Thinking Big is a student organised event which will take place in UCD on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th of November. This one and a half day forum will discuss some of the biggest issues and challenges of this century.
On Friday a series of talks and panel discussions will take place on topics such as urban planning, ed energy sustainability, sovaldi climate change and global food security. Saturday will be dedicated to workshops, viagra where attendees will have a choice of what they attend. These include integration within the EU, the pension crisis and water scarcity. Coordinator of the event, Eóin Flaherty, told the College Tribune that the idea behind the forum was to “get people thinking about these things that are seriously going to affect us but no one is talking about them enough.”
At present the event has seventeen speakers with the addition of former politician Michael McDowell being a possibility. The speakers come from a wide range of backgrounds including people from business, people from the public sector and people from think tanks. Joint recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, John Sweeney will be attending to give an update on his work with the intergovernmental panel on climate change and will also discuss how bad the situation has become.
The event, which is sponsored by UCD Innovation, is being held in the Fitzgerald Chamber in the student centre and workshops will take place in the seminar rooms. Tickets for the event are currently being sold through the event website with tickets going on sale around campus nearer to the event. The organisers are also hoping to attract people from across the country to the event, with students being their main target audience.
Flaherty told the College Tribune “some of the topics are pretty striking”, referring to discussions on having a zero carbon society by 2050. The organisers decided to run this event to get people thinking about issues that they have not considered and asks them to consider ways to improve society. These recommendations will then be sent to the government.
