As students are already overburdened with homework, classes and life in general, the very idea of voluntarily sacrificing an entire Saturday is nothing short of ridiculous. Given this, it is not so surprising that the student section of TEDx Salt Lake City at Kingsbury Hall this past Saturday Sept. 19 was rather sparsely populated, but it is a bit unfortunate. Put together by a completely unpaid staff of volunteers and funded by generous sponsors, each speaker, performer and presenter came from Utah. Everyone involved was there because they truly wanted to be and were willing to give up hours of their own time preparing for it. Student tickets were $5 with a UCard.
The x in TEDx denotes that this TED conference was an initiative and an offshoot of the larger organization that runs TED talks. For those of you who don’t know, TED talks are typically 20 minute long presentations on anything ranging from laughter and the science behind it, to discussions on sex education, to conservation ideas, all given by experts in their respective fields. Many of the ideas presented in TED talks have never before seen an audience and thus allow experts’ ideas to reach their peers in the intellectual world as well as their peers in the mass public. To watch any of these nationally presented TED talks, go here: https://www.ted.com/talks.
TEDx Salt Lake City was all about Upcycled Thinking and was scheduled from 9-4:30 p.m. This emphasis on ways to revitalize old things for use in new ways was applied in four different ways. Those four sections were: Upcycled Economy, Upcycled Science and Technology, Upcycled Community and Upcycled Learning. Each session was filled by at most four live speakers, as well as performance pieces and prerecorded TED talks played as videos. Some speakers/performers made the audience laugh, others made the audience teary and one’s message spoke to so many audience members that she received a standing ovation. That one person is named Thea Holcomb, a high school student whose open ideas about sex education were entirely refreshing.
The woman behind this independently organized TED event was Anna Decker and her hard work paid off in a fulfilling daylong experience. The only bump in the otherwise evenly laid road that was this conference was when one of the food trucks hired for lunch lost a tire on its way to Kingsbury Hall. On the whole, not the worst thing that could have happened.
If you were not able to attend yesterday and are now regretting it, fear not. Once the recordings of each speaker and presentation have been compiled and edited, they will be available for public use at tedxsaltlakecity.com, allowing you to watch all of the videos over the course of several days whenever you can find the time to do so, or to pick and choose what videos you find interesting to watch now and save the others for another day. As long as you have wi-fi, the choice lies firmly in your hands.
Hopefully this event was not a one-time thing and Kingsbury will continue to host such conferences in the future. I, for one, can’t wait to see what a possible future conference would bring.