November 14, 2014
The Levitt Center wants to bring a TEDx event to the Hill to capture the spirit of TED, an organization dedicated to sharing and spreading ideas. A planning committee has been hosting meetings and discussions to make that goal a reality. TEDx events are planned and coordinated by local communities under a free license granted by TED. They serve as platforms to share live TED-like talks and videos.
“The Levitt Center is interested in organizing and hosting a TEDx to spur conversation among students and faculty from a diversity of backgrounds about important and interesting topics; the TEDx Program is designed to help communities, organizations and individuals to spark conversation and connection through local TED-like experiences. At TEDx events, a screening of TED Talks videos — or a combination of live presenters and TED Talks videos — sparks deep conversation and connections at the local level,” Eren Shultz ’15 said. He also mentioned that the Levitt Social Innovation Team, which includes Shultz, Sharif Shrestha ’17, Meghan O’Sullivan ’15, Thomas Figueroa ’15, Andy Chen ’16, Zach Pilson ’16, Tsion Tesfaye ’16 and Lisa Yang ’17, has been contemplating the idea of hosting a TEDx talk since February of 2014.
“There appears to be a great deal of interest and there is still plenty of time for people, departments, and offices to become involved,” Associate Director of the Levitt Center Chris Willemsen said.
“Specifically, the Social Innovation Team is interested in helping to host a TEDx in order to bring to the surface and stimulate more conversations about social innovation and social entrepreneurship. The Levitt Center, over the past year, has developed a host of new programming and resources, including the new Social Innovation lab located at the back of the Levitt Center, at helping to foster socially innovative ideas and accelerate and support students with ideas for socially and/or commercially entrepreneurial ventures,” Shultz said. He emphasized that the committee is very open to new ideas.
“After an all-campus email was sent out by the Levitt Center this fall and an initial interest meeting was held, it turned out that many people and organizations, including the OCC, Student Assembly and individual students and faculty have been interested in hosting a TEDx for quite some time. While the planning the event is still very much in the preliminary stages, the ground work done by the Levitt Center has consolidated the conversation and allowed the many people and organizations interested in hosting an event to combine efforts and collaborate to host an event and come up with a topic that has broad appeal to the campus community,” Shultz said.
Because the planning is still in preliminary stages, the Innovation Team did not identify any specific speakers they are interested in hosting. Shultz said that after hosting interest meetings, the group made lists of topics that will be narrowed down and then presented to the campus community. The committee will put any list of narrowed ideas to an all-campus vote before deciding on a topic for the event.
“We are aiming to select a topic that is narrow enough to be unique and provide some focus to the talk, but also broad enough to attract a diversity of speakers and appeal broadly to the campus community,” Shultz said. He added that if Hamilton community members would like to contribute ideas, they can email eshultz@hamilton.edu or meosulli@hamiton.edu. The planning committee continues to be open to new ideas for topics and speakers and Shultz said students, faculty or staff not currently involved are welcome to join the committee.
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