Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘TEDxMiddlebury’

Mar 9

1 Comment

We’re Here! TEDx Middlebury 2013

tedxmidd13It’s TEDx Middlebury 2013! Audrey and I will be updating MiddBlog today with summaries of the thirteen speakers. Stay tuned for lots of insight, nuggets of wisdom, and so much more. Check out the live stream of the event here. And keep up with our twitter feed for live coverage from @MiddBlog! (Apologies in advance for the sporadic nature of our updating, we’ll make sure it’s all in order once the symposium has ended!)

Intro: The morning started out with introductions and thank your from the students who made this year’s TEDx event possible. MiddBlog would also like to reiterate the thank you to Liz Robinson at the Project for Creativity and Innovation for her unwavering support to events like TEDx and student projects across campus! Onto the speakers and their takes on this year’s theme: The Road Not Taken.

First speaker: Andy Nagy-Benson is the pastor of The Congregational Church of Middlebury. He opened with a quote from “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. He talked about how “the road not taken” could also be interpreted as a “vocation found.” Many people discuss ministry as a “calling” and Andy sees it as the need to serve one of the world’s great needs that meets with one’s personal passion. He told an emotional story about his first day as a student chaplain at a hospital when he was paged on his first day to baptize a baby girl who was being kept on life support in the neonatal unit. After the baptism, the little girl died soon after, yet the nurse in the unit stayed with the family for hours afterwards. Andy said that it is this “with” that made the difference. He supplemented with other touching stories of the children’s book “The Frog and the Toad” and an anecdote of a teenage service trip to Virginia. He ended by saying that it is a challenge and a privilege to live a life of being “with.”

Second speaker: Ai-Jen Poo is the Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). She introduced her talk by honoring her grandmother as an important caregiver in her own life. However, despite her grandmother’s cheerful outlook on life (she laughs three times a day), she needs a caregiver to help her complete everyday chores. Using the story of her grandmother, Ai-Jen highlights the problem that as a country, the United States does not care for those who take care of others. Warning that the rapidly aging population of the US will require more domestic workers, Ai-Jen envisions a county in which caregivers get the support they need. She sees the possibility of a caring economy grounded in the values of respect and relationships. To get to this point as a national community, she asks us how we, as individuals, can care for others. Can we call our parents more? Can we look after our neighbors better? To whom can we offer a smile?

Read more

Mar 4

1 Comment

Tedx Middlebury Videos

This fall, I had the honor of attending TedxMiddlebury and reporting on it for Middblog.  Four students from Middlebury organized and brought together an incredible range of speakers for a full day of stories in Bi Hall.  I’ve been keeping an eye out for the videos of the conference, but somehow I missed their publication over J-term.  The entire conference was fascinating, I wish I could embed every video, but I’ll stop myself at just a few for now.  If you are interested, search for TedxMiddlebury on youtube, and you can find the rest of them there.

 

Nov 6

Sunday Reading: You snnnneeaaky mom!

Hey everybody, another week, come and gone.  Christmas decorations have immidiately popped up before the Halloween candy has even been finished while Middlebury had visits from Dan Choi, Jeffrey Blount, Phil Kaye, and many, many more at the TEDx talks this weekend.  Something about TEDx really reminded me of why I chose to go to Middlebury.  At the same time, however, it urged me to remember what the rest of the world has to offer. As for a little sampling of what the world has to offer:

MUSIC: John Lennon’s tooth was sold yesterday at an auction yesterday for 19,500 pounds.  A Canadian dentist claimed the winning bid (a dentist, really?.) Just goes on the list of weird things sold on eBay.

TECHNOLOGY: For many who have lost their hearing and require the use of hearing aids, background noise dominates the noises and sounds coming through to their eardrums.  Inventors have now developed a ‘hearing loop’ however, that gets rid of those sounds, amplifying the important noises.  “It’s the equivalent of a wheelchair ramp for people who used to be socially isolated because of their hearing loss.”

SKYPE: Having just finished two long Skype conversations with friends abroad, I can attest to the usefulness and importance of Skype in the technology-savvy younger generations.  This NyTimes piece does a great job describing how Skype has changed the nature of  long term relationships over time.

PATENTS: David Gelernter is a computer scientist, known for helping to connect computers together in collaborative networks.  In 1993, he was the victim of the Unibomber after receiving a pipe bomb in the mail.  Now, he is fighting Apple in a lawsuit, claiming patent infringement to the tune of $625 million dollars.  Reminds me of an episode of This American Life I just listened to called “When Patents Attack.”

SPACE: A construction firm in Japan recently proposed building a set of solar panels across the moon’s equator, with the ultimate goal of supplying energy to the entire world.  Actually.  This is actually happening.

ART: Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist and activist was detained last April for 81 days for supposed tax evasion.  Others believe his detainment had more to do with pro-democracy connections, but either way, his fine was set last Tuesday.  Since the announcement of the $2.4 million tax bill (more than 3x the amount he supposedly evaded,) over 20,000 people have chipped in and contributed $550,000 to help pay the fine.

And your video of the week: (It gets freaking incredible at :50)

Nov 5

TEDx_logo_RGB_36501
3 Comments

TEDx 2011: Embracing Risk (Live-Blog)

The schedule for TEDx 2011

Tedx Middlebury is back with a brand new series of speakers. Put on for the first time last year by Chloe Sasha ’11, the event was a huge success. This year, a team of organizers including Annie Makela ’12 and Hudson Cavanagh ’14, took on the endeavor of getting some 16 speakers to come to Middlebury for free to talk for twenty minutes about the theme of “embracing risk.”

TEDx derives from TED, the exclusive global conference that features the cutting edge of innovators, philanthropists, scientists, artists, etc. showcasing their “ideas worth spreading.”

Here is the explanation of TEDx found on the Middlebury TEDx website:

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event.

MiddBlog is in charge of Live-Blogging TEDx this year. We will be updating our TEDx Live-Blog page (see menu bar at top of page) with summaries/impressions/quotes from each speaker throughout the day. Also check out our Twitter and Tedx’s twitter.

Oct 2

3 Comments

TEDxMiddlebury: Live Blog

As we noted this morning, today marks TEDxMiddlebury, the college’s first ever TED-like conference organized by Cloe Shasha ’11 and her team of fellow students. Titled “How We Started: From Idea to Impact,” the TEDx event features a prominent lineup of writers, journalists, athletes, activists, and thinkers — many of them Midd alumni — and several TED Talk videos. The afternoon session is currently ongoing in BiHall 216. For those elsewhere, watch the live stream here.

Hit the break below to read our live blog on today’s presentations:

Read more

%d bloggers like this: