Fri­day, June 4, 2010 TED offi­cially came to Utah. TEDx, a new pro­gram that brings TED-​​quality talks to local com­mu­ni­ties launched it’s first event in Salt Lake City at the Uni­ver­sity of Utah.

The first pre­sen­ter was Tom Van­der Ark, for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion, who is work­ing on a new idea for “blended learn­ing”, his inter­pre­ta­tion of the next gen­er­a­tion in learn­ing — with big impact for the many chil­dren in lower socioe­co­nomic envi­ron­ments who would nor­mally drop out of school. Find out more about this project at http://edreformer.com/.

The next speaker was a bril­liant 15-​​year old stu­dent, Strom Clark. His pre­sen­ta­tion was on his 1st place CUSEF and Intel Inter­na­tional Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing Fair project titled “Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Nicotinic-​​Acetylcholine recep­tors in the Hip­pocam­pus through Ion cur­rent Analy­sis”.  His pre­sen­ta­tion was pep­pered with mul­ti­ple 6-​​syllable words in suc­ces­sion, so don’t expect me to decon­struct his talk very eas­ily. The most  impor­tant and impres­sive part of this pre­sen­ta­tion was his pas­sion for the research into find­ing a cure for mem­ory loss and Alzheimer’s — AND the fact that he’s also a con­cert pianist. WOW! I want some­one with his pas­sion to be my doc­tor! He’s really an inspiration!

The 3rd speaker was Bard Geesaman MD PhD. His topic focused on how to finance inno­va­tions in biotech­nol­ogy and the life sci­ences more effec­tively. His basic premise is that the cur­rent model is bro­ken, and out­lined a new fund­ing model for the industry.

Finally, Alis­tair Cock­burn PhD gave a riv­et­ing pre­sen­ta­tion about Design­ing in Teams — The Coöper­a­tive Game. He showed how design is a coöper­a­tive game with 3 moves: invent­ing, com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and decid­ing. Design is also a goal-​​directed game, along with things like Jour­nal­ism, Engi­neer­ing, Soft­ware Devel­op­ment, Busi­ness ini­tia­tives, etc.  You can read a full dis­cus­sion on this pre­sen­ta­tion here: http://alistair.cockburn.us/Alistair+at+TEDxUoU+2010

The event was rounded off by an impres­sive per­for­mance by Ririe-​​Woodbury Dance Com­pany (on a tiny stage), and net­work­ing after­ward, spon­sored by The Sum­mit Group.

I’d like to thank TEDx and the event hosts for bring­ing TED to Utah. It’s been a dream of mine to attend a TED con­fer­ence for at least 10 years now. The TEDx events are such a great resource to com­mu­ni­ties, and give us a taste of some of the big think­ing that is shared at larger TED events. Thanks for bring­ing it to the rest of us, TED!

More links: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700037819/Big-ideas-aired-at-Utah-TEDx-event.html

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