TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

2018 TEDxSalem

Anna Nixon: An advocate for girls in science

By

Anna Nixon, Founder of STEM 4 Girls

Meet our final sur­prise speak­er for TEDxSalem V “Through the Look­ing Glass.”

Anna Nixon’s STEM career began in the sec­ond grade, when she and her father start­ing build­ing robots togeth­er in their garage. She was hooked imme­di­ate­ly.

“I loved that feel­ing of accom­plish­ment that came with final­ly get­ting a robot work­ing after hours of hard work,” she said.

Now, a senior at West­view High School in Port­land, she intends to take her pas­sions to a big­ger stage. Once she earns her degree in com­put­er sci­ence, com­put­er engi­neer­ing, or bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing, she aspires to work with robots that will be used to pro­vide med­ical aid.

Anna has learned a lot since the sec­ond grade, being involved in FIRST Robot­ics, tak­ing advanced STEM class­es in school, and start­ing a non­prof­it, STEM 4 Girls. She’s not only more knowl­edge­able and skilled, she’s become aware of the field’s chal­lenges recruit­ing and retain­ing girls and women.

Ever since Anna first joined robot­ics, she was often the only girl in the room.

“I think that the biggest chal­lenge that comes with being the only girl in the room is feel­ing the pres­sure that your actions will reflect on every girl,” she said. “And I think this is true for any minor­i­ty in any field. It’s easy to get into the mind­set of ‘If I make a mis­take peo­ple are going to think it’s because all girls are bad at this’ instead of mere­ly accept­ing your mis­take and mov­ing on. While it may seem unfound­ed, that fear of fail­ure makes you less con­fi­dent tak­ing risks or ask­ing oth­ers for help which can have a neg­a­tive impact.”

Anna’s non­prof­it, STEM4Girls, aims to solve these issues and help girls stay in STEM by build­ing up their con­fi­dence and fos­ter­ing a sup­port­ing and encour­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

“Var­i­ous stud­ies have shown that girls actu­al­ly tend to do bet­ter in STEM sub­jects than their male coun­ter­parts, at least until around mid­dle school,” Anna said. “As they grow old­er, girls often tend to lose inter­est in STEM because they don’t see oth­er girls doing it or they get the mes­sage that ‘STEM is a guy thing’. Thus, the great­est sup­port that girls can get is mak­ing them feel includ­ed in the STEM com­mu­ni­ty. This means pro­vid­ing them with female role mod­els and peers that they can depend on as well elim­i­nat­ing prej­u­diced views against women in STEM.”

Join us Jan­u­ary 6 to hear more about Anna’s sto­ry and her call to action.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Cayla Skillin-Brauchle: An artist with questions

By

Cayla Skillin-Brauchle

TEDxSalem is proud to intro­duce our 2018 artist-in-res­i­dence Cay­la Skillin-Brauch­le, who will bring the theme “Through the Look­ing Glass” to life on stage through her art. The theme’s idea of shift­ing per­spec­tives inspired her work.

Cay­la sees the look­ing glass as a kalei­do­scope or a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, but also a mir­ror, all of which show art’s capac­i­ty to give us dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, she said.

An assis­tant pro­fes­sor of art at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty, Cay­la is excit­ed for her involve­ment in this year’s TEDxSalem.

“I think it’s inspir­ing to hear peo­ple’s sto­ries of find­ing their a‑ha moments,” she said.

She’s also excit­ed to get to know the Salem com­mu­ni­ty bet­ter and meet peo­ple who are inter­est­ed in think­ing cre­ative­ly about com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er fields.

Cay­la moved to Salem two years ago after spend­ing a year in India on a Full­bright Schol­ar­ship. She enjoys liv­ing and work­ing in west­ern Ore­gon in all but one way. Cay­la says she has lived in the trop­ics dur­ing mon­soon sea­son, but that expe­ri­ence did not pre­pare her to “under­stand the length and depth of the rainy sea­son in Ore­gon.”

She also enjoys the small­er com­mu­ni­ty feel of Salem. Cay­la grew up in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty in cen­tral Ver­mont ‚“which has four true sea­sons.” She finds Salem to have a sim­i­lar ethos of self sus­tain­abil­i­ty and out­door appre­ci­a­tion.

Cay­la describes her­self as a con­cep­tu­al artist who seeks to chal­lenge peo­ple’s per­cep­tions regard­ing both what and how they think. Many of her projects com­bine com­plex draw­ings, bright col­or­ful cos­tumes and per­for­mance.

“A lot of my work is absur­dist. I often set up scenes that are absurd…the func­tion of that is to allow peo­ple to con­sid­er oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties than they do in their every­day life.”

Cay­la will not only design the instal­la­tion, but will also give a talk and lead a recess activ­i­ty. She hopes that peo­ple will be inspired to think about the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives in Salem.

Pets: No. I have a part­ner and a gar­den. That’s enough. We trav­el a lot.

Favorite Movie: “Amelie”

Favorite Book: “Bell Hooks”, Teach­ing to trans­gress is very inspir­ing to me right now.

Favorite Music: I’m cur­rent­ly lis­ten­ing to a lot of the B52’s. They are awe­some, weird fem­i­nist musi­cians. Also, girl rock from the 80’s and 90’s, singer song­writ­ers, and music I can dance to.

Favorite Food: Right now, the toma­toes from my gar­den.

Favorite Salem Food: Flash fried Brus­sels sprouts from Tap­root Lounge & Cafe

Favorite Drink: Milk shakes at Minto Island Grow­ers farm stand.

Hob­bies: Gar­den­ing and cook­ing. “I like to do stuff with things from my gar­den, like mak­ing pick­les.”

Creativity in action

In coop­er­a­tion with the Salem Art Asso­ci­a­tion through a pro­gram cater­ing to the Artist-in-Res­i­dence con­cept, Cay­la will be work­ing on her TEDxSalem stage instal­la­tion on-and-off at The Annex from Dec. 12 to Jan. 6.

Salem Art Asso­ci­a­tion exhi­bi­tions are always free and open to the pub­lic. Gallery hours are Tues­day-Fri­day from 10 am‑5 pm, and Sat­ur­day-Sun­day from Noon‑5 pm (Annex week­end hours may dif­fer, please call 503–581-2228 to check avail­abil­i­ty). Learn more at salemart.org/programs/annex.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Noah Strycker: Seeing the world, one bird at a time

By

Noah StryckerIt all start­ed with the bird feed­er.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the bird feed­er that Judy Kap­pler attached to her fifth grade classroom’s win­dow at Oak Hill Ele­men­tary School in Eugene. Every time a new bird came to vis­it that feed­er, she paused the class to observe it.

One of her stu­dents, Noah Stryck­er, was riv­et­ed. So much so that he built his career on birds, writ­ing books about them and pur­su­ing them all over the world.

Stryck­er has just pub­lished his third book, Bird­ing With­out Bor­ders, about what’s known in the bird­ing com­mu­ni­ty as “The Big Year” – a com­pe­ti­tion to trav­el far and wide to iden­ti­fy as many bird species as pos­si­ble, whether by sight or by sound.

His first expo­sure to the Big Year was at the age of 12, when he picked up King­bird High­way, Kenn Kaufman’s mem­oir of drop­ping out of high school to do his own Big Year in the 1970s. Stryck­er says he “read that book over and over,” but the goal to embark on a Big Year of his own coa­lesced when he was a stu­dent at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty, writ­ing for Bird­ing mag­a­zine along­side his course­work.

After grad­u­at­ing in 2008 with a Fish­eries and Wildlife degree, he made birds his full-time career, work­ing on field projects with var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties. One of his first such projects out of col­lege saw him camp­ing out in Antarc­ti­ca with a colony of 300,000 Adélie pen­guins – which became the basis of his first book, Among Pen­guins.

When Stryck­er final­ly start­ed his Big Year in Jan­u­ary 2015, he’d hoped to iden­ti­fy at least 5,000 birds around the world. His grand total by Decem­ber 31 was 6,042 – at the time, a world record – and he esti­mates he was able to iden­ti­fy 95% of them by sight. His trav­els took him to all sev­en con­ti­nents (only one of which, Africa, he’d nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed), to both remote and sur­pris­ing­ly mun­dane loca­tions such as cities, farms and land­fills.

He jokes that he speaks three lan­guages: “Eng­lish, about 80% Span­ish, and Bird.” That came in handy when trav­el­ing across 41 coun­tries, some­times with bird­ers who spoke no Eng­lish; the only lan­guage he had in com­mon with them was that of bird names and bird calls. The sheer size and scale of the glob­al bird­ing com­mu­ni­ty was a wel­come sur­prise to him.

“Birds are uni­ver­sal crea­tures,” Stryck­er says. “Birds are so uni­ver­sal that they break down our human bor­ders … it doesn’t mat­ter who you are or where you’re from, birds are around you. They con­nect peo­ple more than oth­er things [in nature] … any­one can watch them.”

Strycker’s not one to sit still for long – hav­ing just wrapped up a mul­ti-state book tour for Bird­ing With­out Bor­ders, he’s now off to work in Antarc­ti­ca as the res­i­dent bird expert for Quark Expe­di­tions, which leads sight­see­ing tours of both polar regions. When he’s not on a Quark voy­age, he works as the asso­ciate edi­tor of Bird­ing.

Out­side of that, Stryck­er says he prefers to focus on one project at a time. In this case, that’s his next book: an upcom­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nation­al Geo­graph­ic called Birds of the Pho­to Ark, slat­ed for April 2018.

And, of course, his upcom­ing TED talk. The sub­ject: how birds con­nect the world.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Marie Greene: Bringing the Maker movement to center stage

By

Marie Greene

Marie Greene is a mak­er.

When she was bare­ly dou­ble-dig­its, she learned the lyri­cal lan­guage of knit­ting, a skill inher­it­ed at her grandmother’s side.

An end­less cre­ative out­let, knit­ting pro­vid­ing con­tin­u­ous learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and a con­stant chal­lenge. And for a mul­ti­tasker, like Marie, it was also a great com­pan­ion activ­i­ty that com­ple­ment­ed her life through­out the years. Whether dur­ing her time as a project man­ag­er in hos­pi­tal finance, while rais­ing her three boys, or with her activist and com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing activ­i­ties, knit­ting could (and did) hap­pen any­where.

Even­tu­al­ly, Marie’s hob­by turned into a pas­sion that launched a new career — knitwear design­er — allow­ing her to join her ana­lyt­i­cal skills with her cre­ative side.

“It’s some­thing I’ve known my whole life, but I def­i­nite­ly didn’t turn it into a busi­ness on pur­pose. I sort of fell into that,” she said.

And while Marie may spend many hours rapt in yarn — she is an entre­pre­neur after all — when she steps from her cre­ative cocoon, she nev­er far from her cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty. In addi­tion to lead­ing the Salem chap­ter of the Ris­ing Tide Soci­ety, a group that helps and sup­ports those involved in cre­ative busi­ness­es, she also loves to write, cook and trav­el.

“I just got back from a cou­ple weeks in Europe where I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach knit­ting, vis­it a cou­ple coun­tries, enjoy some great food, and see some ter­rif­ic archi­tec­ture which real­ly inspired me,” Marie said. “I take a lot of ideas that I come across while I am trav­el­ing, espe­cial­ly in regards to archi­tec­ture, and I trans­late it into my designs.”

But for Marie, the act of cre­ativ­i­ty goes beyond her job a pat­tern design­er, beyond the art of knit­ting. She’s also a fiber guru, an obses­sive food­ie, an ama­teur gar­den­er, a wife and a moth­er. Encom­pass­ing it all, Marie is a mak­er. And being a mak­er exceeds the act of just creating…it’s telling a sto­ry, shar­ing a piece of his­to­ry, pass­ing on a tra­di­tion. It’s self-expres­sion. It’s art. It’s func­tion. And it’s also the top­ic of her “idea worth spread­ing” that she’ll share at TEDxSalem V on Jan. 6.

Speak­er: Marie Greene

Lives in: Salem. Marie, her hus­band and three boys moved to Salem — on a whim — just over four years ago. “We came out for a vis­it and just felt so con­nect­ed to the com­mu­ni­ty. We knew instant­ly we were home.”

Job: Knitwear design­er at Olive Knits

Favorite book: Essen­tial­ism: The Dis­ci­plined Pur­suit of Less by Greg McK­e­own. “There are oth­er books I love but as some­one who has the ten­den­cy to want to do all the things all the time, that book is a real­ly good reminder. Helps me come back to cen­ter, to what I am here for, what I real­ly want to accom­plish. I reread it every 6 months. It helps me check in with myself.”

Favorite food: Cheese and wine (Her rec­om­mend­ed wine is any Stoller Reserve Pinot)

Favorite movie: Fly Away Home. “It’s so super cheesy, but I total­ly love that movie.”

Guilty plea­sure: Nordic noir. Grit­ty, moody for­eign crime dra­mas on video or audio.

Fun Fact: Marie is chron­i­cal­ly ear­ly. “I wake up ridicu­lous­ly ear­ly in the morn­ing — 3:30 a.m. is my aver­age wake up. I am such a morn­ing per­son. All my best stuff hap­pens in the morn­ing.”

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Jackson Rayne: Magician. Escape artist. TEDxSalem speaker.

By

Jackson Rayne

Illu­sion­ist. Escape artist. World record break­er.

TEDxSalem explores more than ‘ideas worth spread­ing’ at its Jan­u­ary 6th event, which will fea­ture both a talk and per­for­mance by Las Vegas-based magi­cian Jack­son Rayne.

When asked what he is pas­sion­ate about in life, Jack­son is quick to respond: peo­ple.

“I love learn­ing and I love teach­ing and inspir­ing oth­ers. Life is tough and I feel great pur­pose when my work can pos­i­tive­ly affect peo­ple through enter­tain­ment,” he said.

No stranger to Salem, Jack­son attend­ed Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty where he grad­u­at­ed with his BA in Eco­nom­ics. It’s also where he gained nation­al media atten­tion for his first under­wa­ter escape and real­ized his oppor­tu­ni­ty of a career in mag­ic.

And for the past 25 years, Jack­son has been push­ing the extremes, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, through dynam­ic illu­sions and dar­ing escapes. What began for the fun of learn­ing, devel­oped into a call­ing that’s earned Jack­son a place on cen­ter stage as a head­lin­ing per­former as well as recog­ni­tion on nation­al tele­vi­sion.

But it doesn’t stop there. Jack­son is also the hold­er of mul­ti­ple world records.

“I broke the fastest escape from a posey strait­jack­et,” Jack­son said. “My orig­i­nal record break­ing time was 7.26 sec­onds which I can now beat by quite a bit. I also broke the world record for most escapes from a straight jack­et in one hour with 54 escapes.”

“I did­n’t even know I was capa­ble of break­ing a world record,” he said. “The first time I was locked up the jack­et it took me 45 min­utes to escape but I did it. Once I fig­ured out the most effi­cient route it was just a mat­ter of time. It actu­al­ly looks very easy now when I escape because it hap­pens so fast.”

Join us at TEDxSalem to hear illu­sion­ist Jack­son Rayne’s ‘idea worth spread­ing’ and pos­si­bly a lit­tle some­thing else we might have up our sleeve.

Speak­er: Jack­son Rayne
Hob­bies: Flag foot­ball, golf, snow­board­ing, and trav­el­ing the world
Favorite food: New York style Piz­za and sushi
Favorite place to relax: Aru­ba
Favorite beach: Horse­shoe Bay, Bermu­da
Favorite peo­ple: Mani­la, Philip­pines
Favorite cul­tur­al des­ti­na­tion: All of Japan

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Creativity for all: Meet TEDxSalem speaker Laura Mack

By

Laura Mack

Art makes the impos­si­ble pos­si­ble.

Salem artist Lau­ra Mack bridged the gap between Trump and Hillary sup­port­ers even if it was just on can­vas. She start­ed with pho­tographs of scream­ing pro­test­ers and then redrew the faces in char­coal, soft­en­ing their eyes, clos­ing their mouths.

“I tried to turn these angry pro­test­ers into thought­ful lis­ten­ers,” she said, “bring­ing us to the table to lis­ten to each oth­er.”

She hopes peo­ple see that it’s pos­si­ble to find com­mon ground. Mack doesn’t have much time for her art these days as a moth­er of two, col­lege instruc­tor and art advo­cate, but she does spend a lot of time think­ing about the cre­ative process.

The abil­i­ty to see things and solve prob­lems in a new way is not just for artists, she said. It’s a vital skill for every­one.

That thought inspired her to cre­ate a class at Chemeke­ta Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege that fos­ters the cre­ative process. Most of her stu­dents don’t con­sid­er them­selves artists.

Art is one of the tools she uses to teach, but it’s not the only one. Stu­dents also do improv, cre­ate lists, per­form, make books and invent. One time she asked stu­dents to pick two objects, such as a bench and a con­vey­er belt, and think up 50 inven­tions.

“After about nine,” she said, “things start to get inter­est­ing.”

“We’ve been trained to get one right answer,” she said, “instead of stick­ing with it and com­ing up with a bet­ter idea.”

That process of being inspired, ask­ing ques­tions, tak­ing time, incu­bat­ing ideas and refin­ing leads to bet­ter ideas whether that’s in com­put­er sci­ence or psy­chol­o­gy, she said.

But many col­lege stu­dents strug­gle at first because they haven’t thought this way since ele­men­tary school, she said. As an art advo­cate, Mack devel­ops pro­grams that will keep the cre­ative process in schools through col­lege.

“Cre­ativ­i­ty needs to be main­tained from a very young age,” she said. “We don’t want to wait until col­lege.”

When she’s not teach­ing or cre­at­ing, Mack hangs out with her two boys, hus­band and their new pup­py Vad­er as in Darth Vad­er.

“It’s an iron­ic name because he’s incred­i­bly sweet,” she said.

She also vol­un­teers at her son’s school, offer­ing art class­es. That expe­ri­ence inspired anoth­er pro­gram meant to fos­ter the cre­ative spark. Hear more about Mack’s vision to keep that spark going in Salem-Keiz­er schools and in class­rooms around the world at TEDxSalem V.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.