We’ve made the decision to extend the deadline because we have had an outpouring of community support and, frankly, we need the extra days to accommodate the demand. Plus, we realize that with a couple of more speakers to announce in our line up in the coming days, there will be increased demand to attend. It’s only fair to make sure that everyone has a chance to attend TEDxWaterloo.

By the way, the set design for this year’s event is rumored to be awesome. The atmosphere at Centre in the Square on March 21 will be electric. Exciting. Amazing. And you’re going to be so glad you’re there.

With less than a week left to submit your application to attend, I have to admit that the TEDxWaterloo team has heard some CRAZY reasons why people are procrastinating in filling out their online application.  Here are some of them:

•  I don’t think I am interesting enough for TEDxWaterloo. 

Ah! Of course you are interesting enough! Just tell us about yourself. Why you want to be at TEDxWaterloo. What you do around the community. You don’t have to be a volunteer or change the world, just talk about your life a bit.  You might be a student slammed with homework and your community work may consist of helping your roommates polish off that keg, but eventually you will be doing something else with your life. Tell us about your goals. Or if you spend your day in a cubicle and want to get out for the day to experience all this TEDx inspiration or motivation, that’s a good reason, too.  JUST tell us something.

• It’s too much work to fill out the online application. 

NO, it’s not. It will take 10 minutes. Maybe less. Or you can write as much as you want. Take an hour if you want. Just do it.

• It’s on a Wednesday. I work on a Wednesday. 

Sick day, vacation day, personal day, professional development day, skipping school day, mental health day, “tell your boss about it  and invite them to apply to attend” day!

• It’ll be too much fun, then I have to go back to my real life and be depressed.

No kidding. There is nothing like the “TEDxWaterloo Day-After Hangover.”  You wake up the next day and realize you just met hundreds of really cool people, heard some amazing stories, ate fantastic food, drank a few beverages with people who made you laugh, think and think some more.  The only cure to this is to add them to your social network, send them an email, and hook up with them sometime soon. TEDxWaterloo is a catalyst for change!

• I don’t want to go alone.

At TEDxWaterloo, you are never really alone. You are surrounded by interesting people who want to talk to you. Besides, part of the fun is not just hanging out with the usual suspects, but to be open to meeting new people.  You don’t have to be a crazy extrovert – TEDxWaterloo is designed to make talking with other participants easy. And fun. Besides, there is food involved. Rumour has it that serious friendships (and minor flirtations) have got their start at a TEDxWaterloo buffet food line.  Go on, make new friends. You may have them for life!

• I didn’t get in last year. 

Try again. Mention you didn’t get in last year. We aren’t heartless. Besides, we admire people who don’t give up.

•  You people are crazy. 

Yeah, we are. Crazy about bringing TEDxWaterloo to our community and ensuring everyone has a fantastic time. We are crazy about spreading ideas and crazy about making sure as many people as possible can be part of it.

Now, go apply. 

Why trepidation? Because while we sincerely wish everyone who wants to attend TEDxWaterloo 2012 could buy a ticket and enjoy the day/night with fellow TEDxWaterloo participants, we are faced with two realities that prohibit this from happening:

1. Space considerations – The Centre in the Square venue can accommodate only a certain number of people  (1200) in terms of seating, moving around outside the auditorium, feeding and maintaining the interactivity level this event is meant to instill.
2. TEDx events like ours are governed by certain TED guidelines and this includes the concept of “curating” the event from the speakers to the audience. While not all TEDx events are audience curated (some TEDx organizers around the world are vehemently opposed to this concept), it has proven to be an effective tool in creating the “TED-like” experience that the TEDxWaterloo team deems essential to our event.  Curation encourages a dynamic, engaged and interested audience from an entire community: it’s an all-ages, all-stages-of-life event with the only prerequisite is that you are able to articulate in some fashion your interest in the event and your community involvement. There is also a bit of luck involved. We have to make the cut off point somewhere because of the limitations in space. We have an excellent team of trained people who read the applications (but don’t see names) and choose participants based the answers to the five questions that are most reflective of a person’s interest level and community involvement.  It’s an incredibly tough job because with so many interesting people who want to attend, there are some agonizing decisions about limits. Yet, decisions are made.

As Canadians, having to say “no” to someone is just not in our national character. We hate to disappoint and love to apologize. (That’s a good thing. It goes a long way in making society less fractious.) We offer alternatives: there are locations around the cities that will be live streaming the event so you can enjoy a different kind of community feeling and still be part of the event (we will be listing these locations in the next month or so).  You can also watch live from your computer.  And there is the waiting list for the live event in case some of the original accepted participants change their minds about attending on March 21, 2012.

One thing we do want to stress is that you don’t need to be super special, amazing, a wunderkind or fabulously accomplished to attend TEDxWaterloo. Heck no! We seek a wide range of experience in life – you might be in elementary school or a retirement home; you could be homeless or build homes; you may have seen every TED talk or maybe just discovered your first one. You could be new to this city, community or country or able to fly here from a whole different nation in your private jet (so far that hasn’t happened that we know of!)  Just fill out the five questions to the best of your ability; state your interest and send it off.  As Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  So take that shot!

In the end, the audience selection process works for the TEDxWaterloo community.  The people who find themselves listening to our speakers and engaging with fellow participants outside the auditorium are thrilled with the diversity of the speakers and audience.  It’s not the same-old, usual suspects crowd they run into at work, school, cultural events or their day-to-day lives. Sure, there are always familiar faces but there is also that awesome feeling of meeting someone new and thinking “Wow, this person is so interesting; I am glad they are here.” Connections are made, new friendships are forged and, most importantly, ideas are spread.  

P.S. The Application process ends on January 27, 2012.  So fill out your applications early to avoid the last second rush!

The past few months have been a roller coaster for the selection committee as we embarked on the process of assembling our program of speakers and performers for this year. It always feels like a leap of faith at first, starting with a blank slate that quickly turns into a frenzied, foggy cloud of possibilities. There is a lot of research and discussion, combing through the hundreds of nominations that have been pouring in from our colleagues, friends and community, as well as following up on instinctive leads and serendipitous finds. As a shortlist begins to take shape, there are some immediate invitations that need to go out, and some to hold back while we wait for responses. The waiting can be the toughest part. It is a bit of a guessing game: just like at a great dinner party, we need to balance the guest list. If some people can’t make it, we’ll have others in mind, but the flavour of the event will change a bit, and we can’t go inviting everyone all at once, in case they all say yes!

Of course, not everyone’s schedule aligns, so there are inevitable sad moments when a sought-after speaker declines, but these are far outweighed by the thrill as, one-by-one, our speakers commit to joining us. And they don’t do it lightly. They know what’s at stake. We make it clear from the beginning that we expect a great deal from our speakers and performers, and they make a commitment to working hard and with passion to develop the best TEDtalk they can. As each speaker commits to TEDxWaterloo, we begin a dialogue where we explore and share ideas in order for them to chart a course – their course — that they can follow for maximum impact on March 21, 2012. They are as excited as we are and everyone is giving their best.

Gradually, our speaker slots begin to fill up, and we develop a clearer sense for what our event will become. Our speakers are dynamically shaping what will happen on that day. New sub themes and areas of interest will suggest themselves, and we’ll go hunting for that perfect voice to round out the cast. All of this, against the backdrop of a ticking clock, with everyone’s schedules filling up and our continuing drive to make the day’s program into something bigger than any one of the talks can be on its own. It pays to leave room for some serendipity as well, since we never know what surprising new voices might show up at the last minute. And they do

Throughout the process, we realize the business end of running a TEDx event is really important, so as we lock down a few things, we communicate back to the community about what’s happening. That’s why I’m so excited by today’s announcement that we have Bilge Demirköz, Jean Béliveau and Scott Chantler as integral parts of TEDxWaterloo 2012. We’ll be announcing more speakers early in the New Year (along with many other fun surprises), so be sure to stay in the loop by visiting this site often… and you can always find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or join our mailing list on http://tedxwaterloo.com/contact/

I mean really hung up on you.

The phone slamming, angry adverbs, mid-sentence cut off, came out of left field kind of hang up?

I can remember my first experience with an angry hang up like it was yesterday. NKOTB and their classic hit “Please Don’t Go Girl” was blaring through my tape deck, as my 12 year old eyes cried a million tears over a boy who shouted into his rotary phone “We are over” and followed his decree with a resounding slam. It was the first time my teenage self had discovered the sense of powerlessness you experience when you are disconnected from so abruptly. It was the first time that I learned the power you wield when you break communication with another and disconnect without an explanation. In a world so full of opportunities to communicate it is a shame that so many of us communicate so poorly, and take the easy road of the disconnect from people and situations when they become difficult.

As I have grown older and have more tools at my disposal then ever to connect and communicate, I sometimes feel more lost than ever before. I have often wondered then if poor communication doesn’t disconnect souls, but rather it’s the disconnected souls who poorly communicate. If that statement could have a nugget of truth, then where does that leave us, as we find the promise and power of connection and our contributions to the communities that we find ourselves in? Where does it leave us when communication has never been so important, yet has never been more misunderstood and misused?

I am not sure what the answers are, and maybe for now, I don’t to figure it all out. Perhaps the answer is fluid and malleable as we constantly recalibrate in an ever changing world. Maybe the most important thing is that we are searching for an answer, together and connected, through an outlet like TEDxWaterloo, wresting through these inevitable tensions.

Seth Godin once said “Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value” I am sure in his marketing guru genius he was talking about connecting products to people, but I can’t help but wonder if that same statement applies person to person. When we connect with one another, in new and meaningful ways, when we choose connectedness over the disconnect, we then create value because of what we create together.

We have all heard the line “two heads are better than one” and “we are stronger together then we are divided”. Maybe sometimes clichés are clichés because they are true. Maybe finding our connectedness and looking for the answers of how each of us, in our own context, can hang up once and for all on our disconnectedness, is the most powerful force on earth for change. Maybe there is hope beyond the disconnect and maybe for now, that hope is enough.

It’s just ordinary people working together to achieve a common extraordinary goal. That’s it. There is no fancy, schmancy plan or a detailed master plan that we all follow; although there are plenty of days we wish there was one. While we have plenty of general organizer resources to call upon, and some guidelines and a few regulations we must follow in order to meet our TEDx license, most of what we do is creating something new – after all, TEDxWaterloo is only in its third year of existence. No one passed down a tome of “how to do this” to anyone; there is no department of “TEDxWaterloo Education” (yet) that indoctrinates new volunteers into how to run a successful TEDxWaterloo event. We treasure the documents we do have that retrace the previous years’ successes and failures, and lean heavily on the folks who volunteered before us. But each year the challenges are new because the events are new, many of the volunteers are new and the speakers are new.

The kicker is that we all do this on a voluntary basis. Somehow, three years ago, a few people in this community got it into their heads they could pull off a major cultural event that now includes not one main event (TEDxWaterloo 2012: DIS CONNECTED on March 21, 2012), but also TEDxWaterloo Adventures and Salons. Last year’s TEDxWaterloo 2011 event drew almost 1000 participants to the sold-out Centre in the Square venue. It was a brilliant event that took thousands of volunteer hours to pull off, as well as the commitment of community partners who invested financially in this vision. They were not disappointed.

It’s true that we have the original TEDxWaterloo license holder, Matt Gorbet, and co-host/director Ramy Nassar leading the way, but they are the first to admit they would get no where fast if it wasn’t for the entire team beside them. It’s the total mash up of this brainpower and enthusiasm (along with giving up a lot of “free” time often stolen from family, friends and other activities one enjoys) that makes TEDxWaterloo work. And work it does. One of last year’s speakers, Vincent John Vincent, the cofounder of Gesturetek, offered up this comment about his experience last year:

“I had the honour of speaking at the 2011 TedXWaterloo. It was absolutely a top-notch organization producing a top-notch event. Everyone was warm and supportive, and I had a great time, as I know everyone else I talked to, did as well. I don’t think any other TedX event has been produced as well as this one. I really enjoyed how it was set up to meet and talk to all the attendees in the breaks and at the after party.”

This is high praise, considering there have been 2,600 independently organized TEDx events since the TEDx program was launched three years ago. That’s 10,000 TEDx talks – and all of it put together by volunteers in communities around the world. If you need to know the secret of TEDx it’s this: The People.

On September 15, over 70 volunteers came together at the Accelerator Center for our 2011-2012 kick off initiatives. From TEDxWaterloo veterans, to volunteers who had never heard of TEDxWaterloo, we all came together with a common passion; bringing ideas worth spreading to the Waterloo region. Before the meetup, most of us had never spoken to one another, but we eagerly shared our experiences, best practices, ideas, and hopes of how amazing this event could be. Since then, smaller groups have flourished, collaborating and working together to bring new ideas, new experiences and new adventures to life.

I am thrilled to be the Project Manager for this great organization and I know that I will learn a lot, challenge my limits, and make new connections. I can’t wait to put new ideas into action! TEDxWaterloo is friends and connections worth making, ideas worth spreading, and actions worth doing.

While I’m not supposed to give away all of our surprises, I wanted to let you know a bit of what we are working on.

This fall will bring to life our first TEDxWaterloo Salon event. Salon events will be smaller, more intimate TEDx events with a very well defined theme and scope. The idea behind Salon events is to bring together not just an audience but also a connected group of individuals that share a common passion or understanding of the theme.

Also coming this Fall will be our first TEDxWaterloo Cinema event. We plan to host several screenings each year of films related to either past speakers or ideas in general. In conjunction with the screenings, it’s our intention to invite actors/directors/writers/producers involved in the film to host discussion groups afterwards.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the entire TEDxWaterloo Community. Whether you’ve attended a previous event, watched our live stream or hosted videos, volunteer with us or work with one of our incredible partner organizations – Thank you! I look forward to continuing to build this community through our 2011/2012 year.