I have to preface this post with a couple of shout outs: the images are from Kyle Roth, a local photographer who does beautiful work and who is a big champion of Cleveland (check out Epstein Design Partners); Thanks go out to Lev Gonick, CIO of CWRU whose ticket I was able to use at this sold out show; Susie Sharp, who hooked me up with the ticket and escorted me in; and to Hallie and Eric who managed to get this show together and interest enough Clevelanders to fill the Capitol Theater on a snowy day in February.
If you have never heard of TED, don’t feel too bad, as many people have not. From the website:
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year’s TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.
Basically, the idea is to inspire innovation and thought by sharing cool ideas. Going to a TED event or listening to a TED talk might inspire you to do something cool and exciting. When you do it, you can share with your own TED talk, and like the shampoo commercial used to say, “and they’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on…” It has been so successful, in fact, that one person’s idea was to hold their own TED event outside the usual locations. Thus TEDx was born-the x stands for independently organized TED event. Now you do not have to live in California to hear cool ideas, you can hear from the people in your own local area that are doing cool things and inspiring the world.
The organizers for our event were Hallie Bram and Eric Kogelschatz. Hallie and Eric moved to Cleveland from the Boston area. Being a transplant to Cleveland myself, Eric and I chatted briefly about Cleveland’s potential and future as a revitalized city. Hallie was a Cleveland native, and was thrilled to come back to do her part in revitalizing our fantastic city. In addition to their day jobs, they also founded shark and minnow and TEDxCLE. This is the kind of youth and energy that Cleveland needs to foster and support to breathe new life and vitality back to Cleveland. If you a fan of bringing talented and energetic young people back to Cleveland who will invigorate the NE Ohio region, stop by shark and minnow and drop them a line.
The speakers for the event were from all walks of life: Dr C Martin Harris of the Cleveland Clinic; Benson Lee of Technology Management, Inc; Terry Schwartz of Pop Up City; Patrick Perotti, Esq, from Lawyers Give Back; Chris Yanc of cyandesigns; Aaron LeMieux of Tremont Electric; Michael Ruhlman, author; Danielle LeBoe, owner of Room Service; Sean Bilovecky of Wrath Arcane; and Dana Myers of Myers Motors. There were some clips of other cool things out there to break things up. Each of these speakers had great ideas and a ton of things to say, so I want to try and highlight them all separately. My personal thanks goes out to all the speakers who made my day so great, to the Capitol Theater for hosting the event and to Pheonix coffee for providing the much needed Ethiopian coffee to start my day. There was an after event at Stone Mad Pub, which I stopped by, but unfortunately had to leave to do some work, so I hope everyone had fun there as well. So where will the next event be? I am all in!
