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Today I had the wonderful experience of attending a TEDx event live at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.    The event consisted of a 20 TEDx talks given from people as diverse as Dr. Lillian Smestad talking about anti-matter research done at CERN to a fifth-grader named Kate Cesario who read her classmate’s poem about her experience about coming from war-torn Iraq to the United States which she called the “Everything Country.”

My favorite talks included:

• John Katsoudas—talked about how Nano Liquid Batteries can be the breakthrough that are needed to jump-start the market for purely electric vehicles
• Haydn Shaw—talked about millennials are not a problematic group to deal with if you realize they are just going through a problematic period called emerging adulthood, like every other generation has done before it
• Garrett Gray—on how to suppress the instinct which terms healthy competition into unhealthy competition
• Carl Seidman—on how his first “retirement” at 32 taught him that all of us will need to reinvert our career and our lives at least once in our lives, so we might as well do it voluntarily rather than being forced to do so.
• Ellen Schnur/Jim Mecir—talked about how the powers of improvisation can help you not only be more spontaneous, but can help you stop negative “self-talk” which can sabotage your efforts

The organizer, Amy Lee Segami, spent six months putting on the event with her team of IIT student volunteers.   I am still on an intellectual high after listening to an entire day’s worth of information and entertainment.   It is now my goal to BE on a TEDx talk next time around in 2017 …

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