TEDxSalem

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Not just talk: TEDxSalem live entertainment lineup

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Robotic Torrest beatboxes at TEDxSalem 2014 in the Historic Elsinore Theatre. (Photo by Anna Reed)
Robot­ic Tor­rest beat­box­es at TEDxSalem 2014 in the His­toric Elsi­nore The­atre. (Pho­to by Anna Reed)

When we think of TED and TEDx, we typ­i­cal­ly think of speak­ers giv­ing talks on a red rug on stage. That’s because many of us have only expe­ri­enced TED through videos online.

The val­ue of attend­ing a live TEDx event is the full expe­ri­ence. That includes live talks, of course, and we spent a lot of time pro­mot­ing our speak­ers. But that’s only half of it. With your tick­et also comes break­out activ­i­ties, snacks, a full meal, lots of free stuff and live enter­tain­ment.

Here are the per­form­ers that will keep you delight­ed through­out the day on Oct. 3:

Riv­er City Rock Star Acad­e­my: A rock school for young musi­cians will very pos­si­bly melt your face off and get your blood pump­ing.

Rich McCloud: Singer, song­writer and spo­ken word artist, McCloud will get your soul stir­ring into peace­ful bliss.

Vor­tex Remover: Made up of Salem’s Peter DeG­root and Rob Groves, Vor­tex Remover is an exper­i­men­tal rock duo that’s a lit­tle bit weird, but a lot of bit fun.

Break­dancers: Some of Salem’s best break­dancers will take the stage for a thrilling show­case of tal­ent. Try not to let your jaw drop to the floor.

Enlight­ened The­atrics: Salem’s own the­ater com­pa­ny (now based at the his­toric Grand The­ater) will have a sur­prise per­for­mance for us. But since it’s a sur­prise, that’s all we’re going to tell you!

Our team work tire­less­ly to curate the most ful­fill­ing and fun day and we’re so excit­ed to share it with you. If you haven’t already, buy your tick­ets at tedxsalem2015.eventbrite.com.

World domination one TEDxSalem at a time

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TEDxSalem 2013
Par­tic­i­pants did­n’t know what to expect dur­ing the first TEDxSalem, but they left feel­ing con­nect­ed, ener­gized.

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.

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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.

 

Jodi Winnwalker: The power of music

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?????????????????????????????????????????????????????Jodi Win­nwalk­er wit­nessed the pow­er of music ther­a­py even before she knew what music ther­a­py was.

It was through her moth­er, who sang and hummed to Jodi and her broth­er, David, while grow­ing up. David is one year old­er than Jodi and he has Down syn­drome. Music was a key way David con­nect­ed with oth­ers, and that’s where Jodi first learned about the pow­er of music.

Then in the sixth grade, she joined choir.

“That’s where I real­ly learned the pow­er of music for build­ing com­mu­ni­ty and for lead­er­ship skills,” Jodi said.

When she was 17, her choir direc­tor sug­gest­ed she be a music ther­a­pist. And that put her back to when she first learned of music, on her moth­er’s hip.

Today, Jodi owns a com­pa­ny called Earth­tones Music Ther­a­py, which employs 14 music ther­a­pists. Jodi’s focus is peo­ple with Alzheimer’s, but Earth­tones offers a drum cir­cle pro­gram for vet­er­ans, a chil­dren’s pro­gram and a hor­ti­cul­ture ther­a­py pro­gram.

At TEDxSalem, Jodi will share exam­ples of how music ther­a­py affect­ed peo­ple’s lives, includ­ing a woman named Mol­ly, who had phys­i­cal and devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties and was placed in the Fairview Train­ing Cen­ter as a child. Jodi worked with Mol­ly, whose sto­ry is the sub­ject of the doc­u­men­tary “Where’s Mol­ly.”

“I real­ly would like to encour­age peo­ple to con­sid­er how they can use music inten­tion­al­ly for them­selves for their own health and well­ness,” she said.

TEDxSalem to provide ASL interpreting

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Koli cutlerWe have some mag­nif­i­cent news to share: TEDxSalem will now become acces­si­ble to even more of our com­mu­ni­ty, thanks to two vol­un­teers who have stepped up to help us make it an ASL inter­pret­ed event.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is very rare for a live TED event to be inter­pret­ed and we are so excit­ed to be able to pro­vide this ser­vice to our beloved ASL com­mu­ni­ty.

Huge props to Karen Brush for being the cat­a­lyst for this devel­op­ment, and huge thanks to Cyn­thia Ander­son and Koli Cut­ler for vol­un­teer­ing their time.CynthiaInternetPhoto

So please spread the word of this won­der­ful news, and if you are part of the ASL com­mu­ni­ty or know some­one who would enjoy this oppor­tu­ni­ty, be sure to let them know.

Tick­ets are avail­able at http://goo.gl/pI3UJ2 or skip the fees and get them in per­son at the His­toric Elsi­nore The­atre in down­town Salem!

Travis Jank: Bitcoin and the 21st Century Gold Rush

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Head ShotTravis Jank’s inter­est in cryp­tocur­ren­cy, exchang­ing mon­ey through encrypt­ed trans­ac­tions, is an evo­lu­tion of his ear­li­er inter­ests.

“I’ve been into over­clock­ing com­put­ers for a while, which is tak­ing the fastest, newest tech­nol­o­gy and push­ing it to its out­er lim­its by cool­ing it with liq­uid nitro­gen,” Jank said. “The com­put­ers need for cryp­tocur­ren­cy, like bit­coin, are extreme­ly fast and pow­er­ful so I start­ed learn­ing about it in 2009 and it kind of took off from there.”

Jank will be shar­ing his inter­est in bit­coin and what he sees in its poten­tial at his TEDxSalem talk Sat­ur­day, Sept. 13.

To under­stand the rise of bit­coin, Jank sug­gest tak­ing a look back into the era of the Cal­i­for­nia gold rush.

“They did­n’t just allow one com­pa­ny to buy up all the land and start min­ing. They said, ‘It’s here, come and stake your claim,’” Jank said. “Bit­coin start­ed in sort of the same way, it was cre­at­ed with the idea that any­one with mon­ey and access to a com­put­er would be able to exchange mon­ey for goods and ser­vices with­out the bar­ri­ers of the estab­lished finan­cial sys­tems.”

The prin­ci­ples behind cryp­tocur­ren­cy writ large are the same decen­tral­ized ones behind the larg­er inter­net of putting peo­ple on an equal foot­ing, but apply­ing it to mon­ey.

That said, Bit­coin does have its detrac­tors and has expe­ri­enced some dis­con­cert­ing grow­ing pains. Because the cur­ren­cy is unreg­u­lat­ed and a rel­a­tive­ly small per­cent­age of over­all wealth is invest­ed in it, it’s pos­si­ble for major play­ers to have out­sized impacts.

“When Chi­na jumped into bit­coin, we saw the val­ue go from $100 to $1,300. When the gov­ern­ment scaled back its invest­ment it dropped to $400, and now is hov­er­ing around $700,” Jank said. “Some peo­ple made a lot of mon­ey, some peo­ple lost a lot of mon­ey, but it was the same way dur­ing the gold rush.”

Reign­ing in that volatil­i­ty is a mat­ter of spread­ing the bit­coin to a larg­er num­ber of busi­ness­es and con­sumers, he said.

“Right now, you can’t always get what you want in exchange for bit­coin ‚so it can add an extra step, but I can see it becom­ing some­thing like a check­ing account. The new peo­ple who use and accept bit­coin are also bring­ing in new ideas about low­er­ing the bar­ri­ers,” Jank said.

In the long-run, Jank sees cryp­tocur­ren­cy as a poten­tial cure for some of our finan­cial woes (think deficits and default­ing), and a equal­i­ty-dri­ven world,. If you want to hear how, you’ll need a tick­et for TEDxSalem 2014. Buy one now.

Jessica Amos McElravy: Finding peace, starting with yourself

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1403735460000-meditation-49702When Jes­si­ca Amos McEl­ravy’s daugh­ter was born nine years ago, she came to terms with a dif­fi­cult real­i­ty.

In order to give her daugh­ter, Haven, the best she could, she need­ed to do the same for her­self.

So with some help, she addressed her anx­i­ety and the tox­ic things she’d been hold­ing on to. She learned tech­niques to live with­in her own nature and to avoid self-shame.

Now, she guides oth­ers through a sim­i­lar jour­ney through her busi­ness, Stay With Your­self.

At TEDxSalem, Jes­si­ca will share the process she goes through to soothe her anx­i­ety and fears — the dread­ed emo­tions we all have felt. The unique part of Jes­si­ca’s talk is that she will most like­ly be feel­ing those very emo­tions while stand­ing on stage and speak­ing to you.

The thing that stands out when speak­ing with her is that she does­n’t try to ban­ish fear or extin­guish anx­i­ety. In fact, she acknowl­edges them, then finds ways to work around them.

The key, Jes­si­ca says, is to avoid build­ing the neg­a­tive feel­ings even more by judg­ing them.

“Rec­og­niz­ing my needs and pro­vid­ing for my needs is the trick most of the time,” she said. “Tak­ing care of myself is the biggest com­po­nent.”

Jes­si­ca’s ulti­mate goal is to remind her TEDx audi­ence that they are not alone and that they are capa­ble of find­ing inner peace.

If every­body could find that peace, life and the world would be a much bet­ter place.

“I think that’s real­ly good news and def­i­nite­ly worth spread­ing,” she said.

If you want to see Jes­si­ca in per­son, get your tick­ets now at the Elsi­nore The­atre or http://tiny.cc/TEDxSalem.