FILES The university’s recent lecture event sold out in three hours BY GEORGIA FISHER
Elizabeth Smart speaking at UNR’s recent TEDx event.
Y For more information, visit www. tedxuniversityofnevada. org.
16 | RN&R |
FEBRUARY 6, 2014
ou know the old adage about wanting to write a shorter letter, but not having the time? Same goes for speeches. “It’s much easier to fill an hour than it is to fill a tight, 12-minute talk,” said Bret Simmons, a UNR management professor who launched the school’s instantly popular TEDx program last year. “There’s no waste of words. You have to grab [listeners] in the first 60 seconds, or they’ll really check out.” A word about grabbing: If a love of TED talks—the internationally renowned Technology, Entertainment and Design series—is what brought your attention to this story, we’re not on the same page. Not exactly, anyway. TED has regularly inspired heady discussions since 1990, and plenty of
buzz surrounded the second annual TEDxUniversityofNevada, which sold out in less than three hours, and ran on Jan. 24. But a TEDx event isn’t a TED event, per se. While it shares certain branding and ideology with its famous parent, the “x” means a given program is independently organized, locally focused, and—per the official website—“TED-like.” Hell, Reno alone is home to three. Apart from UNR’s, there’s TEDxReno coming in June, and a new one in the works from the Davidson Academy of Nevada. (The latter event’s founder, a high school senior, “is hoping to expose his fellow students to new perspectives, different ideas, and people that they may not be familiar with or have access to,” said academy spokeswoman Melissa Lance.)
Attendees hopefully are made aware of the whole TED/TEDx distinction from the get-go. Many TEDx websites include a polite disclaimer, for instance, asking that journalists “be respectful of the difference between the TED and TEDx brands,” as “any headline or text which implies ‘TED’ is coming … is misleading.” No doubt this helped at a recent TEDx conference in San Diego, where college professor Benjamin Bratton took the mic and slammed TED events as being “middlebrow megachurch infotainment.” Ouch. The roughly 7-foot-tall, bright red “X” at the corner of the stage at UNR’s Joe Crowley Student Union helped clarify things locally, as did the day’s $100 price tag—a sliver of the bill to attend this year’s TED extravaganza in Vancouver (think
$3,750 for a basic, annual membership that requires an application. A five-year “patron” membership sets you back a cool $125,000). Simmons said, “I’m pretty certain they know what they’re getting.” He capped his volunteer-run show at fewer than 200 people, in light of seating limitations. Many were friends and family of local speakers, or connected to the school in other ways. “They set their alarm clocks,” Simmons added with a chuckle. “We were sold out by 9 a.m.”
Speakers of the house In a nod to the organizers’ connection to UNR’s business program, the 21-speaker lineup was well stacked with folks from the corporate world.
