On 21 November I had the great privilege to be one of the speakers at this year’s TEDx Talk organized via Uppsala University. I and a few others were asked to talk about making a U-turn in life, be it in a career change, a change of mentality, strategy, or even how to make yourself or others cope with a sudden U-turn.

I spoke (in English) about my strategy of leaving my position as a secondary school teacher to become a freelance (by choice) journalist, and try to fill the information gaps in the media I had identified myself. This eventually took me all the way to Syria, to witness world news without any other journalist in sight. But what happened? The lack of knowledge in society, among other journalists and even editors, meant that the information and perspectives I had as a witness was silenced any way. This brought me to the conclusion that we: a) Still don’t have the so-called mass communication society we think we have, despite having more tools for information sharing than ever before, and b) Being just a writing journalist is not the most effective way to reach out either, in a society with a trend where more and more people are simply not following the traditional media outlets.

So I have kept myself busy trying to lecture as much as possible, to both meet the growing interest in the world war in the Middle East, but also to try to do something about the general lack of knowledge and information among ordinary people. Even if they try to follow the traditional media, there is seldom enough space or air time to give a whole background.

As I and maybe even you wait for the official clip of the speech to end up on Youtube, the stremed version can still be seen here via the TedXUU page.