TEDx is a globally known organization whose mantra is “ideas worth spreading”. Every student at some point in their lives has probably had a teacher step aside for about 10 minutes and let a TED talk do the teaching for them. TED talks can be about nearly any topic; the only real requirement is that they are thought-provoking, and, as mentioned earlier, worth spreading. A group of SigEp members were up and ready to go Saturday morning to attend the event. The guys had no idea what lessons they were showing up to learn, but they were excited to learn them.
TEDx, as opposed to a regular TED talk, means that the event is independently organized, rather than curated by the TED organization itself. Ohio State students and staff all worked to organize this event, and many of the speakers brought in were either students or professors at Ohio State. The speakers brought in ranged from a radical historian, to an aspiring stand-up comedian, to a fashion designer. The topics discussed ranged from the effects of stress on cancer growth, to awareness for lack of sufficient disability accommodations on campus, to what really defines somebody as a “speaker” of a language.
The takeaways from this event were incredible. Each speaker left the attendees with a valuable lesson, if not multiple lessons. Afterwards, it was difficult for the guys to pick which talk was their favorite, and nearly nobody picked the same one. In the future, it seems as though each TEDx event at Ohio State is going to need to save room for Ohio State SigEp.