Mark your calendars for February 23, 2013, because TEDxColby College is coming up!! TED, (technology, entertainment and design) is best known for its website that hosts full-length talks from innovative leaders and thinkers from around the world. It’s actually a nonprofit started in 1984 to spread ideas; all of the talks are presented at three extremely prestigious conferences annually. They have had illuminating speakers such as President Bill Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Nobel laureate Jim Watson (of Watson & Crick), Lost producer JJ Abrams among others. An invitation to speak at a TED conference is an incredible and rare opportunity, as are tickets to go and attend (they start at $7,500).
A TEDx conference is for a community such as Colby to experience the thrill of a TED conference in person. Started by a couple of Colby students, it’s sure to be a great success. It’s an independently-organized event that mimics the real conferences and features exciting speakers from the community. TEDx Colby’s description of the theme ends like this: “TEDxColbyCollege will explore new ideas through the lens of failure, with perspectives from across the academic spectrum and beyond. Success and failure are two possible progressions of the attempt, and one is as valuable as the other.”
The organizers have been posting speakers daily since the start of Jan Plan. Students slated to speak include Danny Garin, John Kalin, Kelsey Park, Eddie Kim and Aurora Kesseli. Faculty and staff such as Tashia Bradley, Dean of Students for Multicultural Affairs; Professor Steven Nuss, chair of the music department; Andreas Malmendier, math professor and Kevin Rice, chemistry professor, among others! Community members such as
Betty Palmer, Director of the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter, will also speak.
Tickets will run out soon, so sign up here at this link: https://docs.google.com/a/colby.edu/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dE9tOGhlYXpOMnpEOHBlSkYzajBFWkE6MQ
For information about this event, check out the facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/TEDxColbyCollege or at the official event page hosted on TED.com : http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/6334
It’s definitely worth it to spend a day to hear about ‘ideas worth spreading’; check it out and be surprised at what you learn!