In her quest to become a world-famous violinist, Ji-Hae Park fell into a severe depression. Only music was able to lift her out again — showing her that her goal needn’t be to play lofty concert halls, but instead to bring the wonder of the instrument to as many people as possible.

Ji-Hae Park spreads the joy of classical to music to those who might not otherwise hear it — and in the process shows that you can rock out on the violin.

WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HER?

Ji-Hae Park was on the fast track to violin stardom when she … paused. Why was it simply her goal to be the best violin player in the world? Was there more to music than that? And thus she began to think differently about how to “play” her life. Now — along with playing prestigious concert halls, winning prizes and making a new album for Decca called Baroque in Rock – she makes time to play in hospitals, churches, prisons, anywhere she feels she can reach people with music. Her friendly, entertaining rearrangements of classical music invite new listeners in.

She was named The Respected Korean 2010  for her leadership and influence on the national development. She is playing on the Petrus Guarnerius 1735, Venedig on loan from the German Foundation (Deutsche-Stiftung- Musikleben) since 2003.

“Watching the radiant violin prodigy, one would never guess that at one time she had battled depression and found solace in her music. ”   Korean Jo

Architect Alastair Parvin presents a simple but provocative idea: what if, instead of architects creating buildings for those who can afford to commission them, regular citizens could design and build their own houses? The concept is at the heart of Wikihouse, an open source construction kit that means just about anyone can build a house, anywhere.

Alastair Parvin believes in making architecture accessible to 100 percent of the population.

WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM?

“As a society we’ve never needed design thinking more,” says Alastair Parvin, but most people — particularly those in cities of growing density and poverty — can’t afford it. Parvin, who was trained in architecture but chooses to make a career looking for ideas beyond its conventional framework, wants to change that.

He is one of a team behind WikiHouse, an open-source construction set that allows anyone to freely share model files for structures, which can then be downloaded, “printed” via CNC cutting machine and easily assembled. Parvin calls WikiHouse a very early experiment, the seed of what he sees as design’s great project in the 21st century: the democratization of production.

“Sounds promising? It is. This is a revolutionary way of producing architecture.”  Neil Chambers, Metropolis POV Blog

John Amatt has delivered more than 2000 presentations and seminars to audiences of more than 1,000,000 people in 49 countries world wide and has been called “The World’s Best Adventure Speaker”.