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What if You Attend TEDxCharlottesville?

27 October 2015

Allison read th  e TEDxCharlottesville Web Site and started to get excited for 13 November 2015. Whether you attend in-person or virtually via live-stream, this year’s focus on “What If…” is sure to delight as we are encouraged to consider how the world would look if we were able to suspend our judgment.

Tags: allison read, grief, ted

TED and TEDx Talks have been delivering education and inspiration to me (and millions of others) for many years. Since I started blogging in 2011, seven Talks have been the subject of these past blog posts. Therefore, when many generous organizers in Charlottesville, VA, decided to create our first TEDx in 2013, I was super excited. I’ve attended the last two years and look forward to this year’s focus on “What if…” with speakers who have been asked to “inspire new thinking, demand introspection, and challenge the status quo.”

I’ll confess there’s a special place in my heart for the speakers I know like my next door neighbor at work, Dr. Neal Kassel and one of his Board Members and author, John Grisham, or one of my favorite professors at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, Bobby Parmar or my UVA college friend, Dia Draper. I know Kassel and Grisham will inspire once again with the miraculous medical possibilities that exist with Focused Ultrasound technology. I imagine Parmar will challenge us to look at an important business or global ethics issue through a different lens. (Or he may talk about something totally new… that’s the promise of these kind of thinkers!)

You’ll see in the speaker bios, that “Dia Draper is often described as a ‘warm spirit’ with a gift for inspiring others to live with joy and intention.” That was certainly true of Dia when we were at UVA, and now I’m looking forward to reconnecting with her. (Did we really meet more than 20 years ago, and how has it been so long since we last talked?)

In a small town like ours, many of us will have heard of or maybe even know at least one of this year’s TEDx speakers, but what I also look forward to is hearing from all the local folks who are new to me as well as the speakers who will travel to us from afar. Last year’s professional story-teller, Donald Davis, made me laugh and moved me to tears while helping me to make progress on my journey through a difficult time of grief. When I walked into The Paramount Theater that morning, I had no idea that he would have the message I needed to hear. I’m feeling so much better now, and I know Davis’ unexpected inspiration helped me to heal.

There are just a few tickets left for this year’s conference so hurry up and buy yours now. To make the TEDxCharlottesville event as accessible as possible, 200 complimentary tickets will be distributed to educational and non-profit groups in the community. There may still be a few of those left so if you’re interested, email the organizers at contact@tedxcharlottesville.com. And if you can’t join us for the whole day or live far away, then look for information on the TEDxCharlottesville site about live-streaming the day of the event as well as videos of the Talks the organizers post after the event.

Finally, check out upcoming TEDx events around the world here, watch past TEDx Talks here, and maybe you’ll even consider organizing a TEDx in your community. It has been a wonderful experience for us in Charlottesville, VA, and I’m grateful to all the volunteers who work so hard to bring us a great event.

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