TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

Speaker Announcement

Dr. Mark Davis: When waste becomes the cure

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Mark HeadshotThey say one’s trash is another’s trea­sure.

Dr. Mark Davis has built a med­ical career on this con­cept.

To many, poop means very lit­tle. It’s just waste, to be flushed away and rarely spo­ken of.

But for some peo­ple, it’s a sig­nif­i­cant health prob­lem that severe­ly impacts their qual­i­ty of life. And the only solu­tion is more poop.

Let me explain.

Davis, a Port­land-based natur­o­path­ic physi­cian, has ded­i­cat­ed his career to help­ing peo­ple with stom­ach con­di­tions — espe­cial­ly those who have tried every­thing, to no avail.

At TEDxSalem on Oct. 3, Davis will speak about the work he is doing to improve the lives of those who have stub­born inflam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease and infec­tious col­i­tis.

Davis comes from a fam­i­ly of sci­en­tists and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, and he nat­u­ral­ly formed an inter­est in a career in the field, as well.

But unlike con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine, which he says is more focused on fix­ing bro­ken bones and patch­ing up bleed­ing parts, Davis was inter­est­ed in a more holis­tic type of med­i­cine.

When he dis­cov­ered natur­opa­thy, he knew it was right up his alley.

He got into gas­troin­testi­nal health because of the influ­ence of his men­tor, Dr. Steven Sand­berg-Lewis, who is a gut health expert, Davis said.

Davis found that while many peo­ple suf­fer­ing from bow­el dis­eases found relief through diet, nutri­ents and herbs, there were some peo­ple for whom noth­ing seemed to work.

He did some dig­ging into sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, and he found an answer that has helped many peo­ple: fecal trans­plan­ta­tion. In oth­er words, he takes donat­ed fecal mat­ter from healthy peo­ple to trans­plant it in sick people’s intestines through an ene­ma.

Today, he runs his own donor bank at his prac­tice and con­tin­ues to help peo­ple who have tried every­thing to relieve their bow­el dis­ease symp­toms with no suc­cess.

You would have to attend TEDxSalem to learn more about fecal trans­plan­ta­tion, what Davis has done to make the process more — well, appe­tiz­ing — and the bar­ri­ers the gov­ern­ment has placed on peo­ple who would ben­e­fit from this treat­ment.

Tick­ets are avail­able at tedxsalem2015.eventbrite.com.

Michael Davis: What we get from “Sesame Street”

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Author of "Street Gang"Ask Michael Davis what his favorite Sesame Street sketch is, and one comes to mind right away: “Bert and Ernie Fish Call.” In it, the laid-back Ernie con­founds Bert with his unortho­dox yet wild­ly suc­cess­ful method for fish­ing. It’s a sophis­ti­cat­ed and pret­ty fun­ny gag for such a sim­ple con­ceit: two Mup­pets in a boat, dodg­ing fish.

“I think they’re one of the great com­e­dy teams of all time,” said Davis, author of the New York Times Best­seller Street Gang: The Com­plete His­to­ry of Sesame Street, and speak­er at this year’s TEDx Salem.

Fun fact – Accord­ing to Davis, in Bert and Ernie you can see sub­tle hints of the real-life cre­ative ten­sion between the straight-laced Frank Oz, and the more mis­chie­vous Jim Hen­son, one that helped dri­ve the show for years.

You can also see how a sketch that first aired in 1982 endures to this day, and still appeals to view­ers both younger and old­er. Cur­rent­ly the clip has over 3 mil­lion views on YouTube.

“That’s the mag­ic, that they’ve been able to keep [the show’s suc­cess] rolling for so many years,” he said.

 

For his TED talk Davis will share how the show has evolved to main­tain its pop­u­lar­i­ty with mil­lions of chil­dren in its over 45-year his­to­ry. He will also dis­cuss how the show’s pro­duc­ers con­tin­ue to par­lay that pow­er into pos­i­tive social change both in the US and around the world. Accord­ing to Davis they are cur­rent­ly work­ing to bring aware­ness of san­i­ta­tion and hygiene to audi­ences in India and Pak­istan. In South Africa, the first-ever HIV-pos­i­tive Mup­pet, Kami, has helped bring AIDS aware­ness to a coun­try that has strug­gled to face the cri­sis. The Queen of Jor­dan Rania Al Abdul­lah also has cred­it­ed the show (Hikay­at Sim­sim) for empow­er­ing women in her coun­try.

It’s one of the key mis­sions of the Sesame Work­shop, the non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion behind Sesame Street: to use the show’s con­cepts in hotspots around the globe, from North­ern Ire­land to the Balka­ns to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Davis said.

Every­where it is seen, the show serves to “help chil­dren cope, and to teach Street Gang Coverthem about their soci­ety,” he said.

Through a com­bi­na­tion of com­e­dy and tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing tech­niques, Sesame Street has impact­ed gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren world­wide, Davis said, expos­ing them to some­times tough lessons through intel­li­gence and wit — even if some­times the lessons and occa­sion­al­ly even the wit are beyond the grasp of the show’s core demo­graph­ic of 2- to 4‑year-olds.

Sesame Street has had the stay­ing pow­er and the patience to wait for them.

“When chil­dren get old­er and more sophis­ti­cat­ed, a light goes on,” Davis said. “They under­stand that some­body a long time ago taught them.”

Some­thing to think about, the next time you come across a fish­er­man out on a lake yelling, “Heeere fishy-fishy-fishy!”

– To see Michael Davis and oth­er TEDx Salem 2015 speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.

Maya Kaup: Stepping Up to Stop Food Waste

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From music lessons to sports like gym­nas­tics and track, to vol­un­teer­ing with the Girl Scouts, Maya Kaup, 20, was raised to explore every oppor­tu­ni­ty, and to stay busy. Maya KaupTo find a niche. To get involved. It was only nat­ur­al, then, dur­ing her fresh­man year at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty that a Face­book video on food waste and com­mu­ni­ty hunger spurred her to action. Why not bring food recov­ery to her school?

Why not here? Why not me?

“Some­one had to do it,” the biol­o­gy major said. “I see it as a moral oblig­a­tion.”

For her TED talk, Kaup will share her expe­ri­ences found­ing the Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of the Food Recov­ery Net­work, a nation­al non-prof­it that focus­es on fight­ing food waste and hunger. Accord­ing to FRN sta­tis­tics, 17.5 mil­lion fam­i­lies nation­wide are “food-inse­cure,” not sure where their next meal will come from. In Ore­gon, 15 per­cent of fam­i­lies are food-inse­cure; the pover­ty rate in Mar­i­on Coun­ty is 19.5 per­cent. Mean­while, Amer­i­cans dis­card 35 mil­lion tons of food per year, or rough­ly 40 per­cent of all food pro­duced in the coun­try.

In 2014, Kaup along with 20 vol­un­teers helped the uni­ver­si­ty block 8,000 pounds of sur­plus, unsold food from the garbage to feed the home­less. 635521005049941726-SAL1123-Causes-FoodRecovery-ar-01Not only is good food not thrown away, but nutri­tious fruits and veg­eta­bles are saved for those who can’t often have them, Kaup said.

“It’s a win-win,” she said.

When Kaup isn’t man­ag­ing the FRN, she takes a full course load at school, and also helps care for orphaned ani­mals at the Tur­tle Ridge Wildlife Cen­ter. See­ing the suc­cess­es of her efforts moti­vates her to do even more, she said.

It “fuels my fire,” she said. “It makes me real­ize I can make a dif­fer­ence.”

To see Maya Kaup and oth­er TEDx Salem 2015 speak­ers, buy tick­ets here.

Lou Radja: Everyone deserves the opportunity to dance

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Motivational speaker Lou Radja will share the lessons he learned growing up in the Congo and getting his education in the United States.
Lou Rad­ja will share the lessons he learned grow­ing up in the Con­go and get­ting his edu­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States.

“Jam­bo!”

Lou Rad­ja announces the Swahili greet­ing wher­ev­er he goes in his deep boom­ing voice and broad smile. It’s almost impos­si­ble not to smile back.

Rad­ja, 39, grew up in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go, Africa, and, like his par­ents, attend­ed col­lege in the Unit­ed States. The gift of edu­ca­tion changed his fam­i­ly tree, and his life’s pur­pose is to return the favor.

“It’s essen­tial for our own sur­vival to take care of one anoth­er. There’s noth­ing spe­cial about it,” he said, “except human beings giv­ing every­one an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dance.”

One of his favorite say­ings from his vast col­lec­tion, is “when you take the ele­va­tor to the top; always send it back down for some­one else.”

Near­ly 50 years ago, mis­sion­ar­ies gave his father a chance to go to col­lege, not because he was smarter than every­one else, Rad­ja said, but because he was lucky.

“That’s when you real­ize that every­one has this organ­ic bril­liance but not every­one has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case it,” he said. “That moti­vates me even more to give oth­ers the same oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

“I already know they are bril­liant,” he said, “all they need is a dance floor.”

Rad­ja found­ed EduCon­go, a U.S. based non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that helps more than 2,000 under­priv­i­leged chil­dren in the Con­go get a qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion. It’s his way of send­ing the ele­va­tor back down for some­one else.

Rad­ja is also a moti­va­tion­al speak­er who draws on his expe­ri­ence grow­ing up in Con­go and his edu­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States to inspire peo­ple to be more and give more. Rad­ja will share his talk “Africa, my roots. Amer­i­ca, my wings” at TEDxSalem Sat­ur­day, Oct. 3, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter.

To hear Radja’s talk and lis­ten to oth­er TEDxSalem speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.

A few of Radja’s favorite quotes:

“Life isn’t about wait­ing for the storm to pass…It’s about learn­ing to dance in the rain.”
‑Vivian Greene

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with oth­ers.”
‑African proverb

“Twen­ty Years From Now You Will Be More Dis­ap­point­ed By The Things You Didn’t Do Than By The Ones You Did Do…Explore. Dream. Dis­cov­er.”
‑Attrib­uted to Mark Twain

Rhea Stadick: Bringing Humanity to Software Development

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Some­times the only thing stand­ing in the way of suc­cess is doubt, accord­ing to Rhea Stadick, soft­ware devel­op­er and orga­ni­za­tion­al coach at Intel. “Just assump­tions that it can’t hap­pen, it won’t hap­pen, or there’s a rule against it,” she says.

There’s a lot less in your way than you think, she says, if you just have the courage to try some­thing new.

For her TED talk, Stadick will dis­cuss her efforts to bring a new man­age­ment approach to soft­ware, one that focus­es more on col­lab­o­ra­tion, adapt­abil­i­ty and inno­va­tion rather than con­for­mi­ty, dead­lines and “deliv­er­ables.” One that encour­ages “out-of-the-box” think­ing. It’s called Agile Devel­op­ment, and it promis­es not only bet­ter pro­grams for end users, but a bet­ter life for pro­gram­mers.

“It’s about bring­ing human­i­ty to the work­place,” says Stadick, sit­ting in her team room at Intel’s Jones Farm cam­pus, where she over­sees the company’s efforts to imple­ment Agile man­age­ment strate­gies. It seems espe­cial­ly odd to see robots posi­tioned around her as she says this. But those robots – in essence stands with mon­i­tor screens – help to mim­ic face-to-face meet­ings with pro­gram­mers who may be in oth­er coun­tries, part of Agile’s empha­sis on direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In and around the room there is a 3‑D print­er, couch­es, and a large white­board with var­i­ous Post-It notes on it, and ideas scrib­bled across its sur­face. A large wall-size win­dow opens to trees, leaves wav­ing in the wind.

It’s a breath of fresh air for pro­gram­mers, to have such an open space that encour­ages indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing.

And it’s a stark con­trast to the tra­di­tion­al­ly heavy-hand­ed, bureau­crat­ic and par­ti­tioned approach to soft­ware that defined the indus­try in the past, an approach infa­mous­ly por­trayed in the 1999 movie Office Space. Think exas­per­at­ed engi­neers — “I am good at deal­ing with peo­ple!! Can’t you under­stand that?!” – sep­a­rat­ing devel­op­ers from the company’s clients. Think Bill Lum­bergh, hand­ing out week­end work and enforc­ing cov­er sheets for TPS reports. Think Peter Gib­bons, drown­ing in a sea of cubi­cles every morn­ing, doing just enough work to not get has­sled.The Old Way

“Six-by-six cubi­cles are not nec­es­sar­i­ly what humans are designed to do,” Stadick says.

As a new soft­ware hire 10 years ago, she saw first­hand the frus­tra­tions of just cor­rect­ing defects instead of pre­vent­ing them, and spend­ing “crazy hours” on the job and at home, just to achieve the same aver­age suc­cess rate, nev­er bet­ter.

“I saw how painful some of the ways we ran projects and teams were for peo­ple,” she says.

Today, with Agile Devel­op­ment, Stadick is hop­ing to dri­ve change not just at Intel, but across the indus­try.  Her suc­cess could not only rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way we lead our projects, but also the way we lead our lives.

There are still some obsta­cles, she con­cedes, not sur­pris­ing when try­ing to uproot an assem­bly-line man­age­ment strat­e­gy that hear­kens back to the Model‑T. But Stadick has faith in her team.

“We work with the some of the most intel­li­gent peo­ple in the world,” she says.

“We can do pret­ty amaz­ing things; there’s not a lot of things hold­ing us back.”

TEDxSalem speaker has big ideas for small houses

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Photo courtesy of Eugene Weekly
Pho­to cour­tesy of Todd Cooper/Eugene Week­ly

The Rev. Dan Bryant didn’t set out to rev­o­lu­tion­ize hous­ing for the home­less, it just sort of hap­pened.

Bryant is one of 13 speak­ers at this year’s TEDxSalem Oct. 3. His home base is First Chris­t­ian Church in Eugene where home­less and low-income res­i­dents go for help, meals and an empa­thet­ic ear down­town. So when Eugene strug­gled with an influx of home­less res­i­dents in 2011, the city invit­ed Bryant, along with many oth­ers, to brain­storm solu­tions.

“A place to be” topped the list of needs.

Then in walked Andy Heben, a guy who spent his sum­mer vis­it­ing home­less tent cities around the coun­try to under­stand what works and what doesn’t. Bryant hired Heben and togeth­er they per­suad­ed the city to let them pilot a home­less com­mu­ni­ty on one acre of unused city land in 2013.

That’s the gen­e­sis of Oppor­tu­ni­ty Vil­lage Eugene, the city’s first suc­cess­ful self-gov­erned home­less com­mu­ni­ty.  As many as 35 res­i­dents and five dogs call the vil­lage home at any one time.

“This isn’t some­thing I set out to do,” Bryant said. “I was more of a peace and social jus­tice guy work­ing on glob­al issues.”

Now he describes him­self as an acci­den­tal hous­ing wonk, and he has big ideas for the next evo­lu­tion of hous­ing for the home­less: Micro Hous­ing.

Cur­rent­ly there are few afford­able hous­ing options for home­less res­i­dents ready to strike out on their own. There is a five-year wait­ing list for sin­gles and cou­ples to get Sec­tion 8 Hous­ing, a fed­er­al hous­ing pro­gram for low-income res­i­dents.

But Bryant hopes to pilot a solu­tion this year that involves 1.2 acres, tiny homes and big ideas that pick up where Oppor­tu­ni­ty Vil­lage Eugene leaves off.

“It’s a game chang­er in many ways,” Bryant said, “They have their tiny ver­sion of the Amer­i­can dream.”

To hear how Bryant plans to rev­o­lu­tion­ize hous­ing for the home­less and to lis­ten to oth­er TEDx Salem speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.