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Waiheke-based entrepreneur Pete Russell is on a mission to revive the local food market, one city at a time.

The best of the TEDx Auckland 2012 Speakers & Performers compilation video.

Peter Young established Fisheye Films in Christchurch in 1997 and has worked as a freelance director and cameraman. He came to filmmaking the long way, spending the first ten years of his working life mustering, shearing, fishing and fencing. Over this time he developed a strong connection to the land and the people that work on it and this bond remained even with his shift to film and television. Peter has credits in well over a hundred documentaries, among them; BBC’s Blue Planet series, a documentary on giant squids for prime time Discovery, episodes on the South Island for Country Calendar, the acclaimed TVNZ series Explorers,and the final tribute documentary for Sir Edmund Hillary.

Philip Patston is best recognised for his ten-year career as a comedian and entertainer, but it’s his passion for social change that is getting him noticed. An alumni of the New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, Philip is a passionate believer that we have a powerful opportunity to reimagine diversity. His focus is on engaging people to achieve positive social change by reinventing the labels with which we categorise ourselves and each other.

Paul has always had a passion for technology and reading and finds it fascinating that we can now carry an entire library around in our pocket. Yet the reading experience has not evolved in more than 2000 years despite storytelling taking disruptive leaps forward with the introduction of film and video games. Booktrack is his answer to addressing the decline in reading and literacy rates that will help make reading relevant again to a new generation of readers.

Matthew Simmons is the CEO of Arvus Group International and currently part of the NZ Clean Energy Centre’s Enterprise Great Lake Taupo (EGLT) team. Matthew’s company, Arvus, is an external source of R&D and innovation worldwide, and has been involved in successful innovations in the fields of Digital Cinema, Loudspeaker design, Acoustics, Optics and Viticulture.

As Chief Executive of the Gibson Group, Victoria leads a group of diverse and talented producers, creatives and technicians. The Gibson Group’s innovative visitor attractions and museum works, and its hugely popular television programmes and films have been exported around the world. Recent projects include an immersive museum outreach project in Copenhagen which has won three prestigious international awards, including one from the United Nations.

Sean is a physicist, decathlete, political advisor and TED fellow. He is originally from New Zealand where he ran for national elected office and helped start New Zealand’s first nanotech company. Sean studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he received a PhD for his research on the mathematical patterns that underlie modern war. This research has taken him all over the world from the Pentagon, to the United Nations and Iraq. Previously, Sean worked at NASA on self-repairing nano-circuits and is a two-time New Zealand track and field champion. Sean is now based in San Francisco where he splits his time between mathematical research and his venture capital backed startup Quid.

Emma Rogan is a partner at Auckland design company Apropos and founder of New Zealand’s 100 Days Project. Her work has been awarded and recognised by the NZ Best Awards, Communication Arts, The Webby Awards and Adobe.

Pip Hall has worked as a full time writer in theatre, film and television for 17 years. An accomplished playwright, Pip has multiple awards to her name including New Zealand’s most significant and prestigious theatre honour, the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Pip also works extensively in television and film as a writer, story liner, story/script editor, developer, creative producer and actor.

Alistair Knott is a linguist and cognitive scientist working at Otago University‘s Department of Computer Science. He grew up in Brussels, attending the European School, a multilingual institution whose Babel-like environment sparked a lifelong interest in language. Ali studied psychology and philosophy at Oxford University, and then did postgraduate and postdoctoral work in artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. He took up a lectureship at Otago in 1999, where he is now an associate professor. Ali’s research is in computational modelling of human language, with a focus on models of language generation. He worked on some of the earliest text generation systems deployed on the World Wide Web, and on an influential web-based human-computer dialogue system. His current interest is in psychological models of text generation: What are the neural mechanisms which allow people to talk about what they see and do?

Assil Russell is a young dental surgeon from Hamilton who has a passion for helping others. Born in Iraq and raised in New Zealand, at the age of 21 Assil set up New Zealand’s first and only registered medical and dental charity for Iraqi orphans and disadvantaged children – I CARE (Iraqi Children’s Aid & Repair Endeavour). Assil believes that “You don’t have to be a doctor to save lives” and ICARE is now an international movement that is empowering ordinary people from all walks of life to make a real difference, one smile at a time.

David was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He earned a BSc in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, followed by an MSc and PhD in Physics from Ohio State University. While working on university campuses in Michigan and California, David held postdoctoral positions at both Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. David’s current work is based at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. He loves to play with ideas and is most happy when he can uncover similar strands of thought on disparate subjects, particularly in science, philosophy and religion. David believes that New Zealand should nurture its intellectual resources as it has done for its environmental riches.

Andrew is arguably New Zealand’s most internationally recognised and published Architect. Last year the worlds most searched architectural Journal, London based ‘World Architecture News’ named his firm, Patterson Associates as one of five Architects world wide “who’s work is set to shape Global Architecture in the 21 century.” He is the designer of New Zealand’s only new build 6 Green Star rated project – Geyser, in Auckland. Rated as international innovator Andrew believes if that if New Zealand is to sustainably succeed its built environment must equal or better its natural environment.

Michelle has a PhD in biomedical materials engineering, runs New Zealand’s only nanomechanical testing laboratory and is a self-confessed adrenaline junkie. Her passion for both sports and science has enabled her to travel the world on the search for her next adventure or research project. With specialist knowledge in nanotechnology, Michelle has contributed to the development of cutting edge technologies. Secretly, however, Michelle has been working on advancing these developments to help her to achieve her childhood dream of becoming a real life superhero.

New Zealand's role in the biggest scientific discovery in decades shows what can happen when kiwis get involved in international collaborations, says a leading physicist.