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COOL STUFF
Creative chaos comes to Buffalo
By Kevin Purdy; photo by Nancy J. Parisi
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TEDx Buffalo planners at work at Spot Coffee on coordinating the April 7 event.
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What would happen if a chef, an environmental engineer, a waterfront developer, and a Web-based custom printer spent a day together in Buffalo? You’d likely never find out—at least not at any typical career-specific conference or networking event. But a small group of volunteers, working entirely with free time, gratis services, and donations, is trying to introduce that kind of creative chaos through TEDx Buffalo, a different kind of conference slated for April 7.
“We’re bringing in speakers to spark some new ideas, sure,” said Susan Lynn Cope, organizer of TEDx Buffalo. “But there’s another level of success to this event, getting people who never thought they could benefit from each other together. Big thinkers, urban planners, but real citizens, too, all in front of each other.” Beyond the networking and cross-pollination of ideas, TEDx Buffalo could also give some of the area’s most well-known names and faces the time and space to hear and discuss ideas, away from the press coverage that typically surrounds such gatherings.
You might have heard of TED: Technology, Entertainment, and Design conferences with the tag line “Ideas Worth Spreading.” At these events, speakers like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former President Bill Clinton, author Dave Eggers—as well as other esteemed scientists, authors, and architects—give eighteen-minute talks, which are then offered freely online. You’ve probably seen them embedded on blogs across the net, or beckoning from your inbox with subject lines like “Must Watch.”
TEDx events are licensed by TED, but independently organized. Cope, thirty-one, a corporate event planner at Ingram Micro, spent a night at Sweetness 7 Cafe filling out a TEDx application to hold a Buffalo-centered event. A few weeks later, TEDx Buffalo was approved, and gradually more and more volunteers started joining Cope for her weekly planning sessions (including this author).
Cope points to British chef Jamie Oliver—and his crusade to bring better food and cooking skills to schools—as an example of how TED can inspire and produce results. Oliver received the 2010 TED Prize, consisting of $100,000 and a “wish to change the world.” Through TED’s mix of attendees, Oliver came to the attention of the ABC television network. That launched the reality series, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, which in turn focused its efforts on improving the food culture of Huntington, West Virginia, statistically one of the least healthful areas in the United States.
By default, TEDx events can only invite 100 official guests. That number could increase, but TEDx Buffalo will be streamed live to the Web, and recorded for later viewing, no matter how many attend. Venues including Asbury Hall (“Babeville”) and Erie Community College’s downtown campus have been considered for the conference, with regional, satellite “streaming parties” also a possibility. More than anything, the hope is that TEDx Buffalo attendees and viewers will hear an idea and be inspired to enact it in their own communities.
In the meantime, meeting announcements go out on Twitter, interested planners show up at Spot Coffee on Elmwood Avenue, and smartphones are (mostly) ignored for an hour each week. Plans for logistics, fundraising, marketing, and grunt work are bounced around and debated. Others familiar with the TED brand and style, and eager to see it come to Buffalo, have given their time and services to the project, but donations will have to fund everything that a conference typically requires: hospitality for speakers, stage and venue setup, Web services and bandwidth, and so on. With a per-donor limit of $5,000, the usual big-name sponsors of WNY events will only have as much impact as any other group or invested individual.
TEDx Buffalo will likely feature around fifteen speakers, each of whom will be granted a short time limit as is usual with the larger TED conference. Every week, more speakers are pulled from news clips and personal recommendations, and added to the consideration list. Those under consideration tend to be out-loud thinkers on topics like employment, development, housing, technology, education, food, and health. At press time, Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School and author of Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), and Andrew Hessel, a leader in the “DIY biotech” field, had been confirmed as speakers.
“I want to see our local leaders, in all fields, hearing what other cities are doing that works, from around the country and the world,” says Chaz Adams, a twenty-five-year-old Buffalo resident who works as a data analyst for AIX Group. “It’s important to get people breaking out of the usual, the old regional and cultural habits, to pick up new ideas ... and start collaborating.”
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Kevin Purdy writes on a variety of topics for Buffalo Spree.
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