Archive for month: February, 2015

“To give every participant a new form of energy” is Patrick Tromp’s exuberant response, when asked what motivates Drum Cafe. Founded in Johannesburg in 1996 by Warren Lieberman, Drum Cafe is one of the world’s leading interactive team building, conferencing and corporate events companies. Building teams, one beat at a time – this is what the group aims to achieve during their performance at the upcoming TEDxDelft event.

For hundreds of years, be it in any culture, drumming has proven to be the most effective team building activity. That being said, Drum Cafe is known for incorporating music and rhythm to motivate, inspire and connect people. During every performance, audience members are each given a drum and are made to bring their unique sound into the mix, creating a one-of-a-kind percussion orchestra. The audience’s individuality and coordination builds team spirit, motivates team members and brings about a better understanding within the group.

“The humor in our concept and the energy we create through it are our most striking features,” says Tromp, head of Drum Cafe Benelux and facilitator for Drum Cafe Europe. The group’s unique method is a proven success in more than 50 countries, having presented in over 30,000 events. They help revitalize and refocus participants between presentations and enhance their receptive capacities.

According to Tromp, drumming is an effective ice-breaker, promoting unity with a sense of belonging. In fact, making music as a group sparks creativity, imparts learning and provides insights as to how important it is to collaborate and listen to one another. People’s true personalities come out instead of their corporate image. On a lighter note, drumming is infectious and hence, impossible to stay away from.

“The best audience one can get would be that which focuses and laughs a lot,” Tromp explains. “We understand how to energize a group of people and know how to connect individuals with each other.” Shedding light on how their approach has changed over the years with the varying expectations of the audience, Tromp says, “People are still people, they react the same to the energy we deliver. The only thing is that, with every session, we are getting better!”

Stop thinking and start feeling the rhythm as the drums are all set roll at the upcoming TEDxDelft event on February 27, 2015.

There is a Chinese dream whereby education is the key to secure one’s brighter future. Shou-En Zhu was one of the millions of Chinese taking part in the rural-urban migration in order to receive this good education.

Having grown up in a small, rural village in China, Zhu was sent to a good primary school in Fuzhou city, the capital of Fujian Province by his father, who strongly subscribed to the Chinese dream. When asked of his inspiration as a child, he described his former self as “not having too much plan”. That, however, changed during his Bachelor years when he was acquainted with the prospect of a game-changing material: graphene.

In pursuit of his interest, Zhu went on to attend several universities. These include a Master exchange program at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, PhD guest programs in Leiden University and ETH Zurich, as well as a Visiting Research Scholarship at UC San Diego.

Currently, Zhu is a PhD candidate at TU Delft. The university’s unique education system has pushed him to go above and beyond. “When I first arrived, I was really alone and you need really to be independent to overcome the reiteration of frustrations,” he recalled. “But this environment is very good.”

Zhu understood the lack of development in graphene and with this insight, he managed to design and construct sophisticated graphene production equipment from scratch. When trying to reminisce about his ordeal, Zhu shared the influential teachings of a  former chairman of the Department of Material Science in Jilin University that kept him going: “If all of the people in this new field are sprouts, you have to grow a little bit taller than the rest, to get more sun and to grow into a large tree.”

His pioneering prototype eventually gave birth to Graphene Master, a startup company that provides research prototyping device fabrication all over the world. Ultimately, Zhu aims to reduce the cost of graphene and to be able to penetrate into the mass market.

Zhu has always dreamt of speaking at a prestigious TED event and finally has opportunity to do so at the upcoming TEDxDelft conference. According to the PhD researcher, graphene is truly a new field. “People hear about graphene, but most of them are not familiar of the practical application of graphene,” he claims. Zhu sincerely hopes that his talk will be a catalyst to raise everyone’s awareness of the new material and to spark interesting conversations about it.