TEDxSalem 2014 speaker announcement: Chip Conrad

You prob­a­bly know Chip Con­rad as one of the fun­ni­est come­di­ans with the clean­est mouth.

As the dri­ving force behind Capi­tol City The­ater and one of its star comics, Chip has been mak­ing Salem laugh with his fam­i­ly-friend­ly brand of humor for years. And now, we are pleased to announce he will bring his trade­mark wit as this year’s TEDxSalem host.

“I want the event to hap­pen and to be suc­cess­ful,” he says. “I enjoy being the per­son to set a crowd at ease.”

Chip got his start in com­e­dy in Flori­da, when he was asked to find a way to bring peo­ple in for a cof­fee shop owned by a church. He’d been writ­ing com­e­dy and learn­ing improv at the time, so he fig­ured it was a good method to get peo­ple in the door.

“Soon we had sold-out crowds and start­ed going across the state,” he remem­bers.

From there, Chip spent the next 10 years trav­el­ing the world, per­form­ing improv. He moved to San Diego for a while to surf, met his wife, and togeth­er the two of them head­ed back to where she had grown up: Salem, Ore­gon.

“It was after a while I saw a need for com­e­dy in the area,” he says. “Salem just embraced it right away.”

Chip has embraced Salem, too. In addi­tion to Capi­tol City The­ater, he’s the mas­ter­mind behind Salem Sharks, the live event mod­eled after a tele­vi­sion show where investors con­sid­er prod­uct and ser­vice pitch­es from aspir­ing entre­pre­neurs.

He’s also the one who brought Lemon­ade Day to Salem, where kids learned the ups and downs of run­ning their own busi­ness by turn­ing the Salem area into a mec­ca of lemon­ade stands.

“I want­ed to do edu­ca­tion­al, edu-tain­ment types of events,” he says. “This is a kid city. This town embraces that.”

Chip says this will be his first time attend­ing a TED event, but he remem­bers being intro­duced to the con­fer­ence through watch­ing “real­ly enrap­tur­ing” YouTube videos.

“You think, ‘I hope we have one of these in our town,’ and then Bri­an and Car­lee come along and make it hap­pen,” he says.

“I think Bri­an and Car­lee have a vision for the future of Salem,” he adds. “They’re try­ing to change the spir­it of Salem and change it for the bet­ter. Let’s give Salem a rea­son to stop say­ing, ‘There’s noth­ing to do here.’ I do feel I am with them on that.”

So what does Chip hope for TEDxSalem this year?

“I want every­body to come to this,” he says. “I don’t want there to be an open seat.”