TEDx Lehigh River: Slimmer but still strong
DETAILS
TEDx Lehigh River is back Thursday with lots of ideas worth spreading but in a slimmed down version. There will be fewer local speakers giving talks, fewer videos of other speakers from other states and countries, shorter breaks and a lower ticket price. The local event, based on an international phenomenon, also is moving to PBS 39 at SteelStacks in Bethlehem from Miller Symphony Hall in Allentown.
Organizers say the changes are in response to audience feedback. Last fall’s event lasted four hours and this year it will be three hours or fewer, says Lisa Getzler, the event organizer and executive director of the Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity & Innovation, a founding partner of the local TEDx group with PBS 39. “We’ve gone from eight speakers and three videos to six speakers and two videos,” Getzler says.
Those six speakers will give talks on the theme “Intention by Design.”
TEDx Lehigh River
It’s popular today to talk about living and working with intention, and Getzler used that concept to come up with the theme.
“When I think about design, I think about the profession of people who create things that meet the needs of others,” she says. “When I think about intention, I think about the process by which we take an idea and then actualize it.
“We’re looking to combine the two powerful forces of idea to actualization, and then creating something out of nothing based on the needs of others.” Speakers are:
Laura Briggs, Harrisburg area, freelance writer: “The Future is Freelancing”
Amanda Morris, Kutztown University associate English professor: “I am a Settler-Colonizer”
Suparna Damany, Upper Macungie Township, physical therapist: “The Health Account: Injury Prevention for the Modern Age”
Jen Groover, Philadelphia entrepreneur, author and speaker: “Why Transformation Trumps Motivation for True Change”
Geoffrey Klein, Philadelphia speaker and marketing executive: “Story Matters: Tell One that Matters to Your Audience”
Neil Deshmukh, Moravian Academy student: “The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence: Is Technology Running Us?”
TEDx Lehigh River held its first public event in 2013 and ran annual events since then. This year, the group had 40 applications and chose six speakers.
Getzler chooses the speakers and coaches them, largely using videoconferencing technology such as Skype and Facetime. Previously, a committee did the curating. By streamlining the process, the group hopes to do at least two events a year.
“We never could have done more than one event a year, had we continued in our old cumbersome speaker curation process,” Getzler says.
Morris will talk about how, despite the genocide of people indigenous to North America and efforts to erase their culture, they have survived and even thrived. She’ll cover all that in about 10 minutes.
She stresses this is not about guilt-tripping the audience.
“I said if you want me to get up there and depress people for 15 minutes, I can do that but I don’t want to,” she says. “I’m used to being very positive.”
At Kutztown, she teaches contemporary indigenous writing and rhetoric.
“I hope to tell them the story about real indigenous people living today that they haven’t heard before and make them understand how these people have been erased and how we as settler-colonizers have a responsibility to fix this problem,” Morris says.
Most Americans are used to seeing Native Americans in cliched ways — such as when students in elementary school are taught about the Pilgrims and the Indians or when names of tribes are used by sports teams and their mascots wear headdresses.
Morris wants the public to learn about contemporary Native American artists, musicians, authors, designers and thinkers.
In classes, Morris says her students are “amazed that there are indigenous rappers because their assumption is indigenous peoples are no longer with us, they’re a thing of the past.”
“There are amazing stories and beautiful works, and there’s no discussion of any of this in the mainstream media, in the education system, in government, in Hollywood,” she says.
Damany will talk about preventing injuries that come from the way we work and live today.
Many people work at sedentary jobs and spend lots of leisure time in front of screens, only getting brief spurts of exercise, which leads to inevitable injuries.
“In our modern age, the way we use our bodies is very different and we’re using our bodies in ways we weren’t meant to,” she said. “In a sense we’re in the middle of a medical crisis and we’re not doing anything to prevent it.”
Damany is the author of “It’s Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome! RSI Theory and Therapy for Computer Professionals,” and has been treating people with chronic pain for more than two decades. She says she’ll be providing tips on changing habits to prevent injuries.
Damany is a polished public speaker but not all of her fellow TEDx talkers are. Talks are purposely capped at 18 minutes so there’s no room for meandering and filler.
“Typically, when someone is giving a public speech they’re looking to include a broad range of perspectives on whatever their topic is,” Getzler says. “But in a TEDx talk it’s kind of the opposite of that.”
She tells speakers to think about their speech like a coat rack.
“Every piece of narrative, story, data has to hang on that coat rack,” Getzler says. “It can only hang there if it actually supports and upholds the unique idea.”
Margie Peterson is a freelance writer. jodi.duckett@mcall.com 610-820-6704