THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
UST Global will host the upcoming TEDx Talk at its Thiruvananthapuram campus on January 20. TEDxThiruvananthapuram is the city level TEDx event in Kerala and is the largest independently organized TEDx event in the state.
TEDx Conference which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and the ‘x’ standing for independently organised event proclaims the slogan, ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’. TED talks have lively discussions on a range of relevant issues and was initiated by an American non-profit organisation called the Sapling Foundation in 1990.
TEDxThiruvananthapuram has 10 diverse speakers who have been selected after careful consideration and with whom the team has been working with to curate talks and ideas relevant for the city. District collector Dr. Vasuki, DGP Prisons R. Sreelekha, Renowned international mathematician Dr. Joseph Gheverghese George and several other innovators and changemakers would be speaking at TEDxThiruvananthapuram. The presenting partner of TEDxThiruvananthapuram is UST Global and the event would be held at the UST Global Campus here in Thiruvananthapuram.
A festival for the curious, these talks seek to facilitate the exchange of unique ideas and thereby cultivate a more inspired and thoughtful community, yearning for positive change. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Shah Rukh Khan and the Pope figure among some of the prominent personalities who have been part of the TED talks, that are held on an annual basis. The organisers’ move to democratise the phenomenon in 2009 saw TED going viral, not merely online but the world over with the ‘x’ suffix getting attached to the acronym. Denoting ‘independently organised event’, these talks broke out of its more elite, American intelligentsia barrier and spread to remote locations across the world.
Getting a TEDx event to the City
The local-level TED experience is further encouraged by the fact that the licences are let out for free, albeit after fulfilling an exhaustive criteria. Moreover, specific issues of that particular location are discussed rather than the initial focus being on the terms in the acronym. TEDxThiruvananthpuram is one of the few events that aims to spread inspiring Ideas in the local community.
In 2012, there was a TEDx event in the city, however till 2016, there were no events. It was in that year, that Vishnu Prasad, CEO of Law Pundits LLP, who, after having attended the TED Global event in Geneva, decided to apply for a license to develop the TEDx event in the city of Thiruvananthapuram. With a team of dedicated volunteers who came together because of their passion for TED talks, the first TEDxThiruvananthapuram was held in 2016, followed by a bigger and more inspirational TEDxThiruvananthapuram in 2017. This time, TEDxThiruvananthapuram will take place on 20th of January 2019, here in Thiruvananthapuram.
“Our speaker curation process is something that we focus on extensively. What we look for in a speaker is not just a famous name or a recognizable face. We select speakers who have a unique idea that is worth spreading and they have been working on that idea by virtue of their job, research or interest or a story that is very inspiring and the community in Kerala can benefit from.” Says Bhakta Pande, who is the co-curator of the talks at TEDxThiruvananthapuram.
Every TEDx event is centred around a theme that has been chosen with the intent of developing the already existing community. For this edition of TEDxThiruvananthapuram, the theme is “Resilience”. After consistently having the TEDxThiruvananthapuram events revolve around mind boggling and stimulating themes such as “Thought Conflux” and “The Next Decade”, in 2016 and 2017, respectively, the TEDxThiruvananthapuram team intends to showcase the undying spirit to overcome, in the form of “Resilience”.
