Laura Fosmire

With TEDxSalem mere days away (who else is excit­ed?!) we are delight­ed to announce the last in our tal­ent­ed speak­er line­up: Tigard-based sto­ry­teller and film pro­duc­er Devon Lyon.

Lyon is the founder and force behind Lyon Films, a pro­duc­tion and media com­pa­ny based in the Port­land area (Lyon him­self grew up right here in Salem). After grad­u­at­ing from Lin­field Col­lege in McMin­nville, Lyon went on to work in com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the Ore­gon leg­is­la­ture, ulti­mate­ly serv­ing as com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for the Speak­er of the House.

“That was fun,” he said. “When I was pret­ty young, though, I always want­ed to go to law school and so that’s what I did.”

Lyon head­ed down to Cal­i­for­nia, passed the bar exam and began work­ing in busi­ness and enter­tain­ment lit­i­ga­tion in Los Ange­les. But it was­n’t long before he missed Ore­gon.

“I was­n’t born here, but I moved here when I was four,” he said. “So every­thing I can remem­ber is from here and I want­ed to get back to the Pacif­ic North­west. That was like, 10 years ago, and I want­ed to hone in more on visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions. So nine years ago, I start­ed my com­pa­ny.”

Lyon Films does com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion, from every­thing to music videos to nation­al com­mer­cials (includ­ing a recent spot for Intel, filmed right in the Port­land Air­port).

But for TEDxSalem, Lyon wants to explore the inter­sec­tion of his inter­ests, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sto­ry­telling.

“Bri­an Hart approached me and said I might be a good per­son for TED talks because of my back­ground,” he said. “There’s been a big tech­no­log­i­cal change and democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the way pro­duc­tion works. But I was­n’t inter­est­ed in a nuts and bolts speech, so I asked, what if I did a fun, imag­i­na­tive talk?”

The top­ic of Lyon’s TED talk will be aug­ment­ed sto­ry­telling (it’s his term). We won’t give away too much here, but the way Lyon sees it, there’s a num­ber of excit­ing and imag­i­na­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties in the con­ver­gence of vir­tu­al real­i­ty, Google glass and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty gam­ing.

Not famil­iar with aug­ment­ed real­i­ty? Devel­op­ers have been cre­at­ing video games based on live, direct views of the real world with com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed sen­so­ry (like sound or video or graph­ics) added on top. It’s quite lit­er­al­ly a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-sup­ple­ment­ed ver­sion of your real­i­ty. And Lyon wants peo­ple to use their imag­i­na­tions and explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties as it relates to sto­ry­telling.

“It’s still kind of a niche thing, but I’m just real­ly inter­est­ed and curi­ous in it,” he said. “All this tech­nol­o­gy is con­verg­ing in this way, but we’ll have to wait a lit­tle longer to see the horse­pow­er. Most peo­ple get Google glass, but I want to kind of get their imag­i­na­tions going as all this tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to con­verge.”

It’s not too late to get your tick­et for TEDxSalem! Tick­ets are avail­able here at http://goo.gl/pI3UJ2 or at the Elsi­nore box office.

Wel­come to Sep­tem­ber! We are in the final count­down until TEDxSalem 2014 and we could not be more excit­ed!

We’ve told you all about our won­der­ful speak­er line­up; we’ve giv­en you some food for thought over the sum­mer; we’ve even told you all your need-to-know infor­ma­tion for the day of the event. But as you’re get­ting ready for this year’s con­fer­ence, here’s some tips on how to real­ly max­i­mize your expe­ri­ence and make sure you get the most out of the day!

10. Take notes! Bring a small note­book or tap out a few quick notes on your smart­phone. You’re going to be exposed to so many ideas and insights in one day, and you def­i­nite­ly want to remem­ber those moments that made you smile, made you think or just jumped out at you. Take a moment, either dur­ing the event or at the end of the day, to jot down the insights you gained.

9. But be present in the moment. We love that you want to Tweet and Insta­gram through­out TEDxSalem, and we encour­age you to do so. But don’t get too wrapped up in your phone that you miss on a poignant moment dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion or a TED talk!

8. And be open-mind­ed. Some of the ideas worth shar­ing may be a lit­tle shock­ing. Some might be a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sial, or entire­ly new to you. Don’t write off a TED talk if you find your­self bristling at it, or if you don’t under­stand it. Have an open mind and con­sid­er new ideas!

7. First in the door, last out the build­ing. Get there ear­ly. You can find your seat, chat up the per­son next to you, get com­fort­able with the the­ater and see what oth­er good­ies we’ll be offer­ing through­out the day (last year, par­tic­i­pants had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase books writ­ten by our speak­ers, or get some awe­some TEDxSalem swag). Stay the whole day and leave late. Lis­ten to every sin­gle talk, do the break­out ses­sions, ask a mil­lion ques­tions. By the end of the day, you won’t want to leave!

6. Bring some­thing to share. It can be some­thing tan­gi­ble like your busi­ness card, or some­thing that’s not, like a thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tion or even just a great book you’ve read recent­ly.

5. Do your research! We love a good sur­prise, and we hope some of the top­ics and thoughts our speak­ers will share with you will be delight­ful­ly sur­pris­ing. But there’s some­thing to be said for get­ting excit­ed about your favorite speak­er ahead of time! Take a moment to famil­iar­ize your­self with every­one who will be talk­ing this year. Revis­it last year’s speak­ers to get in the spir­it of TED! Or vis­it the offi­cial TED blog for more engag­ing TED talks and choose a few favorites.

4. Net­work, net­work, net­work! TEDxSalem is not a pas­sive or iso­lat­ed expe­ri­ence. You are in the beau­ti­ful Elsi­nore The­ater with hun­dreds of peo­ple just as excit­ed about new ideas as you are! Talk to every­one. Intro­duce your­self. Don’t ask what they do for a liv­ing; ask what they’re pas­sion­ate about. Make friends, get con­tacts, dis­cuss the TED talks with them. Force your­self a lit­tle out of your com­fort zone and chat up a stranger.

3. Our vol­un­teers are a resource! They are the heart, soul and back­bone of TEDxSalem, and they are there to make your expe­ri­ence extra­or­di­nary. If you need any­thing at all, don’t hes­i­tate to ask them!

2. Be sure to par­tic­i­pate in the break­out ses­sions. The high­light of TEDxSalem is our speak­ers, but there’s so much more that goes on through­out the day. If you real­ly want to make the most of your time, don’t shy away from sit­ting in on the break­out ses­sions and shar­ing your own ideas. It’s all about mak­ing you think.

1. Immerse your­self in the spir­it of TED! TED is a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed to spread­ing ideas, usu­al­ly in the form of short, pow­er­ful talks. It began in 1984 as a con­fer­ence where tech­nol­o­gy, enter­tain­ment and design con­verged (hence the name) and now cov­ers almost all top­ics, includ­ing sci­ence, busi­ness and glob­al issues. Keep all of this in mind as you approach Sept. 13. The day is devot­ed to shar­ing ideas!

Ask Andrew Sen­ner what he does for a liv­ing, and he rat­tles off an impres­sive, albeit for­eign-sound­ing, title.

“I work for a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy lab at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Sci­ences Depart­ment, and I’m going to school for a degree in micro­bi­ol­o­gy.”

But real­ly, what it boils down to, he says, is that he’s a prob­lem-solver.  He just looks for solu­tions at a mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el.

We’re delight­ed to announce Sen­ner as one of our speak­ers for this year’s TEDxSalem event, where he’ll be intro­duc­ing TED­sters to the con­cept of aquapon­ics.

Ever heard of it? Allow Andrew to explain:

“It’s the com­bi­na­tion between aqua­cul­ture, fish farm­ing and hydro­pon­ics or soil as crop pro­duc­tion,” he said. “It uses the waste stream from fish to feed bac­te­ria, which con­vert ammo­nia to nitrates that the plants can absorb. Then they fil­ter and oxy­genate the water back to the fish.”

It’s sort of a self-sus­tain­ing, minia­ture ecosys­tem. There are some places in Port­land and Bend in which peo­ple are already doing it. And Sen­ner has big ideas for its future.

“Aquapon­ics is pret­ty new,” he said. “Well, sort of. Peo­ple were doing it thou­sands of years ago but call­ing it some­thing else. When I heard about it, I thought, ‘Holy crap, this is a no-brain­er. Why aren’t we already doing this?’ It’s real­ly sim­ple and it mod­els nature and it has this res­o­nance, where you put in a lit­tle bit of ener­gy and get a lot more out of it every time.”

Sen­ner iden­ti­fies Coos Bay as where he is ‘from.’ But he’s lived, quite lit­er­al­ly, all over — Ohio, North Car­oli­na, Cal­i­for­nia, Wash­ing­ton, Ten­nessee, and even in Japan. He’s always had a pas­sion for sci­ence, start­ing with chem­istry.

“It’s the manip­u­la­tion of mat­ter that’s fas­ci­nat­ing to me,” he said. “I don’t know, I guess I could­n’t put my fin­ger on it but it’s a pas­sion I’ve always had and con­tin­ue to pur­sue.”

After enlist­ing in the Marines, where he was a data net­work spe­cial­ist in Japan, he returned to the States to pur­sue a degree at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Sen­ner is a new­com­er to TED con­fer­ences. He heard about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak at TEDxSalem from his wife.

“She heard about it before I did, and I don’t think she expect­ed me to sign up to talk,” he said. “I want to get the word out about aquapon­ics. And I hope that when peo­ple walk away, they’ll be able to pick a prob­lem of their own and under­stand how that prob­lem occurred and what its caus­es are. Aquapon­ics takes its mod­el from nature, and peo­ple will hope­ful­ly start to do that more intu­itive­ly.”

It’s hard to believe it’s already August. On the one hand, it means that sum­mer is wind­ing to a close. On the oth­er, it means we are just that much clos­er to TEDxSalem 2014!

To get you through these last few weeks and make the most of your remain­ing sum­mer, we reached out to our bril­liant group of speak­ers from last year’s TEDxSalem, to ask them the very sim­ple ques­tion: What are you read­ing?

If you need ideas on the best books to feed your brain, look no fur­ther:

What Kel­ly Williams Brown is read­ing: Amer­i­can Nations: A His­to­ry of the Eleven Rival Region­al Cul­tures of North Amer­i­ca, by Col­in Woodard.

As some­one who has moved around the coun­try a LOT, I real­ly love this book — it’s a cul­tur­al his­to­ry of the 11 sep­a­rate cul­tur­al nations that make up North Amer­i­ca. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry book and, I think, does a great job of explain­ing how and why, say, Louisiana and Ore­gon are such dif­fer­ent places. I high­ly, high­ly rec­om­mend it!

(Revis­it Kel­ly’s TEDxSalem talk about mil­len­ni­als here!)

What Chris Hahn is read­ing: Cir­cuit-Bend­ing: Build Your Own Alien Instru­ments, by Reed Ghaz­a­la.

It’s about tak­ing old elec­tron­ics and hack­ing the cir­cuit­ry to make it do things that it was nev­er intend­ed to do, most­ly for the pur­pose of sound design and exper­i­men­ta­tion. The idea of pick­ing up used bat­tery-pow­ered toys at Good­will and then pok­ing around the insides with wires and con­nec­tors to make strange sounds is odd­ly appeal­ing.

(Chris Hahn and Dick­ie Adams intro­duced us to Luma Infi­na­ta, which you can re-watch here!)

What Elaine Sanchez is read­ing: The Hare With the Amber Eyes, by Edmund DeWaal.

It is a fas­ci­nat­ing biog­ra­phy of an extreme­ly wealthy Jew­ish fam­i­ly with roots in Rus­sia, Paris and Vien­na pre-World War I through World War II. It is long, dense and over­ly descrip­tive, but now that I’m more than halfway through it, I’m very inter­est­ed to see how it’s going to end. I’m read­ing it because it is one of my book club selec­tions.

I often read books I would­n’t oth­er­wise select because of the book club. There are a lot of books they chose that I don’t like, but I always learn some­thing new.

(Relive Elaine’s hilar­i­ous TEDxSalem talk, ‘Hav­ing the Sex Talk with Dad’, here!)

What Eric Howald is read­ing: The Mas­sive, by Bri­an Wood.

A post-apoc­a­lyp­tic graph­ic nov­el focused on a rogue team of envi­ron­men­tal­ists still fight­ing the good fight after cli­mate change has flood­ed much of the plan­et’s coastal areas and sunk entire nations. I love every­thing about this com­ic and each new col­lec­tion gets bet­ter and bet­ter as they explore aspects of human­i­ty as much as the threats of cli­mate change.

(Revis­it Eric’s TEDxSalem talk about com­ic books and social jus­tice here!)

What about you, Salem? What books have you been read­ing this sum­mer?