TEDxWakeForestU – This Weekend

Today’s Daily Deac was written by Michael Tantum, a senior from Pennyslvania.  I met him during the fall semester and he told me about the great plans for the TEDx conference, which will be held this weekend.   Michael wanted to be sure that parents and families knew about this wonderful opportunity to hear from innovative, creative, and inspiring speakers.  We hope at minimum you’ll encourage your students to attend – but if you want to attend too, I know Michael and his TEDx team would love to see you in Wait Chapel.

Here’s Michael’s message to Wake Forest families.

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Dear Wake Forest Parents and Families,

This Saturday, February 22nd, Wake Forest University will host its 3rd annual TEDx conference. TEDx may sound familiar;  they are independently organized conferences in the same format as the famous TED talks.  The concept behind these talks is to have inspirational people discuss their “ideas worth spreading.”  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and most of the speakers are centered around those core concepts.

The TEDxWakeForestU conference was originally started in 2012 by student activist and campus leader, Lucy Lan, in order to promote technology entrepreneurship here on the Wake Forest campus.  With this in mind, she was able to bring a multitude of speakers from many disciplines to educate the Wake Forest community.  This event was a bigger success than she could have imagined, with over 1,000 attendees and immeasureable impact on the Wake Forest community.

This year’s conference theme is “Daring to Endeavor,” encompassing the entrepreneurial spirit, originality, and drive of our speakers.  These people come from very diverse backgrounds and disciplines; however, they all share an intense passion that they have acted upon to create something very special.  Each of the speakers are entrepreneurs in their own way and we are happy to welcome them to campus. This year’s speakers include the lead developer from Khan Academy, a data scientist at Uber (mobile app for ride sharing), founder of the US Whitewater Center in Charlotte, founder and co-editor of ORIGIN magazine, and bestselling author of “What is your What?” along with several others.

I wanted to take this opportunity to personally invite you to attend this event. I am extremely excited and I truly hope each of you can make it!  The planning committee has been working hard to make this conference successful and educational to the Wake Forest, Winston Salem, and North Carolina communities. My hope is to have each attendee leave this year’s talks and see the world through “new eyes.”  I expect a large attendance for this event like previous years.   In addition, I hope that you encourage your student to attend.  Please register on our website at www.tedxwakeforestu.com and check out the speaker’s bios.  The event starts at 12 PM on Saturday and will last approximately 4-5 hours with two breaks.  Admission is free for students, faculty, staff and $10 for adults.

Thank you and I hope to see you at the 2014 TEDxWakeForestU conference.

Sincerely,

Michael Tantum (’14)
Executive Director, TEDxWakeForestU