TEDxSalem speakers: Where are they now?

Every year, TEDxSalem speak­ers inspire us with their unique ideas that shed light on the world around us, but where have these ideas tak­en them since leav­ing the stage?

We caught up with sev­er­al past speak­ers to see where they are now. Here’s what they had to say:

Jonathan Chase, who spoke last year about the inner work­ings of the autis­tic mind, is con­sult­ing at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty to help sci­en­tists bet­ter under­stand research par­tic­i­pants on the autism spec­trum. He has also kept busy pre­sent­ing at con­fer­ences, uni­ver­si­ties, work­shops and offer­ing train­ing for par­ents, pro­fes­sion­als and edu­ca­tors.

“TEDxSalem was a great expe­ri­ence and led to a lot of inter­est in what I do and my unique approach to autism sup­port,” he said.

Travis Jank, who talked about Bit­Coin , a type of dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy, start­ed a new com­pa­ny with fel­low speak­er Richard Sur­roz , called the Nerdy Nin­jas, to pro­duce show­case PCS and to do events includ­ing the Vanil­la Ice Project.

Simon Tam, who talked about mak­ing every word count in 2014, has done four more TED talks and is tour­ing the coun­try with his band, The Slants. Cur­rent­ly he is head­ed to Wash­ing­ton DC for a case that might expand the First Amend­ment. Plus he devel­oped a great new taco recipe.

Jef­fer­son Smith, who talked thank­less jobs last year, has con­tin­ued to build XRAY.FM, a start­up radio sta­tion vot­ed Portland’s Best Radio Sta­tion this sum­mer. He is also work­ing with a crew of fel­low vol­un­teers to orga­nize a sto­ry­telling series focused on rad­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty grat­i­tude. The crew is called SuperThank, and they have start­ed a pod­cast and radio show.

“Sept. 21st is World Grat­i­tude Day,” he said, “and we’ll be doing some ridicu­lous things.”

Patrick Spencer, who talked about the Cork For­est Con­ser­va­tion Alliance in 2013, has helped expand its pro­grams to all sev­en cork-

pro­duc­ing coun­tries. The Alliance’s cork recy­cling pro­gram now has more than 1,000 drop-off loca­tions across the Unit­ed States and Cana­da.

“The most excit­ing news is that we have launched an eco-tour of the cork forests in Spain,” he said. “We were very hon­ored to have the eco-tour fea­tured in the New York Times Trav­el sec­tion.”

Thank you to all our speak­ers who shared updates. This year’s line­up of TEDxSalem speak­ers promis­es to be just as excit­ing. Get your tick­ets at tedxsalem2015.eventbrite.com.