Community members, students and faculty can take the stage and deliver the speech of their dreams in front of the Bowling Green community through the TEDxBGSU conference.
“It’s an independently organized TED license event,” student organizer Carly Dudek said. “A way to bring a TED-like experience to BGSU, using marketing and the name. It’s about creating an environment that fosters ideas worth spreading, and bringing that to the University. We want to have a place that celebrates conversations and celebrates relationships that people can build from those conversations.”
The theme of the event is “affinity.” All the speakers will revolve their talks around the idea of a love or liking for something.
“Affinity is a very general word that has a lot of definitions that we really plan on raising,” Dudek said. “It could be about our relationship with another person or a natural liking or talent for something. Affinity is like a general sense of harmony or cohesion within a community. And we based this theme vaguely off of BG’s new marketing campaign, which is ‘Belong, Standout, Go Far.’”
The event has already garnered massive popularity. Through email inquiries, there has already been enough Bowling Green community members who have expressed interest in attending to fill the limit of 100 seats at a time.
“We probably have two to two and a half times as many applicants than there are even slots at this point,” Assistant Dean of Students Leah Howell said. “President Rodgers has even sent in an application.”
Applications are still open for speakers. Interested students, faculty, staff and community members can apply to speak using a form through UAO’s OrgSync page. Applications can be found here.
The conference first came to the University in 2011, but Dudek and a group of students successfully brought it back through collaboration with the office of campus activities. They started from scratch to receive both the University’s approval and a license from TED to use their brand name and resources. While this group is not an official organization, the office of campus activities has been ensuring that this group has all the same resources, help and opportunity as a registered organization.
They are hoping this will become an annual event.
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“What we’re looking for mainly is someone who has something that is really important, and I think the biggest thing we’re looking at is the idea and how well you can present it,” Dudek said.
All material will be recorded and edited and, if it fits all of TED’s guidelines, will be posted on their official website, and on the University website as well. It takes place on April 15th in the Union Theater. Applications are due this Friday, February 9 at 4:59pm.
