TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

Salem Convention Center

Transformation through Awareness: Meet chiropractor & yoga teacher Zohra Campbell

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It’s hap­pened to all of us. We’re lis­ten­ing to a lec­ture or read­ing a book, but we’re not real­ly pay­ing atten­tion — our minds have wan­dered off to some­thing else.

At a day full of pre­sen­ta­tions and new ideas, like TEDxSalem, we can eas­i­ly find our­selves strug­gling with focus.

That’s where Dr. Zohra Camp­bell will try to help.

The long-time Salem chi­ro­prac­tor and yoga teacher will lead two ses­sions — one in the morn­ing and one after lunch — of mind­ful­ness and pranaya­ma, yog­ic breath­ing prac­tices that help our mind get focused, present, and aware.

She’ll be ask­ing audi­ence mem­bers to breathe, move, and become more aware of their bod­ies and sur­round­ings.

“My hope is that I can help us focus on what we are here for, notice what we bring to the table that day, and let our old pat­terns go so we can be present and open to the day ahead,” Camp­bell says.

Camp­bell believes that aware­ness is trans­for­ma­tion, and that is the heart of the busi­ness she has run for 15 years, Indi­go Well­ness Cen­ter.

A chi­ro­prac­tor since 1992, Camp­bell has found that her clients’ pain is often relat­ed to stress or ten­sion pat­terns they hold in their bod­ies.

“Pos­tur­al habits, emo­tion­al habits, men­tal habits — they keep us trapped in either pain or emo­tion­al suf­fer­ing,” she says. “My pas­sion is to help peo­ple unwind that.

“I start every yoga class by hav­ing peo­ple sit and breathe and just notice what they’re com­ing with today. Once we’re aware that we hold ten­sion in our neck, every time we have that aware­ness, we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond.”

Indi­go began in 2004 in a loca­tion on south Com­mer­cial Street.  After sev­er­al loca­tion changes and with the sup­port of many stu­dents and clients, Indi­go found a home in Pringle Park Plaza, down­town Salem, five years ago.

Today, the busi­ness includes four chi­ro­prac­tors, sev­en mas­sage ther­a­pists, a coun­selor, and a full yoga stu­dio with 23 class­es each week.

Camp­bell also leads a 200-hour yoga teacher cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram and sev­er­al yoga retreats annu­al­ly. She has led retreats in Cuba, Mex­i­co, Guatemala, Hawaii, Cos­ta Rica and Italy.

Many of the retreats include a ser­vice ele­ment. In April, Camp­bell will be co-lead­ing a trip with Mik­ki Trow­bridge to India, where par­tic­i­pants will raise funds for an orga­ni­za­tion that helps vic­tims of human traf­fick­ing.

No mat­ter where she is teach­ing, Camp­bell tries to bring par­tic­i­pants’ focus back to the per­son­al aware­ness that can lead to heal­ing.

“We all feel great after we go to a yoga class or get a mas­sage, and we all wish we could feel that way all the time,” she says. “That’s real­ly my goal: to give you the tools you need to feel that way more of the time. The more we’re aware of our habits, the more oppor­tu­ni­ty there is to change them.”

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  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

TEDxSalem poet explores identity, female empowerment through words

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Poet. Col­lege stu­dent. Black woman. Hait­ian immi­grant. Adoptee.

These are just a few of Jolie Brownell’s many iden­ti­ties.

When the 20-year-old takes the stage at TEDxSalem, the audi­ence will hear her grap­ple with these iden­ti­ties through her poet­ry.

“I want to express through poet­ry my walks of life, the inter­sec­tions of my dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties, and what that means to me and to soci­ety,” Brownell says.

Brownell, who grad­u­at­ed from Sun­set High School in Beaver­ton, is a sopho­more at Loy­ola Mary­mount Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les. She’s major­ing in women and gen­der stud­ies.

Her choice of major wouldn’t sur­prise any­one who knew her in high school.

By age 19, Brownell had already won awards for her blog, “Me Too Girl,” and she had self-pub­lished a book with the same title. The book is a col­lec­tion of mes­sages and poems on girl empow­er­ment.

She has giv­en speech­es on this top­ic to hun­dreds of women and girls in the Port­land area, and led work­shops in part­ner­ship with Girls Inc., I Am That Girl, Pro­duced By Her, and Chick­Tech.

Brownell is orig­i­nal­ly from Haiti, but a Port­land fam­i­ly adopt­ed her when she was 3.

She first became ded­i­cat­ed to female empow­er­ment issues when she was just 13.

“Like many young girls around that age, I was con­sumed with self-hatred, self-doubt, lack of con­fi­dence,” she says. “Dur­ing the sum­mer between mid­dle school and high school, I decid­ed to shift gears because I real­ized that I’m going to have this body, I’m going to be this per­son for the rest of my life. Do I want to spend the rest of my life hat­ing this per­son, or do I want to spend it try­ing to teach myself how to love myself?”

Her essays and jour­nal entries about self-dis­cov­ery even­tu­al­ly led to her blog and her book.

“I’ve always loved the pow­er behind words, and I want­ed to use my words to uplift and inspire oth­ers,” Brownell says.

Brownell hopes that TEDxSalem audi­ence mem­bers will expe­ri­ence that inspi­ra­tion dur­ing her per­for­mance. But, ulti­mate­ly, the work to improve self-con­fi­dence is an indi­vid­ual pur­suit, she says.

“I’m try­ing to encour­age and uplift women. But I can only do so much and then you must car­ry it; you must do the work, the final step of lov­ing your­self,” she says. “I encour­age the audi­ence to find the deep­er mean­ings in my work and what that means for them.”

For more infor­ma­tion about Jolie Brownell, check out her web­site at www.joliebrownell.com

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  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

Make the most of your TEDxSalem experience with these 10 tips

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We’re less than 24 hours away from TEDxSalem VI. Don’t have tick­ets yet? Don’t wor­ry, you can still get them here.

Do we all have our tick­ets now? Good! Now read these ten tips on how to get the most out of your TED expe­ri­ence Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter.

10. Take notes! Bring a small note­book or down­load a notes app for your smart­phone. You def­i­nitely want to remem­ber those moments that made you smile, made you think or just jumped out at you. Take a moment dur­ing the event and at the end of the day to jot down the insights you gained.

9. Be present in the moment. We love that you want to Tweet and Insta­gram about your amaz­ing TEDxSalem expe­ri­ence. But don’t get so wrapped up in your phone that you miss a poignant moment dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion or a TED talk!

8. Be open-mind­ed. Some of the ideas worth shar­ing may be shock­ing. Some might be a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sial or entire­ly new to you. Don’t write off a TED talk even if you find your­self bristling at it. Be open to 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 and see what oth­er good­ies await 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 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 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 read the TEDXSalem blog for more infor­ma­tion about each speak­er. 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 at the beau­ti­ful Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter 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. (Did the intro­vert in you just cringe? It’s ok. TEDxSalem is for intro­verts, too.)

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. One 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 Jan. 6. The day is devot­ed to shar­ing ideas!

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag that takes place Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5, 2019, 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.

Friends explore music and spoken word on stage at TEDxSalem Saturday

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Chris Ross and Nathan Olsen, two accom­plished and unique souls, will share their long-stand­ing friend­ship on stage for the first time in the form of a musi­cal con­ver­sa­tion at TEDxSalem Sat­ur­day.

One will play the key­board. The oth­er will speak.

The dis­cus­sion will tack­le themes such as how to make things bet­ter, the pas­sage of time, com­ing and going, trust­ing our­selves, and how to be thought­ful­ly inten­tion­al. The idea of play and being play­ful will thread through­out the con­ver­sa­tion; Chris with words, Nathan with music. The audi­ence will expe­ri­ence all the feels on the jour­ney with them through their vision of RE.

Chris has been in Salem about 15 years after liv­ing in Upstate New York, Ari­zona and Cal­i­for­nia. We can thank his wife who prompt­ed the move to Ore­gon after tak­ing a job teach­ing law at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty.

By day Chris teach­es preschool here in Salem. He also works with the Her­itage School, a small K – 8 pri­vate school, also in Salem. He has been work­ing with chil­dren for 40 years. He says he is very play­ful, and the chil­dren keep him young.

When he isn’t work­ing with kids or spend­ing time out­doors with his fam­i­ly, he oper­ates his very small “Uber ser­vice” (his words) which trans­ports his daugh­ters to and from their many activ­i­ties.

“I like things that go in a lot of direc­tions at the same time,” Chris said. He likes to see lay­ers of things and inter­pre­ta­tions from dif­fer­ing views. It makes sense then, that he is a world trav­el­er, hav­ing seen every con­ti­nent but Antarc­ti­ca. Don’t wor­ry, it is on his list.

It was dif­fi­cult for him to give me favorites. “I like to like things,” he said. So, in keep­ing with his love of trav­el, he loves all types of music and food.

As for his stage part­ner Nathan Olsen, they have been friends a long time and have often talked about how to do a per­for­mance like this. The oppor­tu­ni­ty has final­ly pre­sent­ed itself.

Nathan is a Salem-based, self-taught musi­cian who works as a con­sul­tant, teacher, com­pos­er, and per­former. He majored in com­mu­ni­ca­tions in col­lege and worked in pub­lic rela­tions for a while before final­ly decid­ing to fol­low his pas­sion. Accord­ing to his web­page biog­ra­phy, he has an exten­sive resume and plays in a vari­ety of music gen­res. He will say, though, that his favorite music includes Funk and Jazz Fusion.

And he is proud that, “After many years work­ing as a side­man, this year I’m final­ly fronting my own instru­men­tal Jazz/Funk trio.”

Rather than words, he uses music to express his thoughts and feel­ings. He “lets his fin­gers do the talk­ing.”

Hear this unique con­ver­sa­tion of words, music and friend­ship with Chris and Nathan at TEDxSalem Sat­ur­day.

Chris Ross

Home­town: Pitts­burgh, New York

Edu­ca­tion: BA in Busi­ness and Psy­chol­o­gy from State col­leges in New York; MA in Edu­ca­tion, North­ern Ari­zona Uni­ver­si­ty

Fam­i­ly: Wife, War­ren, and two daugh­ters still in school

Hob­bies: ski­ing, hik­ing, moun­tain climb­ing, camp­ing

Favorite recent movie: The Post, Black Pan­ther

Favorite music: Music of all kinds. Grew up on jazz, blue­grass, music fes­ti­vals and hun­dreds of Grate­ful Dead shows

 

Nathan Olsen

Home­town: Salem, OR (moved here in 3rd grade)

Edu­ca­tion: Radio Broad­cast­ing at Mt Hood Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Maryl­hurst Uni­ver­si­ty

Fam­i­ly: One broth­er, His par­ents are founders of and teach­ers at Her­itage School

Hob­bies: hik­ing – he feels “con­tin­u­al­ly for­tu­nate to live in the Pacif­ic North­west

Favorite recent movie: The orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy

Favorite music: Funk and Jazz Fusion

 

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.

Vickie Hardin Woods: “Hi! Do you like pie?”

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Ac6-12-2015cord­ing to Vick­ie Hardin Woods, “if you’re going to give a gift, [a pie] is about the right gift.”

“If you give some­thing that is too valu­able, then the per­son feels oblig­ed to give some­thing back,” she said. “But you also want it to have enough effort and val­ue” to show that you care.

Two years ago Woods was inspired to per­fect the gift of giv­ing, one day at a time, with a lit­tle help from her oven. Over the course of a 365-day peri­od, begin­ning with a lemon meringue, she baked one fresh pie each day from scratch and deliv­ered it, unso­licit­ed, to friends, neigh­bors and even­tu­al­ly even com­plete strangers. She gained noto­ri­ety in local news by pho­tograph­ing each pie and its smil­ing, occa­sion­al­ly dis­ori­ent­ed recip­i­ent as part of her blog.

For her TEDx talk, Woods will dis­cuss how sur­pris­ing peo­ple with pie gave her both a deep­er under­stand­ing of com­mu­ni­ty, and insight into her own sense of pur­pose after retir­ing from a 30-year career in local gov­ern­ment.

A pie-a-day blog – Seems daunt­ing, but is it real­ly? Here are some key ingre­di­ents, and tips to make yours a smash hit at your next ran­dom encounter…

What you would need:

  • (137) dif­fer­ent pie recipes
  • Fresh, local, whole­some organ­ic ingre­di­ents
  • A Tum­blr blog
  • Be retired
  • Option­al: (5) grand­chil­dren to occa­sion­al­ly help deliv­er pies.

Break the ice. “That was on many days the hard­est thing I had to do,” she said, “to find some­body, and then approach them and give them the pie.” It’s impor­tant to estab­lish a con­nec­tion, even if it’s brief, she said.

“You can’t just walk up to a stranger and say, ‘Here’s a pie.’ You have to build some sort of rela­tion­ship, no mat­ter how short it is.”

Some were more recep­tive than oth­ers, she said. Some­times small talk would not be enough for a skep­ti­cal stranger; more often than not, though, Woods’ pie pitch would find a will­ing par­tic­i­pant.

“There’s some­thing about break­ing through that bar­ri­er,” she said. “I don’t know how many times I had peo­ple say to me, ‘This is the best thing that’s hap­pened to me today!”

Fail­ures hap­pen. “Usu­al­ly if [a pie] didn’t turn out, I fig­ured it was me, not the pie,” Woods said. She remem­bered a par­tic­u­lar pecan pie she tried to show off at a cook­ing class she was tak­ing at Carl’s Cui­sine on Chemeke­ta St. In a hur­ry, she had failed to give the pie enough time to set. “I opened up the car­ri­er and there’s this gooey mess all over the bot­tom.”

Blend until ingre­di­ents come togeth­er. Woods sees pie giv­ing as “less as grat­i­tude than just a gift, free of all encum­brances, grace,” she said. It took rough­ly a month to work up the nerve to approach her first stranger, she said. But the reward of mak­ing peo­ple hap­py made the chal­lenge worth­while for her.

“I got the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that I touched someone’s life,” she said.

For Woods, pie pro­vid­ed struc­ture to a life in tran­si­tion. It forced her to get out into the world. And in hand­ing home-baked good­ness to peo­ple some­times far from their home, she brought the world a lit­tle clos­er to hers.

“Each pie is its own jour­ney,” she said, from her kitchen to points unknown, and the sto­ries told and expe­ri­enced in between.

“That’s what life is about, our sto­ries.”

 

– To see Vick­ie Hardin Woods and oth­er TEDx Salem 2015 speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.

 

Fearless against failure: The story behind this year’s location

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SCC Front 1

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt any­thing?
— Vin­cent van Gogh

It’s espe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful that this year’s TEDxSalem con­fer­ence — the theme of which is “fear­less” — is being held at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter.

Why? Fear very near­ly pre­vent­ed a con­fer­ence cen­ter from com­ing to down­town Salem at all.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the fear that such a ven­ture would fail.

The con­ven­tion cen­ter opened with great fan­fare and a rib­bon-cut­ting in 2005.

But in the decades lead­ing up to that moment, devel­op­ers and city offi­cials alike had tried and failed and tried again to bring a hotel and con­ven­tion cen­ter to Salem’s down­town.

There was the pro­posed Hilton Hotel and con­ven­tion cen­ter in 1976 that would have cost an esti­mat­ed $21 mil­lion. But the devel­op­er strug­gled to find finan­cial back­ers and ulti­mate­ly cost the city hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. There was talk of a river­front con­ven­tion cen­ter, a down­town civic space and even a golf course. A devel­op­er in the 90’s pro­posed a $27.7 mil­lion con­fer­ence cen­ter and hotel, only to be reject­ed by the City Coun­cil.

It was­n’t until the ear­ly 2000s that city offi­cials began work­ing with the com­pa­ny behind the Phoenix Inn to bring a hotel and con­ven­tion cen­ter to the space. A $32 mil­lion cen­ter was approved in 2003 under May­or Janet Tay­lor.

But fears about the project — its size, scale, cost, what it promised the com­mu­ni­ty, even what it looked like — con­tin­ued to run ram­pant. Cit­i­zens were wor­ried about the size and the design. Busi­ness own­ers expressed con­cerns over its impact to the down­town econ­o­my. And some city offi­cials ago­nized over whether or not it was a wise invest­ment.

When the cen­ter opened in 2005, even its strongest sup­port­ers acknowl­edged it would like­ly lose mon­ey in its first few years.

Instead, the cen­ter host­ed 284 events and 45,000 peo­ple in its first 10 months alone.

Since then, the cen­ter has played host to elab­o­rate din­ners, ele­gant fundrais­ers, farewell par­ties for city dig­ni­taries, nation­al con­fer­ences and local high school reunions.

And this fall, we’re thrilled that the cen­ter will be host­ing TEDxSalem 2015.

It was a fear­less few who made the cen­ter a real­i­ty. This Octo­ber, let’s cel­e­brate that.