The inaugural TEDxEcoleHotelièreLausanne event took place on 16 January 2012 on EHL’s campus, featuring a wide variety of speakers offering much food for thought and many enriching ideas for the hospitality sector.
The successful, independently organized event was attended by Bruno Giussani, European Director of TED, Maeve Ryan (Writer), Mike Hatrick (Innovation Expert), Kynan Eng (Neuroinformatics Researcher at Zurich University), Eva Zabey (Ecosystems Evaluation Expert), Sophie Maxwell (Head of Creative Insight at Pearlfisher), Tom Selwyn (Professor of Anthropology), and Birgit Schleifenbaum (Innovation Expert). The speakers demonstrated their ability to surprise and inspire the audience of around 100 hospitality professionals.
Maeve Ryan explained why successful writers find people extremely fascinating and have a good sense of space, two of the assets required in the creation of new experiences in the hospitality sector.
Kynan Eng talked about experiments on the interaction between space and people, whilst Sophie Maxwell suggested that F&B specialists would find substantial new business development possibilities through the promotion of natural foods that are worlds away from complex artificial packaging.
Sustainable development was also a focus for discussion with Eva Zabey asking the audience to consider the costs of well-being when creating new hospitality concepts. Birgit Schleifenbaum described the way in which sensory science can help to increase the pleasure and energy obtained from food whilst protecting our health and our planet.
This event used TED’s celebrated format of short, carefully prepared live talks combined with TEDTalks videos from TED.com.