TEDxSMU Asks The Big Questions

Dave Gallo, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, dives into a deep subject at TEDxSMU.

Dallas journalists called TEDxSMU “audacious, extraordinary and amazing.” The high-concept think-fest drew 485 people to Caruth Auditorium Oct. 10 for an eclectic list of speakers and presentations, all keyed to the question, “What will change everything?”
Ideas that challenged the concept of impossibility were presented in short presentations no longer than 18 minutes. Some of the ideas included: What it’s like to be an astronaut aboard the International Space Station; the unusual teamwork needed for giant whale copulation; how to get the United States off oil by 2040; how to get our minds to work faster than calculators; how living with a terminal disease can be fulfilling; how to help solve malnutrition among India’s orphans with peanut butter bars; and why our ocean world may be more important than our dirt one.
Participants were chosen from hundreds of applicants, who said they found the networking time between sessions almost as valuable as the “TED Talks.” TEDxSMU was an independently organized conference modeled after the annual TED conference in Long Beach, California, and licensed by the nonprofit group that produces the larger event. The acronym stands for technology, entertainment and design. What started as a small meeting of creative thinkers has grown into an annual event that draws speakers like Al Gore and Bill Gates.
The nonprofit group that runs TED also licenses individual events under the same banner of “ideas worth spreading.” After he was wowed by a TED event last spring, Geoffrey Orsak, dean of the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, organized TEDxSMU with help from sponsors and project director Sharon Lyle.
Orsak took it a step further, however, organizing many of the same speakers and presentations for a first-of-its-kind TEDxKIDS event for 340 area junior high students Oct. 9. It was learning camouflaged as fun – especially when students appeared on stage to confess, “What My Parents Don’t Know.”
Orsak says he is looking forward to return engagements for both events. “We expect that with the support of the community, TEDxSMU 2010 and TEDxKIDS will be back in full force.”