Xccelerate at TEDx Fargo

Culture | July 20th, 2016

Many of us are familiar with TED conferences or ‘TED Talks’, the global conferences that bring together a wide variety of speakers from different disciplines to talk about subjects ranging from business to culture and society. Perhaps you have watched any number of their published talks online or your supervisor at work has invited your colleagues and you to one of the conferences as a team-building exercise.

Whether you are a regular attendee at these events or just happen to be someone interested in seeing what all the fuss is about, you will have an opportunity at the upcoming TEDx Fargo conference. The theme this year, according to organizer Annie Wood, is ‘Xccelerate’, which is about ‘moving ideas forward faster’.

Ms. Wood, along with Greg Tehven, the curator of speakers for the event, as well as a number of community members, have managed to gather twenty-one speakers together for the upcoming event, comprised of a mixture of local personalities as well as people on the national talk circuit.

This is the seventh TED event to take place in Fargo, with annual conferences occurring since 2013 and various smaller events since 2012. Annie Wood has been organizer since 2015. These Fargo TEDx conferences are independently organized, hence the addition of the ‘x’ after TED.

If “moving ideas forward faster” sounds like a rather vague description of the type of content to expect in the conference, perhaps it is in order to describe a small sampling of the wide variety of speakers and subjects to people this year’s event. Two of the local speakers are Kellam Barta and Jessica Thomason.

Kellam Barta has an MA in sociolinguistics from North Carolina State University where he headed a group called Diversity Ambassadors, an outreach program which spreads awareness of language variation and promotes celebrating our linguistic differences instead of subjugating them. Sir Francis Bacon famously said, “Knowledge is power,” and to Barta so is language, and our differences in things as mundane as pronunciation have been exploited to maintain current social hierarchies.

There is a good chance that you’ve heard of Jessica Thomasson, the President and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, which has seen its fair share of both proud supporters and harsh detractors in the area for its settlement of displaced refugees from war-torn nations like Somalia and Sudan. It is because of this sharp difference of opinions regarding her work that she is a natural candidate to speak at the conference about, what else, listening to and having dialogues with people who disagree.

Among the nationally recognized speakers who will be at the event are Richard Wiese, the host of ABC’s acclaimed “Born to Explore,” who will be speaking about rethinking your bucket list; Bec Heinrich, a manager at Deloitte’s Washington DC Greenhouse, who will be speaking about the impact of rest for leaders and “slowing down before speeding up”; and Tom Byers, the first holder of the Entrepreneurship Professorship endowed chair in the School of Engineering at Stanford, who focuses on education regarding high-growth entrepreneurship and technological innovation. If any of these speakers pique your interest, an entire list of the speakers and their credentials can be found at tedxfargo.com.

Annie Wood is also excited to mention that there will be a number of early morning “adventures” starting at 7:30am: Carrie Leopold showing how to paint with moss and Brend Weiler leading rooftop yoga.

There are also break and lunch times throughout the day with food and coffee provided by local businesses and roasters. There will also be free parking and a bus traveling to the event at Moorhead Center Mall, as well as other fun activities to take part in.

And be sure to hold onto that ticket whether you order it on the website or pick it up at the event that morning: a number of local food vendors will give you deals for showing your ticket.

“We craft an experience for the community,” said Annie Wood.

IF YOU GO:

TEDx Fargo

Thursday, July 21, 9am-5pm

Fargo Civic Center - 207 4th Street North, Fargo, ND 58102

https://www.eventbrite.com