TEDx Waterloo

On Wednesday, I went to TEDx Waterloo. I applied this year thinking I’d either not be accepted or not be able to go due to needing to take care of Wesley, but I was accepted and a friend of mine was able to watch Wesley during the day, which was awesome.

If you don’t know what TED is (how could you not!), it stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and has become a format for conferences that are held around the world. Talks are on a huge variety of subjects- speakers are charged with giving the talk of their lives in 18 minutes or less. You can see a ton of examples at TED.com.

I got to the Centre in the Square just before the first round of speakers started. I particularly enjoyed Scott Chantler and Krister Chalm of the first set of speakers. One of the really cool things about the day was Mr. Chantler’s project- he spent the day working on a representation of the day and the speakers in comic form.

I also enjoyed Taylor Jones of Dear Photograph, from the second set of speakers, and Jean Béliveau, whose story of his walk around the world was super compelling.

My favourite speaker of the day was Karen Morris, who gave a really well done talk about love, connection, and innovation, which is hard to describe but it really spoke to me. Overall, it was a great day. If there’s a TED in your area and you haven’t been, you should go!