David Irianto

Connector, Designer, Idea generator, Writer/Editor

Often dubbed one of the most sought-after festival content curators in Indonesia, David is a co-curator of TEDxJakarta and the Content and Creative Director of IdeaFest, Indonesia’s largest creative festival. In this role, he leads the curation of more than 160 sessions and manages over 600 speakers across disciplines and industries for the festival’s three-day program. David has a demonstrated history of involvement in cross-sector socio-creative projects in Indonesia. He was a member of the Jakarta City Book Committee, where he led the creative production of the 33rd International Publishers Association World Congress and drafted the dossier that earned Jakarta the UNESCO Creative City of Literature title in 2021. Beyond festival work, he has curated impactful narratives and communications for major national platforms, including Pekan Kebudayaan Nasional (PKN), KompasFest, BCA’s Indonesia Knowledge Forum (IKF), Indonesia Bertutur (INTUR), and Jakarta Content Week (JakTent). Alongside this work, David produces meaningful content focused on mental well-being through Greatmind.id, publishes books for young readers through PearPress, designs editorial and communication strategies at SIMPUL, a creative content agency specializing in storytelling and communications, and crafts and curates impactful narratives at GAUNG. David earned a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication Design from BINUS University and a Master of Science in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Universitas Tarumanagara (UNTAR). This interdisciplinary background reflects his wide-ranging curiosity. Prior to establishing his own initiatives, he began his career as a designer, later becoming an art director and editor in design and lifestyle media, including Concept Magazine, ELLE Indonesia, and ELLE Decoration Indonesia. This professional trajectory led to his appointment as a board curator for the Indonesian Pavilion at Salone del Mobile 2018 and Maison & Objet 2019. From 2020 to 2025, he also worked as a Visual Communication Consultant with the Environment, Natural Resources, and Blue Economy (ENB) Global Practice at the World Bank Jakarta Office. His body of work led to his selection as an Obama Leader Asia-Pacific in 2022 and an invitation to attend the Obama Foundation’s Democratic Summit, where he met President Barack Obama in New York. David also represented Indonesia at Momentum, Edinburgh Festival 2023, alongside festival programmers from around the world. He currently serves as Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Indonesian Association of Graphic Designers (ADGI) and as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture, coordinating National Talent Management for the literary sector.

Three things I’m passionate about. First, human thought processes and behavior, and how they shape habits and, over time, civilization. I’m fascinated by the circularity of this process: how collective habits and civilizations, in turn, shape human biases and behavior. This spans biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Second, I’m passionate about human creation: art and design, and the pursuit of function, aesthetics, and entertainment. I’m drawn to the creation of meaning from abstract concepts such as shape, texture, and color. Lastly, I’m passionate about humanity’s relationship with stories: how stories emerge, spread, and transform within society and the human mind; why we love them so deeply; how they are crafted; and how, in turn, they shape people. This includes storytelling frameworks, mediums, industries, and the way stories permeate society, changing minds, capturing attention, and even causing addiction.

Chaos is a friend. Chaos stems from complexity so vast that it can no longer contain itself. Chaos breeds uncertainty, and complexity, chaos, and uncertainty make us uncomfortable. Yet without chaos, there is no creativity or innovation. Imagination is how our brain learns to live with chaos, trying to find meaning and order within it. As we live in an era of massive information overload, where our preferences and vertical interests are pushed deeper into algorithmic echo chambers, and amid the growing multipolarity of global power, one of humanity’s most vital skills is learning to find comfort in chaos. I have come to realize that I am built differently. I carry a deep curiosity and multiple interests, so much so that it has often been difficult for me to focus on just one field. I became a misfit, with too much information hoarded in my head. For a long time, this felt like a flaw in both my personal and professional life. Naturally, I was drawn to the creative field and studied graphic design. But it was only after discovering TED and later TEDxJakarta that things began to make sense. I realized that it was the multidisciplinarity of ideas that allowed my mind to feel at home. That same multidisciplinarity, however, quickly turned into complex chaos. When I began helping organize IdeaFest in 2017, I found myself navigating more than 80 sessions across vastly different fields, jumping from music to film, from design to social issues. By 2019, my mind was exhausted. I experienced severe burnout and was ready to walk away from curating and managing such complexity. Passion can power you like fire, but if left unchecked, it can burn you to ashes. I attended TEDxWeekend Taipei thinking it might be my last. Instead, meeting fellow curators and organizers, listening to their struggles and achievements, ignited something in me again. I felt a renewed fire and a quiet calling, as if the world still needed people like us, people who act as synapses between ideas, disciplines, and communities. Connectors. Conveners. Weavers of knowledge. And so here I am today. Standing against machine-driven content and rising global fragmentation, I believe that curating chaos is deeply human and may be one of our greatest strengths. Our ability to sit with complexity, navigate uncertainty, and hold contradictions without flattening context is our superpower. The human brain thrives on the exercise of navigating chaos, like a child seeing color for the first time. So let us practice. First, chaos does not need to be sought. It will come. When it does, take a step back and observe. Second, practice moving between different points of view. Listen to many kinds of people, without discrimination. Third, understand your biases and learn to use them. Our nature and nurture shape how we see the world, and subjectivity is not a weakness. Fourth, challenge those same biases. Deliberately try to agree with what you initially resist and see the world through that lens. Fifth, look for patterns. This comes naturally, as the human brain is wired to recognize them. Then return to the first step. Over time, you will feel the strain in your mind. That is why community becomes essential. Meaning is found through human stories. In the end, be the curator of it all. Be a field-agnostic human synapse.

Architecture, Art, Content, Design, Editorial, Festival, Journalism, Literary, Media, Psychology

I discovered TED during my first job out of design school in 2009. My boss at the time downloaded a bunch of TED videos; I copied some onto my flash drive and watched them religiously, including a talk by Stefan Sagmeister. Fast forward to 2010. I was working at ELLE Indonesia, where one of my colleagues, Lalitia—who happened to be the co-curator of TEDxJakarta—gave me tickets to attend TEDxJakarta 2010. That day changed my life. The following year, in 2011, Lalitia asked if I wanted to help design materials for TEDxJakarta. She lured me into my first TEDxJakarta volunteer meeting with the promise of meeting Stefan Sagmeister, who happened to be stopping in Jakarta for coffee with the TEDxJakarta team en route to his sabbatical in Bali. From that moment on, I’ve been volunteering with TEDxJakarta ever since. I started as a graphic designer, then— in the spirit of regeneration—helped coordinate the creative and design department, and in 2017 was invited to join the curation team. When I first joined as a volunteer, my only agenda was to use my skills to contribute to something purposeful, to be part of something bigger than myself and the mundanity of everyday life. But over time, the experience brought me my biggest career breakout: I was asked to become Head of Content at IdeaFest, the largest creative festival in Indonesia. I never imagined that volunteering would become my profession, connecting me to opportunities to curate, collaborate, and sit at the table with some of Indonesia’s sharpest minds and creatives. More importantly, many of the volunteers have become my closest friends. We’ve supported one another through both professional and personal tribulations—not only as collaborators or, at times, business partners, but as friends whose bonds will last a lifetime. TED also shaped my journey as a learner. In 2014, inspired by a talk by Martin Seligman, I enrolled in a graduate psychology program. My thesis focused on flow, inspired by another talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Since 2020, I’ve also served as a co-organizer of TEDxJakarta Countdown. We’ve held three successful events: fully online in 2020; a hybrid edition in 2022, filmed in an empty theater and a public park; and an onsite event in 2023, where we transformed the venue into a tropical forest. I was also fortunate to participate in the TED Mystery Experiment. I’ve attended two TEDxWeekends. The first, in Taipei, quite literally “cured” me of burnout. The second was in Singapore, where I connected with organizers from across the region and co-facilitated a curation workshop in front of sharks and fish at the SEA Aquarium—a true core memory. In 2022, I was selected as one of the Obama Leaders Asia-Pacific. While in New York to meet President Obama, I asked Florentina (the TEDxJakarta licensee) to connect me with the TED team to see if I could stop by TED HQ, bringing along several APAC leaders—some of whom were also TEDx speakers in their home countries. Thank you so much for welcoming us and showing us around. It holds a special place in my heart—another core memory. For me, TEDx is an experimental laboratory: a fertile ground for ideas, idealism, individual expression, and peer support.