As a student, faculty member, alumni or a family member of someone at Eastern Michigan University, you bring a lot to the table. You have experiences, knowledge and lessons that you have to offer to teach other people. Likewise, other people have their own lessons to teach you. TEDxEMU is an opportunity to create an environment to share these lessons.
TEDxEMU will take place at Quirk Theatre Friday, Mar. 13 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event will be hosting students, faculty and alumni who choose to share 5-15 minute long presentations on topics ranging from technology, entertainment and design. TEDx is not limited to just these three areas, as it incorporates the goal of globally sharing any and all ideas.
In a world with Facebook, Reddit and Tumblr, TEDxEMU doesn’t seem
all that inventive of a concept. To be perfectly honest, TEDxEMU sounds like many other events hosted on campus.
The only thing that might strike you as impressive about TEDxEMU is the giant banner hanging in the EMU Student Center. Yet it is the podcast length of the different speeches, the range of ideas covered in a condensed amount of time and the encouragement to use your own creativity to come up with ideas that makes TEDxEMU an unique experience.
Orlando Bailey, the final presenter in TEDxEMU 2012, said, “It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I remember every minute of it, even though it was an all-day event. I felt privileged to be there.”
Go to YouTube and type in “TED talks.” Immediately, you will discover page after page of people sharing ideas, stories and concepts. You have opportunities to learn about spoken word poetry from Sarah Kay, women leaders such as Sheryl Sandberg and laugh to funny thoughts regarding school and creativity by Sir Ken Robinson.
TEDx has had talks covering virtually every topic, and does so by the people who consider themselves experts in the ideas they share.
“What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination,” Robinson said.
TEDx has been spreading ideas about creativity since 1984. The three-letter acronym, TED, stands for technology, entertainment and design. During the group’s main conferences, they focus on the idea of looking at the big picture.
As the TED website said, “Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.”
While TED hosts a yearly global conference, TEDx allows for communities to host their own TED programs on a smaller scale. This is the second time EMU has hosted this program, the first time being March 9, 2012. In 2012, EMU brought forth Aijalon McLittle, Orlando Bailey and Patrick Seick, as well as others, to share their stories and experiences.
Heather Neff, a professor at EMU and one of the presenters last year, said, “I really want it to be clear that we need to keep this going. EMU TEDx makes EMU part of a global conversation.”
With that, Gregg Costanzo is overseeing EMU’s 2013 TEDx event.
Costanzo welcomes students to get involved and share their ideas and stories. Presentations must be well prepared, thoughtful and engaging.
Those interested in attending TEDxEMU should be ready to commit for the full nine hours, and can apply to attend between Feb. 1 and 15 through the website.
Just because you didn’t make the Jan. 31 deadline to submit an idea to present at TEDxEMU doesn’t mean you cannot share your ideas.
TEDxEMU has a Google Moderator page linked from their website. The page allows the EMU community to share their ideas, specifically regarding the future of EMU and the TEDxEMU events.