 In the past few weeks, I've been rethinking my career and my position as a designer. And I had to admit that actually I'm not going in the direction I want to go. I started my studio. Oh, I forget to click. So there I am. Hello. I started my studio together with my partner Ralph and as designers we wanted to change the world. We're interested in... Oh, there we go. We want to change the world. We're interested in new materials, new technologies, new ways of producing, basically everything that is connected to how we will see our future. We research on intangible processes in nature and we translate these into installations with lights. And so far we have never been untrue to ourselves. We always only made what we wanted to make, despite of having an income or having success. And it's gone really well so far, which is great because we're very ambitious and we sold many pieces in the last years. And since our start six years ago, we work with including our freelancers 22 people and we're very happy with them. So everything is great. What else? Well, I found myself in a weird position. I found myself worried. I am worried about the financial crisis. I am worried that my clients will not have money to pay my works and that I have sent all my people home. So what is my solution to this? I was thinking, oh, I hope this financial crisis goes away very quickly and we can just stick to normal and just continue the way we're going. So did I? I'm sure that I can continue to build up my business and we are safe. The fact that I'm thinking this is very weird because normally it's me who is convinced that we need this crisis and we need the collapse of the system to change the world. And actually, I wanted to be a designer in the first place to change the world. So what the fuck am I thinking? I'm ashamed to see myself like this. I thought I wasn't like this. I wasn't one of these people. But apparently it's in all of us or in a lot of us at least. And if our system is based on holding on to our private securities and we need to change, we can only change because of the mass, how will we ever change? And there's also a contradiction in this because if we don't change because of overpopulation or pollution or you name it, anyway the world will collapse at a certain moment. So we're holding on to a fake security and this prevents us from saving the world. So what if the world collapses? What if all these prophecies for 2012 are actually true and we will lose all our securities, no supermarkets, no electricity, no internet, all our investments worthless? What will we do if we have to build up a whole new world from scratch? Where do we start? This is what we asked a group of students. We asked them what if it's the end of the world, but you survived and you have to start up to build up a new world. What would be the first thing you need? Well, the students had five days to come up with solutions. So to get them in the mood on the first day they had to make fire and they had to have lunch without cutlery or without plates. It was easy. They had to cook themselves dinner and collect edible plants to make this dinner from. And at the end of the day everyone was depressed. Everyone thought like we are not able to do this, to survive. We have no knowledge. We have no connection anymore. We don't know anything about nature. But as the days came along actually I was very impressed by which IDs the students came up with. Instead of thinking about tools or guns or houses what I would have expected from design students they I was very pleased to find out that they were thinking about change in much larger structures. So one of the most important things and topics that the students were working on was new ways of power. How will we deal with power in our new world? And then clearly this was one of the projects one of the students made. She made a chair that would define your position in the world and your level of power or your social level basically. And it was one chair and for each level you could change the chair and build it up and it became more comfortable and more comfortable but also more and more unstable. So as a society you could only sit for a few seconds on this chair and it would collapse or you would fall off. So basically what they wanted in this new world was no absolute power and a quick change in this. One of the other things what was also very striking were new ways of education. There was a big need for people who could have their own personal study all kind of different topics together and have a freedom to choose from who they want to learn if it would be a professor or maybe someone who is working in the field. So in a new world we will do things totally different. And then there was one person who came up with FaceMap. This is an analog version of Facebook to reconnect in a destroyed world and refined our people and services. Only one girl and she didn't believe that we would survive this new world. So she made a presentation of the highlights of human culture and she projected this on a big screen and she set the screen on fire so slowly the screen burned down and there all our securities were gone. And at the end of the week we celebrated the end of the world with champagne and fireworks and we had just a very great week. So this made me think suddenly I was not so scared anymore about the end of the world because all ideas are already there there are enough great ideas to build up a perfect world. What is scary is our attitude and that is something we need to change. So let's take this financial crisis as an opportunity and dive into it together. I changed my mind. Let's change the world.