When is the last time you allowed yourself a day of learning completely new ideas? The TEDxUCLA "Ideas Worth Spreading" event on October 27th lived up to its promise. TED (www.TED.com) is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. This was the second annual TEDxUCLA event and I couldn't have dreamed of a more interesting experience.
From the minute I pulled into the UCLA campus I knew I was in for a treat. Red balloons paved the path from the parking lot to the venue. I usually have trouble figuring out what building my classes are in at UCLA, but not that day!
The real theme of the day was "OPEN" and I learned this important lesson before I even got to my seat. As I was walking to the building a man rode by on a double decker bicycle with all sorts of gear attached. I thought to myself, "There's got to be one of these oddball guys on every college campus." Inside, I saw a woman with a headset waiting to get in and thought "Geez, she can't even put her phone down for an hour?"
They turned out to be Rachel Kann, an earthy, quirky spoken word poet and event emcee and Bobby "Tall Bike Bobby" Gadda, a bicycle activist and performance artist, both of whom entranced the audience with their independent, spunky spirits.
The rest of the day was peppered with over a dozen unique, awe-inspiring takes on Science, Technology, Education and Design including a cardiologist who learned to be a better doctor by studying animal hearts and behaviors; a mechanical engineer with a PHD who explains science through comics; a professor of English Lit who brought Shakespeare to a maximum security prison with extraordinarily moving results; a scientist who studied cell textures to discover that cancer cells are softer than normal cells; and a law professor who challenged her students to view a case from all angles and helped free an innocent man.
Bookending the speakers were amazing multi-cultural performances featuring musicians, artists and our own time-lapse muralist Chris Rutterford, working in Scotland via Skype. Rachel lead us in a meet and greet stretch break and a kick-ass game of hot potato with 525 people from ages 20-80 tossing red TED beach balls around.
Not an ordinary Saturday for me. I left invigorated and awestruck, clutching my red TED beach ball to remember the day.
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