Mississippi State University will host its first TEDx conference on Friday.
Michael Poole, a university senior in computer science and president of TEDx at Mississippi State, said students began efforts to host a conference in the spring 2018 semester. At the time, a group of students held a public interest meeting to start the roughly 15-member TEDx at Mississippi State student group.
From there, Poole said, they worked through the summer and into the fall to get a license to host the conference. Once they got it, they started planning the event in coordination with MSU.
TED is a nonprofit that focuses on spreading ideas. Poole said the application process was “intensive” but helped the group learn what a TED conference is about.
“They really wanted to make sure you understand what the focus of a TED talk is,” Poole said. “The whole focus is on ideas, and not just nice stories or cool new things — it’s about spreading new ideas.”
TEDx at MSU, which is scheduled for 4-9 p.m. in the Colvard Student Union’s Dawg House, focuses on “Moving Forward.” Per TED regulations, the conference can only have 100 attendees, and Poole said only six $10 tickets were left, as of Wednesday afternoon.
The conference will be live-streamed at https://www.livestream.com/msstate/TEDx.
Friday’s conference will include Danielle Scott, a two-time Olympic volleyball silver medalist who travels the nation speaking to schools about the importance of financial literacy and women in leadership. It will also feature Nicholas Ward, a Green Beret veteran who suffered a brain injury and will talk about overcoming the injury and his obsession with joining the Green Berets.
The conference will also have a lot of local flavor, with MSU student Brady Kruse, MSU Associate Professor Veera Gude, Starkville High School senior Hanna Jian, MSU alumnus Kolie Crutcher and MSU student Madison Grant.
“We’re very pleased with what we have,” Poole said. “We wanted to definitely make sure we included locals and people related to Starkville, so even professors and alumni. But we also realized there are great people beyond that who want to share their ideas and we’re fine with branching out and looking further as well.”
TEDx at Mississippi State Vice President Avery Ferguson said the group wanted to emphasize giving a stage to people who might not otherwise have it.
“It’s been exciting getting to know people who want to speak at this conference and getting to know people who don’t always have a voice,” Ferguson said. “One of our speakers, Hannah Jian, is a high school student, and we’re really excited to have her take the TEDx stage because most high school seniors can’t say they’ve given a TED talk, let alone speak at a conference.”
Montelleo Hobley, coordinator of the behavioral intervention team in the Dean of Students Office, is TEDx at Mississippi State’s staff advisory. While he’s offered advice to the students and helped them to market the event, he said they did a lot of the heavy lifting for setting up the conference and getting the speakers.
He said it has been inspiring to watch their commitment to making the conference happen.
“It’s overcoming adversity all day,” Hobley said. “This is something that started last year, and last year they just couldn’t get it off the ground and going. Having a group of students who have been dedicated to meeting every Thursday and dedicated to making sure this comes to fruition has, for me, given me another outlook on students. Because sometimes with students, once they hear ‘No,’ it’s like ‘Oh, OK, I heard no and now I’m down with it.’
“But they have been so dedicated to continuing to push forward because of the hope of how this will turn out,” he added.
Poole said TEDx at Mississippi State is hoping for the conference to become an annual event. He said this first year should help lay the foundation for that.
“Our goal this year in hosting this and making it as good as it can be is to educate the general public and provide evidence for the future about what we’re trying to do, what we have done and what we will do,” Poole said.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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