The third session kicked off with the beautiful Iraqi poet Shahad Al-Rawi. Shahad is an author, poet and anthropologist best known for writing short stories, poetry and articles in the field of humanitarian affairs, she studied in Baghdad and she holds a master’s degree in Human Resources Management from Damascus, Syria and serves as director of research development at the Academy national R & D -United arab emirates- Dubai. Shahad’s talk was poetically put together in which she shared her personal insights on what Iraq means to her, how she managed to build a base of followers using the tool of nostalgia to the past, and how she never ceased to stop writing and expressing herself through the creative process of writing potry.

Next speaker was Ahmed Abdul-Rahman Mohammed who began his talk with the question: “Who hasn’t suffered from electrical shorts and blackouts in Iraq ? I can’t think of any”. Ahmed grew up in an educational family which cares for science and success within superiority studies . He graduated from Al-Mustansiriya University/ College of Engineering /Mechanical Engineering Department. He presented an innovative and an interesting solution he calls it electricity by flow energy or EFE . Where the dream of finding a cheap and an environment friendly source of generating electricity is now possible as the project employs fluid motions solely to produce sufficient energy.

Then, The Rock Trip fire up the stage as they take us on their rock trip , charging up the air as you see the volunteer jumping up and down to the melody while the audience hold up their iphone lights instead of the old fashioned lighters in a dimmed hall . We can’t but think to ourselves…THIS IS A NEW ERA!

Ahmed Adnan and Wisam Al-Obaidi shared a 3 minutes touching video about the civil wars that happened defending religious sects. Ahmed briefed a touching story about a lost of a loved one that torched an interest in  staying strict to his own sect and blindly hating the other one. Then, Wissam, who happens to be from the opposite sect stepped on the stage and they looked in each other’s eyes in appreciation as they talked about their long friendship despite that they descended from families that follow different sects and ended their talk bringing tears and applouse by saying no to sectarianism and yes to a more united country that lives in solidarity.

Hamko, As Stand up comedy refreshed newly in Iraq.  This Kurdish British stand up comedian gave one of the funniest yet inspiring talks of the session. He told the story of how he grew up, and how he found himeself in comedy, explainig the different obstacles that faced him along the way but emphasizing on the importance of never giving up on the dream no matter what it was- even if it’s simply, making people laugh!

The next ted talk was by Musatafa Abdulwahed. He Raises the bar even higher when it comes to finding new twists to solving the dominating electricity issue in Iraq . Mustafa breaks new grounds as he talks about producing electricity from the heat of our hands . ” The biggest issue was how to magnify the 20 mv generated from the heat to 5 volt , luckily I was able to solve that using some of most common , affordable capacities , voltage regulators and other simple electronic every day objects” says the presenter.

Then, Muhanned Al-Mahdawi, our very own TEDx Baghdad volunteer, has taken the stage himself this time to talk about his innovation in the medical field. He began the talk by mentioning the cirucumstances in the time of Iraq’s sanction and the difficulties faced with brining new medical gadgets to the country. He began his work by studying these devices and developing replicas that ended up working here! Al-Mahdawi is currently leading his own research using a lenux based optical program that is aimed to accomodate the patient’s necessary needs and procedures from within the doctor’s clinic without the need to visit external facilities.

Ahmed Albasheer made a virtual appearence through a pre recorded video that had a lot of humor yet witful advices. He talked about his show, AlBasheer Show, and his personal story that led him to success.

The day wrapped up with the beautiful melodies of our astonishing talent, Bashar Al-Azzawi singing and playing the guitar. Accompanied by Mustafa Saba’ on rhythms and Omar playing Al Qanun.