First ever TEDx event held at Blaine High School was a sold-out success
(05/24/19) Blaine High School (BHS) was home to its first ever TEDx Talk May 18, and organizers say the sold-out event couldn’t have been much better. Watch presentations from the event.
“It’s great to be in a room with like-minded people that challenge the status quo on technology, entertainment, and design,” said BHS teacher Daryl Boeckers, who also helped organize the event. “As an educator, it invited me to think differently about day-to-day operations as well as the big picture.”
The TEDxBlaine event was billed as a forum in which extraordinary thinkers and doers can share ideas and spark meaningful change to our community and beyond, and it lived up to that, according to another BHS organizer, teacher Kevin Bross.
“It felt great to create opportunities for all of our speakers to share their ideas with others and create a dialog around each of their talks,” Bross said.
Most people are familiar with TED Talks — short, powerful discussions from expert speakers who discuss a wide range of topics that are filmed and made available to the world. TEDx events are much the same, but independently organized TED events. TEDxBlaine was one of those independently organized events.
At TEDxBlaine, there were nine talks delivered, ranging from five to 18 minutes in length. As part of the license from the TED organization, the Blaine program was multidisciplinary and covered a wide range of areas. Four of the nine presenters had ties to Anoka-Hennepin schools — two were current BHS students; one a recent BHS graduate; and one a staff member.
“I was beyond proud of our two student speakers and how they represented Blaine High School and the Anoka-Hennepin School District,” Bross said.
A video of the entire event will be made available by the TED Talks organization in the coming weeks, Bross said.
The four Anoka-Hennepin presenters and the topics they discussed:
- Baraa Al-Jasim (BHS student): Baraa spoke about the fire fighting robot she is currently developing. She discussed the process of identifying a societal challenge and then developing the idea of a solution from the perspective of a young engineering mind.
- Sadhika Prabhu (BHS student): Sadhika presented a talk about what she is calling "Sudden Issues." These are dilemmas we all face in various situations in our lives that arise quickly and are difficult to address in the moment. For Sadhika the "sudden issue" she faced recently deals with a moment when she found herself oriented as an outsider in a group of engineers due primarily because of her gender. Her talk focused on strategies to build up personal resilience to employ when faced with sudden issues and how the power of story might help prevent the sudden issues in the long term.
- Sheba Coffey: Sheba is currently working in Anoka-Hennepin as a student achievement advisor at Jackson Middle School. Her talk focused on a new way of thinking about fear.
- Fedhii Gobena: Fedhii is a 2014 graduate of BHS who is currently working in a consulting firm in Chicago. His talk was about the underlying motivation in decision making.
The remaining speakers and topics included:
- Ross Bernstein: He addressed the power of failure.
- Kevin Bowe: He talked about the emotional side of a skill set and how it can often supersede the technical side.
- Kelly Olson: She talked about the connection between loss and rebirth in the business world and in life.
- Alicia Perkins: Her talk was about how we can overcome mental health stigmas.
- Terry Wu: His talk was about Neuromarketing which is a field of marketing which uses neuroscience to study the brain's responses to marketing stimuli.