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 Cooperative Game. He showed how design is a cooperative 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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The Sundance marketing team collaborated with us to create an amazing Sundance/Salt Lake City Tweetup featuring Ondi Timoner, who was awarded the Grand Jury prize a few days after our Tweetup at the Sundance Film Festival for her documentary, We Live in Public.

We met in the lovely Beehive Tea Room in downtown Salt Lake City. Not only did we have Twitter users attend this event, but we also welcomed a few who have never used Twitter, but wanted to join the group to meet a Sundance director. Ondi Timoner, Josh Harris, and crew joined our Tweetup in between showings and graciously spent some time telling us about the documentary, and Tweeting their experience.

Director Ondi Timoner (@onditimoner) and Josh Harris

Tweetup attendees listening to Ondi Timoner and Josh Harris talking about We Live in Public

Here’s a partial list of the Salt Lake City Sundance Tweetup:
@rmiriam12
@kittygutz
@roxycross
@ThomAllen
@carysnowden
@ambeestar
@taranaki
@latent_image
@highpointe
@ghennipher
@kevinDwhite
@littleidea
Danica Cross
Krista Smith

Many thanks to Sundance Film Festival, Ondi Timoner and Josh Harris for coming to our Tweetup! We all had a great time! And congratulations to Ondi Timoner for winning the 2009 Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary We Live In Public.

Suntweet Charity Tweetup January 22, 2009

One thing I love about Social Media is the power it has to support a good cause. The #suntweet charity Twetup event definitely supported a great cause, and raised over $600 for Serenity. We also UStreamed the event and even made the front page!

#Suntweet panelists prepping to talk about social media.

@ghennipher with fellow #suntweet panelist Jesse Stay (@jesse)

We all had a great time with the Tweetups during the month of January. I’m really proud to have had a part in supporting an important charity — Serenity, and to support a budding documentarian, Ondi Timoner.

If you’re an organization in Utah that would like to be part of our SLC Tweetups, please contact me. Your customers are actively using social media and talking about your brand via social media. Theres no better venue to reach this audience than through social media — online and offline. I would love to connect you with this wonderful group of social media users and help you design a strategy to provide real value to your customers during these difficult economic times.

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