UM's TEDx Event To Encourage 'Crazy Ideas'
The intellectual equivalent of a University of Michigan football game, in terms of community involvement, is what organizers hope the upcoming TEDxUofM conference turns out to be.
The student-organized event will be held 10 a.m.-5 p.m. April 8 at the Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty St., Ann Arbor.
The ideas convention will feature 23 innovative UM professors, alumni and students with globally oriented minds, organizers say. Webcast live and streamed on three screens across campus, conference planners hope to get more than 100,000 people to tune in or attend.
"On Saturdays in the fall, football unites the entire UM community -- not just current students, but alumni all over the world and faculty and staff. We're trying to do that on an intellectual level," said Austin Konig, a junior at the Ross School of Business who helped put the conference together with a group of 65 students from across campus.
Participants will hear from an aerospace engineering student who vowed to produce no waste for one year, a law school alumnus working to free the imprisoned winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, and a professor who designed a low-cost, easy-to-use male circumcision tool to reduce spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.
Doctoral student Darshan Karwat, law school alumnus Jared Genser and Kathleen Sienko, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, are just a few of the speakers on the eclectic agenda of maverick thinkers. The theme of the day-long event is "encouraging crazy ideas," inspired by a column UM President Mary Sue Coleman wrote in Forbes magazine in August.
"We're taking her message to heart," Konig said. "We hope this is a time to pause and recognize all the entrepreneurial possibilities that surround us. Not only do we want to showcase the ideas that students, alumni and faculty here have, ultimately we want to inspire our audience to pursue their own crazy ideas."
Participants will hear 20 presentations from eight students, nine faculty members and six alumni, including:
* Chris Van Allsburg, an alumnus of the School of Art & Design who twice won the Caldecott Medal for writing and illustrating Jumanji and The Polar Express.
* Sean Morrison, professor and director of the UM Center for Stem Cell Biology who researches the mechanisms that regulate stem cell self-renewal, aging and organ formation in the nervous and blood forming systems.
* Red Simmons, the 101-year-old founder of the U-M women's track team who still does stairs at Crisler Arena several times a week.
* Donia Jarrar, a master's musical composition student whose blog translated into English the phone messages Egyptians sent to Speak to Tweet, a Google-Twitter service that enabled tweeting without an Internet connection. At the height of the revolution, her blog received more than 10,000 views per day.
"We're going to take people on a roller coaster," said Alex O'Dell, a junior at the Ford School of Public Policy who founded the TEDxUofM conference last year and is leading the effort this year. "All of our speakers are innovative people who have taken a risk on something they're passionate about."
TED is a California- and New York-based nonprofit dedicated to "ideas worth spreading." It holds conferences all over the world, and allows local groups to organize their own similar "TEDx" events.
Registration is required. To register, see a full list of speakers or watch the conference via webcast, visit http://tedxuofm.com. The event will be shown live on screens at North Quad, the Duderstadt Center and the Shapiro Library lobby.
