Stefanie Knowlton

Salem expe­ri­enced its first TEDx in 2013, when orga­niz­ers Car­lee Wright and Bri­an Hart launched the event with 14 talks, 100 par­tic­i­pants and a whole lot of faith.

“It was a first for us, and it was a first for all of them as well. They didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what to expect, and they came ready to expe­ri­ence it,” Wright said.

For her, that day was a blur of run­ning around and answer­ing ques­tions. Hart han­dled the flow back­stage, and he could hear laugh­ter from the auidence and feel the crowd’s ener­gy dur­ing the speak­ers and recess when audi­ence mem­bers became active par­tic­i­pants in the exchange of ideas.

“You can feel it when stuff is real­ly going well, and it’s kind of a mag­i­cal day,” he said.

“We were like, ‘This is exact­ly what we want­ed.’”

It wasn’t until Wright saw the pho­tos and videos from the event that she appre­ci­at­ed the scope of what they had accom­plished. She hoped that peo­ple would step out of their bub­ble and expe­ri­ence some­thing new. The pho­tos showed peo­ple engag­ing with one anoth­er and once strangers chat­ting away.

In its sec­ond year, TEDxSalem grew to 300 par­tic­i­pants and includ­ed extras such as a spe­cial mes­sage record­ed by AJ Jacobs, known for the TED Talk “The world’s largest fam­i­ly reunion,” just for the Salem audi­ence.

 

Now the team behind TEDxSalem is ramp­ing up for its third event Sat­ur­day, Oct. 3, this time at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter with 13 speak­ers and pos­si­bly 500 or more par­tic­i­pants.

The first two events helped lay the foun­da­tion, and now orga­niz­ers have turned their focus to mak­ing it bet­ter and bet­ter. This year, they are part­ner­ing with Enlight­ened The­atrics, a Salem the­ater com­pa­ny, to offer a unique, hybrid per­for­mance as a lit­tle some­thing extra. Hart was mum on the details because he didn’t want to ruin the sur­prise.

Look­ing ahead, both Hart and Wright would love to bring more high-pro­file speak­ers to Salem. Wright said she wouldn’t mind hear­ing from author Neil Gaiman or fil­mak­er Tim Bur­ton if they hap­pen to be read­ing. Hart  wants the big game-chang­ers in a par­tic­u­lar field, such as the ones lead­ing devel­op­ments in brain sci­ence or tech­nol­o­gy.

At the same time, it’s essen­tial to keep spots for local speak­ers, too, he said. They also want to devel­op new ways to expe­ri­ence TEDx and share those ideas with oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

The end goal? World dom­i­na­tion, of course.

“Our goal is not just to be one of the pre­miere events in Ore­gon,” Hart said, “but the world.”

Give it anoth­er three years. There is no telling where TEDxSalem might lead.

Don’t miss the ear­ly bird tick­et price for this year’s TEDxSalem:

Get $10 off the tick­et price if you order before June 18th at https://tedxsalem2015.eventbrite.com. After that tick­ets are avail­able for $50 for gen­er­al admis­sion and $40 for stu­dents. One tick­et includes a full day of talks, enter­tain­ment, recess activ­i­ties, swag, snacks, lunch and an after-par­ty.