quite likely landed me a radio spot tomorrow, giving advice about denmark to the new us ambassador. yup, it was that kind of day.

but don't let me forget to tell you about:

~ live musicians in the bathroom
~ the homeless guy who helped himself to some of our lunch
~ a lovely, charming young girl who invented a molecule at the age of 16
~ the crazy, bossy coffee lady
~ the lack of swag
~ how the two hosts had obviously recently broken up and couldn't stand one another
~ the human arabesque video
~ now, new, next
~ pretentious anti-everything poseurs
~ an annoying irish woman to whom i lost a competition i didn't know i had entered
~ be my eyes, an app that will let you volunteer from your couch
~ the really weird outfit the copenhagen fashion week woman was wearing
~ changing the straight world order
~ a pretentious young brit who was fighting a battle against the so-called mainstream media without knowing what their agenda was or who/what might be behind it
~ why they played 5 TED videos i could have watched at home
~ the filter project
~ why we are biologically inclined to avoid being reflective for too long
~ surprises and disappointments

but i need to process it all first, it's still tumbling around my head.

for now, i leave you with a youtube video i managed to find of kalle's world tour, a most amazing musician who may have been the highlight of TEDxCPH for me today. this will just give you a taste, but today, he combined death metal and children's music and it was awesome:

highlights and lowlights

the view from my window

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highlights from today:

• most hopeful fact: even without any caps or emissions trading schemes (ETS) or bunker levies in place, it would be possible, right now, through technical and operational means, for the shipping industry to reduce emissions by 15%. that's pretty exciting news for an industry that has 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year.
  
• coolest made-up word: oligopolistic (meaning oil rules)
• most radical suggestion: individual CO2 quotas for every single person on the planet--1 for each of us--would make a fair ETS possible.
• biggest understatment: "peter the great was an awfully good sailor."
• best quote: "i'm the difference between now and a beer." 
• best find: pride and prejudice and zombies

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lowlights from today:

• that tired, yawning feeling immediately post-lunch. 
• feeling invisible as the only woman in the room who wasn't admin or hotel staff or carrying an important asian guy's notebook/man purse.
• that whole strange conference politeness ritual that is at once bureaucratic and sycophantic with undertones of communism coated in a veneer of thinly-disguised slime arising from mixing CEOS with politicians and industry organizations and oil majors. 
• too much crap coffee, not enough latte.
• shop was out of light yellow converse all-stars in my size.
• ending the day with a killer headache.

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i wonder what tomorrow will bring?