TEDxFIU: Ideas Worth Sharing, Shared with you

Gabriel Seiglie/ Contributing Writer 

For Luis Suarez, junior English major, the best part of TEDxFIU conferences is the unexpected.

“They bring up different professional point of views … It helps with new-age benefits. They prefer a lot more visual, auditory and seeing than having to sit down and read. So it opens up the doors for a lot more people to see what’s going on and have more ideas,” he said.

Every year, members of the FIU community come together to share ideas and start a  dialogue in part of a worldwide movement known as Technology, Entertainment, and Design – TED.

This year’s TEDxFIU conference, which will take place on Nov. 16, promising to open the University community to a discussion about diversity, acceptance, and union. Speakers will include women’s rights advocate, Valeriana Chikoti-Bandua; arranged marriage advocate, Omar Durrani; and developmental psychologist Lindsay C. Malloy.

Since 1984, TED has stood for spreading “ideas worth sharing” through conferences that bring together thinkers and leaders in various fields to broadcast their ideas to a wider audience. Speakers give talks usually ranging from five to 20 minutes, in which they share their passions and what drives them to achieve greatness.

TEDx events are miniature TED conferences hosted by independent organizations with the goal of furthering TED’s mission. Since 2012, the University has hosted a TEDx conference every year, showcasing speakers such as paralympic athlete Ileana Rodriguez, Black Violin’s Kevin Marcus and forensic chemist Rhett Williamson. Each of these speakers shared their passions with the crowd in speeches meant to inspire and educate.

“I like how entertaining they can be,” said Aaron Albiza, junior computer science major. “I know TEDx has a very expansive library of TED talks that are just purely for entertainment.”

The speakers at this conference promise to make no exception to this. They each have background in the areas of their talks, and their passion is what makes them captivating. Albiza said it takes “someone who is very, very good at their craft” to make a good TED presenter.

For more information on this year’s TEDxFIU event and for ticket pricing, visit https://tedx.fiu.edu/