TEDx TT 2009

(Photos on Flickr w/ TEDxTt 2009 tags)

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On October 3rd, 2009, the Terry project held its second “TEDx Terry Talks” conference. Like the year before, the conference was very much a collaboration from many parts of the UBC student community, as well as the excellent feedback from the fine folks at TEDx. Here, TEDx Terry talks continued to be the UBC student conference where our very own students had the platform to express their own passions – be they related to their roles as academic participants or as advocates for social change.

The day occurred in the beautiful Life Science Institute with an audience that peaked at around 300 (held steady at > 250 for the day). Here, those audience members were on hand to hear out 7 undergraduate, 1 graduate, and 1 “Young Alumnus” present their stories, be introduced to a single wish, as well as listen to three great TED videos.

In the next month or so, we’ll be rolling out the videos for all to see. They will be presented here, but you can join us on twitter or facebook if you want to be notified – they certainly delivered and demonstrated where students can place the bar for inspiration.

Now with the TEDx program in effect, we are pleased to join the ranks of other great TEDx initiatives around the world.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is call TEDx (place), where x=independently organized TED event. At our TEDx (place) event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

10:00 – 10:10 INTRODUCTIONS – Chris Anderson and Dave Ng
10:10 – 10:30 “Public Health in the 21st Century: the Open-Source Outbreak” – Jennifer Gardy (alumni speaker, BCCDC | Globe and Mail)
10:30 – 10:50 “Gender Quest” – Alexander Cannon (DMA student, School of Music)
10:50 – 11:10 TED video (Dan Ariely)

11:10 – 11:35 BREAK

11:35 – 11:55 “On Perspectives of Global Nomads” – Azim Wazeer (4th yr, Sauder School of Business, UBC Greek Life)
11:55 – 12:15 ” The African Paradox” – Iris Amuto (4th yr, Political Science, Woman’s and Gender Studies, UBC Africa Awareness)
12:15 – 12:35 “Sharing Wonder” – Jennifer Kaban (Unclassified student, TRIUMF)

12:35 – 1:20 LUNCH

1:20 – 1:40 TED video (Stefan Sagmeister)
1:40 – 2:00 “Major Angst” – Camille Israel (4th yr, Anthropology)
2:00 – 2:20 “Malaria: How We Are Biting Back” – Nadine Qureshi (3rd yr, Cell Biology and Genetics, Mission Against Malaria)
2:20 – 2:40 “What Synthetic Biology Can Do For You” – Eric Ma (4th yr, Integrated Sciences, UBC iGEM)

2:40 – 3:05 BREAK

3:05 – 3:15 TED video (William Kamkwamba)
3:15 – 3:30 YOUTUBE EXPERIMENT: The Execution
3:30 – 3:40 “TEDxTt 2008 update” – Geoff Costeloe (5th yr, Integrated Science, Political Science)

3:40 – 4:05 WISH SPEAKER “Broken Mosaic: Challenging Canadian Diversity” – Tahira Ebrahim (4th yr, Human Geography)

4:05 – 4:15 HOUSEKEEPING AND CLOSING

(note: throughout the day, audience members also brainstormed, pitched, practiced and executed an idea for a YouTube video – keywords: MEXICAN WAVE, HUMAN DOMINOES, OPEN SOURCE CHEWBACCA-ESTRA)

Like the TED talks, this conference enacted a wish component, whereby a student had an opportunity to make a wish to members of the audience, receive some funding, and provide an element of focused programming for the Terry project in future years.

This year saw Tahira Ebrahim receive that honor. More details will be coming soon. To participate please join our facebook group, or keep in touch via our twitter feed or blog. For now, we’ll leave you with Tahira’s excellent wish slide.

IMPORTANT: If you were an attendee, it is crucial that you fill the TEDx online form. This can be found here.

Feedback as of 05/10/09 (via Twitter, Facebook, Blogs)

- Great event, looking forward to the next one!
- Such an inspiring day at TEDx Terry Talks!
- In my take away: open access, collaboration, Africa outreach & embrace, nonscientists+scientists
- had an incredible time at #tedxtt, now that I’m all inspired I need to take action
- Awesome TEDx Terry Talks 2009!
- Great 2009 WISH TALK on Canadian diversity by Tahira Ebrahim
- This is the first campus-wide event at UBC where I feel a strong African voice in the room. We are standing up and being noticed.
- I’m in love with #tedxtt
- I wish all my classes were run like this -I’d actually pay attention in school instead of just trying to pass my classes.
- Fantastic TEDx event! Thanks guys!
- This conference was amazing.
- Great Conference! A nice range of topics and audience engagement.
- Excellent conference, I was inspired to see my peers measure up to the ‘real’ (kidding!) talks. Looking forward to next year’s.
- That was a great conference, thank you Terry team^^ I’m definitely going back next year. All the topics are interesting and makes me think about ideas that I have never thought of.
- Awesome conference this year! congrats to the Terry team!
- It was warm and engaging and overall, fantastic.
- Absolutely inspiring day at TEDxTerry Talks.

A pdf copy of our grant application (we received $20,000 the vast majority of which went to hiring a two student team to project managed the event).
We made good use of various web tools including Eventbrite, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook.

Oh, and our goofy promo video: