TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

Speakers

Tickets on sale now for TEDxSalem VI

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Forty eight days and count­ing until one of the best events in Salem.

TEDxSalem, an offi­cial­ly licensed TEDx event, is back Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 to deliv­er a full day of ideas worth spread­ing. Don’t miss your chance to be a part of the TEDx expe­ri­ence. Tick­ets are $55, $45 for stu­dents.

Where else will you hear from an under­tak­er, doc­tor of sex­ol­o­gy, chem­istry pro­fes­sor and neu­ro­sci­en­tist in one action-packed day? Twelve com­mu­ni­ty speak­ers will inspire and chal­lenge you on every­thing from restora­tive jus­tice to how your brain changes your beliefs dur­ing moments of sur­prise.

Did we men­tion the live enter­tain­ment, catered lunch and swag bag? TEDxSalem also includes curat­ed TED Talks, snacks, three recess ses­sions to expand your mind and, of course, sur­pris­es.

Need more rea­sons to attend? Here are the 12 speak­ers who will blow your mind.

TEDxSalem Speakers

Jen­ny­Lynn Diet­rich, an Ore­gon Deaf­Blind Com­mu­ni­ty Alliance Net­work facil­i­ta­tor, will give us a look at the Deaf­Blind com­mu­ni­ty.

Michael Rousell of South­ern Ore­gon Uni­ver­si­ty will take us on a jour­ney into how your brain secret­ly changes your beliefs dur­ing moments of sur­prise.

Car­la Brauer, own­er of Der­mesti­dar­i­um, will share how recon­nect­ing with food changed her life and led to a career bring­ing new life to the dead as a bone clean­er.

Eliz­a­beth Fournier, under­tak­er from Cor­ner­stone Funer­al, will explore “The Ulti­mate Act of Envi­ron­men­tal Vol­un­teerism.”

Melis­sa Michaux, Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, exam­ines “Restora­tive Jus­tice in prison is nec­es­sary to trans­form pris­on­ers for safer com­mu­ni­ties.”

Michelle Jones of the Wayfind­ing Acad­e­my will speak on the high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem, and new mod­els pro­vid­ing alter­na­tive ways of look­ing at the pur­pose of col­lege.

Darya Rose, weblog­ger, neu­ro­sci­en­tist, and author, will speak on how psy­chol­o­gy impacts your abil­i­ty to cre­ate healthy habits and what to do about it.

Moe Car­rick, author, will explore women advo­cat­ing for men (ver­sus “help­ing” them) with new ideas of redefin­ing mas­culin­i­ty.

Hebah Hasan will share how she over­came the con­straints of her cul­ture to earn an advanced degree and become a leader in her field.

Geri Rich­mond, Pres­i­den­tial Chair in Sci­ence and Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon, holds numer­ous notable sci­en­tif­ic accom­plish­ments and was recent­ly award­ed the 2018 Priest­ley Medal from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

Rebec­ca Shapiro, Artist-in-Res­i­dence, will cre­ate the TEDxSalem stage dis­play to help set the tone this year. Learn how she will be “Refram­ing the Jour­ney”

TEDxSalem VI

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. It runs 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets are on sale now for $55, $45 for stu­dents. 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.

Meet the next 5 speakers of TEDxSalem VI

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TEDxSalem is proud to announce the next five of our speak­er line­up for TEDxSalem VI “re.” Keep an eye on our web­site as over the next few months we will delve into the sto­ries behind our speak­ers learn­ing more about their “ideas worth spread­ing” at TEDxSalem VI on Jan­u­ary 5, 2019.

Weblog­ger, neu­ro­sci­en­tist, and author Darya Rose will speak on how psy­chol­o­gy impacts your abil­i­ty to cre­ate healthy habits and what to do about it.

Author Moe Car­rick will explore the provoca­tive ground of women advo­cat­ing for men (ver­sus “help­ing” them) with new ideas of redefin­ing mas­culin­i­ty.

Hebah Hasan will share how she over­came the soci­etal pres­sure of the Mid­dle East cul­ture she grow up in to obtain an advanced degree and work her way into a lead­er­ship role in her cur­rent job.

We will also hear from Geri Rich­mond, the Pres­i­den­tial Chair in Sci­ence and Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon who con­ducts research to under­stand the chem­istry and physics of com­plex sur­faces and inter­faces. Geri holds numer­ous notable sci­en­tif­ic accom­plish­ments and was recent­ly award­ed the 2018 Priest­ley Medal from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

Plus Artist-in-Res­i­dence Rebec­ca Shapiro, who is cre­at­ing our stage dis­play to help set the tone and con­vey the theme of TEDxSalem; Her con­cept is “Refram­ing the Jour­ney.”

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag that takes place Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets on sale soon. 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.

Meet the first 6 speakers of TEDxSalem VI

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Drum­roll please…TEDxSalem is proud to announce the first six of our speak­er line­up for TEDxSalem VI “re.” Over the next few months we will be delv­ing into the sto­ries behind our speak­ers, so keep an eye on our blog to learn more about who will be shar­ing their “ideas worth spread­ing” at TEDxSalem VI on Jan­u­ary 5, 2019.

Jen­ny­Lynn Diet­rich, an Ore­gon Deaf­Blind Com­mu­ni­ty Alliance Net­work (ODBCAN) Facil­i­ta­tor,  will give us an inner look at the Deaf­Blind com­mu­ni­ty in “Deaf­Blind: We’re Blind but not Blind.”

Michael Rousell, of South­ern Ore­gon Uni­ver­si­ty, will take us on a jour­ney into how your brain secret­ly changes your beliefs dur­ing moments of sur­prise.

Car­la Brauer, own­er of Der­mesti­dar­i­um, will speak about how recon­nect­ing with her food changed her life and led her to a career bring­ing new life to the dead as a bone clean­er.

Under­tak­er Eliz­a­beth Fournier from Cor­ner­stone Funer­al will explore “The Ulti­mate Act of Envi­ron­men­tal Vol­un­teerism.”

Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Melis­sa Michaux exam­ines “Restora­tive Jus­tice in prison is nec­es­sary to trans­form pris­on­ers for safer com­mu­ni­ties.”

Michelle Jones of the Wayfind­ing Acad­e­my will speak on the high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem, and new mod­els pro­vid­ing alter­na­tive ways of look­ing at the pur­pose of col­lege and its role in help­ing cul­ti­vate ded­i­cat­ed cit­i­zens who know their pur­pose in soci­ety.

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag that takes place Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets on sale soon. 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.

A TEDxSalem Homecoming: Alumni look back

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Ever won­der what life is like for TEDxSalem speak­ers after their talks?

We know the joy and enrich­ment that we get from watch­ing them, but what about our speak­ers? What do they get out of it? What last­ing impres­sions do they have from their big day?

As we pre­pare for our upcom­ing event, “Through the Look­ing Glass” on Jan­u­ary 6, we check in with a few alum­ni to find out what’s hap­pened since they left the TED stage…

Noah Schultz

“There’ve been some strug­gles in there, but you high­light the beau­ty.”

After his talk in 2016, Noah Schultz was released from incar­cer­a­tion. For a time, he worked on a col­lab­o­ra­tion called Ver­bal Escape, teach­ing spo­ken word per­for­mance in prison com­mu­ni­ties. He also col­lab­o­rat­ed on a fash­ion line and food/beverage sales effort called Cas­ca­dia Kom­bucha.

When we reached him in San Fran­cis­co in Sep­tem­ber, he was on a nation­al speak­ing tour of cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties, high schools and youth orga­ni­za­tions to pro­mote his doc­u­men­tary film “Noah Schultz: From Prison to Pur­pose.”

“It’s been a marathon,” Schultz said, “a lot of sprints in there as well.”

“My TEDx expe­ri­ence was one of the most incred­i­ble expe­ri­ences of my life,” he said.

“That expe­ri­ence, that feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty and sup­port, love and accom­plish­ment in the same room, that whole expe­ri­ence lift­ed me up,” he said.

“To be able to tell my sto­ry and to be accept­ed for who I was, where I’d been and where I’m going was a huge build­ing block,” he said. “One of my biggest accom­plish­ments.”

Jonathan Chase

“Noth­ing com­pares to the feel­ing as you step out of the spot­light with the echo of applause still ring­ing behind you.”

Since his appear­ance at TEDxSalem, Jonathan Chase has giv­en pre­sen­ta­tions across the coun­try includ­ing to nation­al con­fer­ences and col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties such as Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. He also pub­lished a book, “From Sur­viv­ing to Thriv­ing: Class­room Accom­mo­da­tions for Stu­dents on the Autism Spec­trum”. He cred­its his TEDxSalem appear­ance for giv­ing his self-fund­ed book the boost it need­ed, hav­ing gar­nered over 300,000 views on YouTube.

While he does­n’t play music full time any­more, he still brings the bass out to con­fer­ences every now and then, he said.

“I think TEDx is great because any­one can get involved and sub­mit their idea as a pre­sen­ter,” he said.

“It requires com­mit­ment and a lot of rehearsal, but the pay­off is immense, and noth­ing com­pares to the feel­ing as you step out of the spot­light with the echo of applause still ring­ing behind you.”

Mark Davis

“I hope to do anoth­er TEDx talk some day.”

Dr. Davis’ talk has gar­nered almost 26,000 views on YouTube — “Cer­tain­ly the largest audi­ence I’ve ever had,” he said.

“When peo­ple book appoint­ments with me, many of them will men­tion that they’ve ‘watched my TED talk,’ ” he said.

Davis remem­bers the prepa­ra­tion for his appear­ance fond­ly.

“The group that reviewed my talk gave me excel­lent feed­back, which real­ly improved the qual­i­ty of my talk,” he said.

“The rehearsals, pre-par­ty and event itself were a great mix of pro­fes­sion­al and fun.”

Kelsey Juliana

“It hum­bled me, but it also empow­ered me.”

It was less than a year ago that this “cli­mate kid” inspired her audi­ence to believe in the pow­er of youth to fight cli­mate change. Her infec­tious opti­mism encour­aged oth­ers to believe that any­one could make a dif­fer­ence in the world, even in the face of seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able odds.

These days Juliana is hold­ing down two jobs, work­ing at a local bak­ery and vol­un­teer teach­ing with the City of Eugene, while tak­ing class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon as a junior. And of course she’s still part of a poten­tial­ly ground­break­ing legal prece­dent.

On Decem­ber 11 the case that bears her name, Juliana v. U.S.A., 15-cv-01517, came back into the news as oral argu­ments were held in front of a three-judge pan­el of the 9th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, where Trump Admin­is­tra­tion lawyers had filed a motion to dis­miss.

A rul­ing could be hand­ed down any day.

“It’s very excit­ing,” she said. “It feels like it’s part of a move­ment.”

And she is grate­ful for the brief time she spent with TEDxSalem.

“What the TED expe­ri­ence allowed me to do,” she said, “is to actu­al­ly crys­tal­lize what I as a per­son, not as a youth in the move­ment, but what I as Kelsey have expe­ri­enced, have learned, have tak­en away.”

“I real­ized through that expe­ri­ence, through map­ping out my sto­ry and shar­ing my sto­ry, that, wow, I am quite an empow­ered per­son.”

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag that takes place Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, 2018, 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.

Anna Nixon: An advocate for girls in science

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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.

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

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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.