Adventure. Exploration. Travel. Taking journeys. Wanderlust.
These ideas were on the minds of the TEDx Connecticut College executive team when they began brainstorming for the 2014 TEDxConnecticutCollege Conference: Not All Who Wander Are Lost. The conference will take place in Cummings Arts Center on April 12 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In its third year at Connecticut College, TEDx (the “x” represents an independently organized TED event) is reaching all corners of our campus with a palpably strong ambition to spread ideas and generate conversation. It’s creating quite a buzz.
The lineup of speakers this year, chosen through a careful process of brainstorming, networking and reaching out, includes six off-campus guests, four alumni, five professors and seven students, ranging from freshmen to seniors. The speakers vary greatly in profession and expertise, from an underwater archaeologist to photographers, dancers to journalists, activists, entrepreneurs, students and professors focusing on the arts, English, anthropology, and more. The TEDx executive board has made it their goal by spending hours of preparation to create a thoughtfully selected assortment of enthusiastic speakers for the upcoming full-day conference.
Spencer Francus ’14, Chair of TEDxConnecticutCollege, began his involvement with the organization during his sophomore year, when asked to help with web design. He has been involved with it ever since.
Since Francus’s first year with the organization, there has been a hugely collaborative effort from all TEDxConnecticutCollege team members to make a name for the organization on campus.
“Essentially, the difference between the way we’re operating now and they way we were operating in 2011 is with a lot more support than we’ve ever had before. We really wanted to generate positive buzz around an event that most people have never been to, and to really to engrain in the campus community the expectations that we have, which are always over the top and very big,” said Francus. “And so the first event was great, and it sort of let people know that we were serious. The second year was even better. We had 50 percent more speakers; we had a tremendous amount of support from not only the student body, but from the Administration and departments. And this year we’ve been hosting these monthly events, and really cementing ourselves in the extracurricular, social world on campus, and that’s been able to make TED a recognizable thing.”
Francus noted that the way in which ticket sales has progressed since TEDxConnecticutCollege’s first year on campus has hugely affected the speed at which the event becomes publicized and consequently very well-attended. Now that tickets are sold online, combined with how the event has been so hyped up around campus, tickets to the conference have progressed to be very high in demand.
“I think we sold 100 tickets in half an hour,” said Francus. “That alone says a lot about the excitement and the way we’ve been able to make a name for ourselves on campus. And it’s been because of our excitement and ambition about it, but also because of how receptive the community has been to it.”
The process for choosing the theme for the conference takes an immense amount of time and diligent planning from the team members. Francus explained that in the fall, the executive team had a three-hour meeting in which they brainstormed and used ideas that had been previously collected from around campus to come up with one concrete idea.
“We took all of the themes from all of the idea boards and wrote them down on a black board in Fanning—50 or so themes. And then we categorized them based on their concepts. A lot of them sort of spoke to the same sort of themes, notions, ideas,” said Francus. The group then decided what was the most popular, and what conclusively captured everything together. “The majority of these submissions had to do with ideas of looking forward,” Francus said. “Looking forward with uncertainty. Exploration, discovery, adventure.” After a thorough discussion about campaigns and ideas, a list of about 50 titles was created, then one-by-one eliminated until the team decided on the final idea: Not All Who Wander Are Lost.
One of the seven student speakers, Ted Steinberg ’16, a Government and American Studies double major, will be giving a talk about sports and Judaism. Steinberg was very inspired by the concept of TED itself when creating his own talk. “I love watching TED Talks. I love the kind of talks that are funny with some kind of moral, or food for thought, attached to it. So that’s what I’m hoping others get out of mine,” he said. “I love the events that the TEDx Connecticut College has had these year.”
Steinberg’s experience as Vice President of SGA has helped with his ability to talk to large audiences. “I like to speak publicly,” he commented. “I’m really excited for the whole day of the conference. My talk is just one of them. I’m excited to hear all of the other talks, see all of the other talks. It’s a lot of interacting. It’s going to be a fun day. I think it’s exciting to have students given the opportunity to speak. Students have these experiences qualitative enough to talk about.”
Tickets for the conference will continue to be available this week in Cro for $15, or can be purchased on the website: www.tedxconnecticutcollege.com •
