TEDx 2025 rolled out a series of events across Romania and, like in previous years, we chose to support the local edition in Odorheiu Secuiesc. TEDx is a grassroot initiative with simple event format gathering communities around “ideas worth spreading” and notable speakers that share their life journey and professional experiences.
As a sponsor of the TEDx Udvarhely – Odorheiu Secuiesc, SOFTECH has also attended with a team of colleagues willing to see what were the talks about and willing to network with the local community.
The day revolved around the leading topic “What if…” – encouraging the audience to reimagine education, identity, technology, and the ways we connect with each other. The main topics fell in three categories, as follows below.
Wellbeing of the Next Generation
Children’s wellbeing and growth stood at the heart of several powerful talks. Joy and discovery, spirituality and community, treating both failure and success as feedback were the main topics. Seasoned speakers form social services, religious organization and sport background delivered different perspectives.
The guest speakers were: Dr. Szilvia Gyurkó, child protection expert, Sándor Lóránd Demeter, Unitarian pastor and Virgil Stănescu, former professional basketball player. Their input and personal views depicted alternatives on how we can shape the future of the younger generations.
Feeling At Home in The World
Another triggering set of talks revolved around identity, belonging, and crossing cultural boundaries.
“Home” is a concept that may vary from a person to another. During this TEDx Event we had the chance to go through various elements that provide us the sense or feeling of being at home like: taste, traditions, beliefs and journeys.
- Marinela Ardelean, wine expert and author, depicted the way in which flavors can be the carriers of memory and identity across borders.
- Botond Dávid, photographer, presented his Geofolk project, documenting traditional costumes from around the world.
- Viktor Zichó, cycling activist, introduces us in his extreme journeys that transformed his life and his way of seeing the world.
- Sabin Gherman, journalist and publicist, exposed the theme of cultural coexistence, challenging prejudice and advocating for minority rights.
- Debóra Hamza and Balázs Dér, world travellers, recounted their transformative journey across 20 countries.
Technology Shaping Humanity
The approach on this topic was rather interesting, including views from a journalist perspective, a digital marketer, a biochemist and a biomedical engineer. The complexity of these subjects cannot be contained in a few presentations but can arise a few questions on the use of new media, of AI based technologies, of surgery robot-assistants and on the next discoveries in biochemistry.
The guest speakers were: Szabolcs Dull, journalist and analyst, Cristian Mezei, digital marketing and AI specialist, Dr. Éva Csősz, biochemist and research leader and Dr. Tamás Haidegger, biomedical engineer.
Networking and Community Gathering
During the breaks and at the end of the talks, TEDx organisers prepared tasty coffee drinks, delicious bytes and entertaining artistic moments. It is already a tradition to join the event for these special side-moments.
We appreciated the vivid interest for everything that was going on at the event, for making new connections and getting in touch with previous editions acquaintances.
Sometimes we need to go beyond tech talks to get the pulse of the local economic ecosystem and their views one the evolution of things around them.
Why Odorheiu Secuiesc?
Odorheiu Secuiesc is the second largest municipality in Harghita county, Romania. SOFTECH Ltd has a software development office in this city and is proud to count a growing team of over 24 developers.
Even if the city is quite remote, near a mountainous area, the local community is growing thanks to its touristic attractiveness and local manufacturer’s hub. Becoming a cultural vibrant destination, Odorheiu Secuiesc is also one of the regions’ most renowned education canter for secondary and high school level.
SOFTECH Supports Community Initiatives
As part of our CSR strategy, we try to support relevant community initiatives. Given the fact that our offices are scattered around the historical region of Transylvania, in Cluj-Napoca, Târgu-Mureș and Odorheiu Secuiesc we try to identify those initiatives that produce change and are forward-thinking.
In the last years we have found the organization of TEDX in Odorheiu Secuiesc as one of the leading community-oriented programmes and that is why we are proud to be a sponsor of the event, to the extent it is possible.
About SOFTECH and TEDx Partnership
SOFTECH, as a software development company specialized in industrial-grade software development has partenered with TEDx Udvarhely organizing team in 2021. We think that IT companies should be one of the most active enablers of future-oriented thoight leadership events. The perculiar situation of small communities is that it is difficult to organize and gather the sudience for thsi type of events.
That is why, we are happy to be part of TEDx Udvarhely story and we congratulate the team for gathering in 2025, more than 700 persons attending the event.
