Written by Leonilla
13 May 2016
Most of us have seen TED talks on Youtube, right? The speakers are always very good at public speaking and know how to influence and inspire the audience. We had a TEDx event in Umeå 11th of May and I had a change to participate!
TEDx is a nonprofit TED-like event with a goal to share knowledge and spread ideas, the events bring people from different backgrounds together. TEDx events are organized independently and a community can apply for a license in order to organize an event. One was organized for the third time here in Umeå this year. In 2015 there were 100 tickets available and this year the number was 400, so it has grown really fast! The event was held at the cultural center called Väven in downtown Umeå.
TEDx events have been organized also in other bigger cities in Sweden: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Uppsala, your city might also have one!
I’ve been working at a student run organization called AIESEC for the past few months. We were asked if some of us would be willing to volunteer at the event, so I did! The work was easy, practical stuff, checking tickets, guiding people, etc. but a lot of fun as well. We were allowed to go in and watch the talks if we wanted to, as long as there was always someone working outside. I’ve volunteered at a number of film festivals back in Finland and this was somehow a really similar experience: a combination of work and fun.
What happened there?
They had speakers from Umeå, the Västerbotten region as well as other parts of Sweden and Europe, so the topics as well as the talks were really diverse. The talks were divided into four different sessions based on the theme:
I watched session three live and some other talks on the screen outside the stage. One thing I really appreciate in TED talks is that they are only about 10 minutes long, so focusing is easy, especially since the people are really talented to deliver the message they have. Most of us know the feeling of trying to follow a three-hour long lecture and afterwards having no-clue what the main points were, so talking concisely is important. I liked especially Ari Riabackes talk “he talked about how we avoid taking risks and end up not living the life really wish to live.
TED events are also a great opportunity for networking and meeting new people from different backgrounds and there were a lot of business people from Umeå region at the event.
Our ambassador Raghu gave a TED talk at Stockholm last year read more and watch a video here!
