N.C. State will become the first university in North Carolina to host a TEDx event when the University presents TEDxNCSU Saturday.
TED, Technology Entertainment Design, has licensed the University to host this independent event. Francis de los Reyes, an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, said the event presents the best thinkers and ideas to change the world.
“TED is a national, internationally phenomena actually. What it is actually is is a conference put on by a nonprofit organization that features the best thoughts in the world. They put up these two conferences,” Reyes said. “Twice each year they have a gathering of the best doers, thinkers, and ideas to present ideas that change the world.”
“TED is not about main stream, it is about ideas. Some of them might be something we don’t hear every day, but it is making an impact,” Reyes said.
The event will be held Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. in the Talley Student Center Ballroom. Approximately 200 people purchased tickets. The event is sold out. According to de los Reyes, Union Activities Board is planning on hosting another TEDxNCSU event in the spring. That event may accommodate up to 800 attendees.
“TEDx is an off shoot of TED,” Reyes said. “‘X’ stands for an independent, community organized TED event. It is licensed by TED, but it is organized locally by the community. So, there have been over a thousand TEDx events around the world.”
Last year Reyes attended a TED event in India and he said the University seemed like a natural place for a pro-progressive thought event like TEDx.
“When I was in India, I was sitting there thinking ‘Why can’t we do this at N.C. State?’ The University has students who we want to inspire,” Reyes said. “It is a space where we should be able to exchange ideas. It is a natural place for a thing like TED, and so I thought we should do TEDxNCSU.”
Reyes said the event changes how listeners think and feel about world changes.
“[It’s like] your mind has been blown away. Your emotions have been pulled in many different directions,” Reyes said. “You get a really great talk that changes how you think, how you feel, and inspires you.”
He predicts that TEDxNCSU will be a similar experience.
“It is going to be a barrage of information, different messages, {and] ideas in four hours,” De los Reyes said. “It is quite intense.”
Speakers at TEDxNCSU will include Marshall Brain, N.C. State alumnus and founder of HowStuffWorks.com, and Dick Gordon, host of the public radio show This Story.
“[Brain] has been on Oprah. He’s been on things like National Geographic series,” Reyes said. “He is a thinker, he thinks about a wide range of topics, and he is going to talk about the meaning of life.”
“[Gordon] is going to talk about stories that he thinks are inspirational or will change how you think about the world,” Reyes said.
Members of the University community will also speak. Speakers were chosen to fit into the event theme, “What Really Matters.”
Mike Giancola, director of CSPELS and one of the event’s speakers, said he thinks it’s a great thing that the University is trying to bring to campus.
Giancola said he was invited to speak by an event organizer and that he plans to speak on hunger and poverty at Saturday’s conference.
“Anytime you’re given an opportunity to talk about something you’re passionate about it’s a great opportunity,” Giancola said.
Reyes said the organization looked at a variety of speakers and searched for those who would bring new perspectives to the debate.
“We either came up with names first, or we thought about issues that we wanted covered and then we looked at different people who would bring a new perspective to those issues” Reyes said. “Obviously, we wanted an N.C. State slant, so we started with the university of N.C. State.”
All talks will be less than 18 minutes, and Grains of Time, an N.C. State acapella group, will also perform.
“[This weekend] it is just the morning, but we figured that we would start to get the ball rolling,” Reyes said. “The hope is that we can do this every year.”