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TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

2015 Speakers

Maya Kaup: Stepping Up to Stop Food Waste

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From music lessons to sports like gym­nas­tics and track, to vol­un­teer­ing with the Girl Scouts, Maya Kaup, 20, was raised to explore every oppor­tu­ni­ty, and to stay busy. Maya KaupTo find a niche. To get involved. It was only nat­ur­al, then, dur­ing her fresh­man year at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty that a Face­book video on food waste and com­mu­ni­ty hunger spurred her to action. Why not bring food recov­ery to her school?

Why not here? Why not me?

“Some­one had to do it,” the biol­o­gy major said. “I see it as a moral oblig­a­tion.”

For her TED talk, Kaup will share her expe­ri­ences found­ing the Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of the Food Recov­ery Net­work, a nation­al non-prof­it that focus­es on fight­ing food waste and hunger. Accord­ing to FRN sta­tis­tics, 17.5 mil­lion fam­i­lies nation­wide are “food-inse­cure,” not sure where their next meal will come from. In Ore­gon, 15 per­cent of fam­i­lies are food-inse­cure; the pover­ty rate in Mar­i­on Coun­ty is 19.5 per­cent. Mean­while, Amer­i­cans dis­card 35 mil­lion tons of food per year, or rough­ly 40 per­cent of all food pro­duced in the coun­try.

In 2014, Kaup along with 20 vol­un­teers helped the uni­ver­si­ty block 8,000 pounds of sur­plus, unsold food from the garbage to feed the home­less. 635521005049941726-SAL1123-Causes-FoodRecovery-ar-01Not only is good food not thrown away, but nutri­tious fruits and veg­eta­bles are saved for those who can’t often have them, Kaup said.

“It’s a win-win,” she said.

When Kaup isn’t man­ag­ing the FRN, she takes a full course load at school, and also helps care for orphaned ani­mals at the Tur­tle Ridge Wildlife Cen­ter. See­ing the suc­cess­es of her efforts moti­vates her to do even more, she said.

It “fuels my fire,” she said. “It makes me real­ize I can make a dif­fer­ence.”

To see Maya Kaup and oth­er TEDx Salem 2015 speak­ers, buy tick­ets here.

Lou Radja: Everyone deserves the opportunity to dance

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Motivational speaker Lou Radja will share the lessons he learned growing up in the Congo and getting his education in the United States.
Lou Rad­ja will share the lessons he learned grow­ing up in the Con­go and get­ting his edu­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States.

“Jam­bo!”

Lou Rad­ja announces the Swahili greet­ing wher­ev­er he goes in his deep boom­ing voice and broad smile. It’s almost impos­si­ble not to smile back.

Rad­ja, 39, grew up in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go, Africa, and, like his par­ents, attend­ed col­lege in the Unit­ed States. The gift of edu­ca­tion changed his fam­i­ly tree, and his life’s pur­pose is to return the favor.

“It’s essen­tial for our own sur­vival to take care of one anoth­er. There’s noth­ing spe­cial about it,” he said, “except human beings giv­ing every­one an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dance.”

One of his favorite say­ings from his vast col­lec­tion, is “when you take the ele­va­tor to the top; always send it back down for some­one else.”

Near­ly 50 years ago, mis­sion­ar­ies gave his father a chance to go to col­lege, not because he was smarter than every­one else, Rad­ja said, but because he was lucky.

“That’s when you real­ize that every­one has this organ­ic bril­liance but not every­one has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case it,” he said. “That moti­vates me even more to give oth­ers the same oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

“I already know they are bril­liant,” he said, “all they need is a dance floor.”

Rad­ja found­ed EduCon­go, a U.S. based non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that helps more than 2,000 under­priv­i­leged chil­dren in the Con­go get a qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion. It’s his way of send­ing the ele­va­tor back down for some­one else.

Rad­ja is also a moti­va­tion­al speak­er who draws on his expe­ri­ence grow­ing up in Con­go and his edu­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States to inspire peo­ple to be more and give more. Rad­ja will share his talk “Africa, my roots. Amer­i­ca, my wings” at TEDxSalem Sat­ur­day, Oct. 3, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter.

To hear Radja’s talk and lis­ten to oth­er TEDxSalem speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.

A few of Radja’s favorite quotes:

“Life isn’t about wait­ing for the storm to pass…It’s about learn­ing to dance in the rain.”
‑Vivian Greene

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with oth­ers.”
‑African proverb

“Twen­ty Years From Now You Will Be More Dis­ap­point­ed By The Things You Didn’t Do Than By The Ones You Did Do…Explore. Dream. Dis­cov­er.”
‑Attrib­uted to Mark Twain

Rhea Stadick: Bringing Humanity to Software Development

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Some­times the only thing stand­ing in the way of suc­cess is doubt, accord­ing to Rhea Stadick, soft­ware devel­op­er and orga­ni­za­tion­al coach at Intel. “Just assump­tions that it can’t hap­pen, it won’t hap­pen, or there’s a rule against it,” she says.

There’s a lot less in your way than you think, she says, if you just have the courage to try some­thing new.

For her TED talk, Stadick will dis­cuss her efforts to bring a new man­age­ment approach to soft­ware, one that focus­es more on col­lab­o­ra­tion, adapt­abil­i­ty and inno­va­tion rather than con­for­mi­ty, dead­lines and “deliv­er­ables.” One that encour­ages “out-of-the-box” think­ing. It’s called Agile Devel­op­ment, and it promis­es not only bet­ter pro­grams for end users, but a bet­ter life for pro­gram­mers.

“It’s about bring­ing human­i­ty to the work­place,” says Stadick, sit­ting in her team room at Intel’s Jones Farm cam­pus, where she over­sees the company’s efforts to imple­ment Agile man­age­ment strate­gies. It seems espe­cial­ly odd to see robots posi­tioned around her as she says this. But those robots – in essence stands with mon­i­tor screens – help to mim­ic face-to-face meet­ings with pro­gram­mers who may be in oth­er coun­tries, part of Agile’s empha­sis on direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In and around the room there is a 3‑D print­er, couch­es, and a large white­board with var­i­ous Post-It notes on it, and ideas scrib­bled across its sur­face. A large wall-size win­dow opens to trees, leaves wav­ing in the wind.

It’s a breath of fresh air for pro­gram­mers, to have such an open space that encour­ages indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing.

And it’s a stark con­trast to the tra­di­tion­al­ly heavy-hand­ed, bureau­crat­ic and par­ti­tioned approach to soft­ware that defined the indus­try in the past, an approach infa­mous­ly por­trayed in the 1999 movie Office Space. Think exas­per­at­ed engi­neers — “I am good at deal­ing with peo­ple!! Can’t you under­stand that?!” – sep­a­rat­ing devel­op­ers from the company’s clients. Think Bill Lum­bergh, hand­ing out week­end work and enforc­ing cov­er sheets for TPS reports. Think Peter Gib­bons, drown­ing in a sea of cubi­cles every morn­ing, doing just enough work to not get has­sled.The Old Way

“Six-by-six cubi­cles are not nec­es­sar­i­ly what humans are designed to do,” Stadick says.

As a new soft­ware hire 10 years ago, she saw first­hand the frus­tra­tions of just cor­rect­ing defects instead of pre­vent­ing them, and spend­ing “crazy hours” on the job and at home, just to achieve the same aver­age suc­cess rate, nev­er bet­ter.

“I saw how painful some of the ways we ran projects and teams were for peo­ple,” she says.

Today, with Agile Devel­op­ment, Stadick is hop­ing to dri­ve change not just at Intel, but across the indus­try.  Her suc­cess could not only rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way we lead our projects, but also the way we lead our lives.

There are still some obsta­cles, she con­cedes, not sur­pris­ing when try­ing to uproot an assem­bly-line man­age­ment strat­e­gy that hear­kens back to the Model‑T. But Stadick has faith in her team.

“We work with the some of the most intel­li­gent peo­ple in the world,” she says.

“We can do pret­ty amaz­ing things; there’s not a lot of things hold­ing us back.”

TEDxSalem speaker has big ideas for small houses

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Photo courtesy of Eugene Weekly
Pho­to cour­tesy of Todd Cooper/Eugene Week­ly

The Rev. Dan Bryant didn’t set out to rev­o­lu­tion­ize hous­ing for the home­less, it just sort of hap­pened.

Bryant is one of 13 speak­ers at this year’s TEDxSalem Oct. 3. His home base is First Chris­t­ian Church in Eugene where home­less and low-income res­i­dents go for help, meals and an empa­thet­ic ear down­town. So when Eugene strug­gled with an influx of home­less res­i­dents in 2011, the city invit­ed Bryant, along with many oth­ers, to brain­storm solu­tions.

“A place to be” topped the list of needs.

Then in walked Andy Heben, a guy who spent his sum­mer vis­it­ing home­less tent cities around the coun­try to under­stand what works and what doesn’t. Bryant hired Heben and togeth­er they per­suad­ed the city to let them pilot a home­less com­mu­ni­ty on one acre of unused city land in 2013.

That’s the gen­e­sis of Oppor­tu­ni­ty Vil­lage Eugene, the city’s first suc­cess­ful self-gov­erned home­less com­mu­ni­ty.  As many as 35 res­i­dents and five dogs call the vil­lage home at any one time.

“This isn’t some­thing I set out to do,” Bryant said. “I was more of a peace and social jus­tice guy work­ing on glob­al issues.”

Now he describes him­self as an acci­den­tal hous­ing wonk, and he has big ideas for the next evo­lu­tion of hous­ing for the home­less: Micro Hous­ing.

Cur­rent­ly there are few afford­able hous­ing options for home­less res­i­dents ready to strike out on their own. There is a five-year wait­ing list for sin­gles and cou­ples to get Sec­tion 8 Hous­ing, a fed­er­al hous­ing pro­gram for low-income res­i­dents.

But Bryant hopes to pilot a solu­tion this year that involves 1.2 acres, tiny homes and big ideas that pick up where Oppor­tu­ni­ty Vil­lage Eugene leaves off.

“It’s a game chang­er in many ways,” Bryant said, “They have their tiny ver­sion of the Amer­i­can dream.”

To hear how Bryant plans to rev­o­lu­tion­ize hous­ing for the home­less and to lis­ten to oth­er TEDx Salem speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.

Vickie Hardin Woods: “Hi! Do you like pie?”

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Ac6-12-2015cord­ing to Vick­ie Hardin Woods, “if you’re going to give a gift, [a pie] is about the right gift.”

“If you give some­thing that is too valu­able, then the per­son feels oblig­ed to give some­thing back,” she said. “But you also want it to have enough effort and val­ue” to show that you care.

Two years ago Woods was inspired to per­fect the gift of giv­ing, one day at a time, with a lit­tle help from her oven. Over the course of a 365-day peri­od, begin­ning with a lemon meringue, she baked one fresh pie each day from scratch and deliv­ered it, unso­licit­ed, to friends, neigh­bors and even­tu­al­ly even com­plete strangers. She gained noto­ri­ety in local news by pho­tograph­ing each pie and its smil­ing, occa­sion­al­ly dis­ori­ent­ed recip­i­ent as part of her blog.

For her TEDx talk, Woods will dis­cuss how sur­pris­ing peo­ple with pie gave her both a deep­er under­stand­ing of com­mu­ni­ty, and insight into her own sense of pur­pose after retir­ing from a 30-year career in local gov­ern­ment.

A pie-a-day blog – Seems daunt­ing, but is it real­ly? Here are some key ingre­di­ents, and tips to make yours a smash hit at your next ran­dom encounter…

What you would need:

  • (137) dif­fer­ent pie recipes
  • Fresh, local, whole­some organ­ic ingre­di­ents
  • A Tum­blr blog
  • Be retired
  • Option­al: (5) grand­chil­dren to occa­sion­al­ly help deliv­er pies.

Break the ice. “That was on many days the hard­est thing I had to do,” she said, “to find some­body, and then approach them and give them the pie.” It’s impor­tant to estab­lish a con­nec­tion, even if it’s brief, she said.

“You can’t just walk up to a stranger and say, ‘Here’s a pie.’ You have to build some sort of rela­tion­ship, no mat­ter how short it is.”

Some were more recep­tive than oth­ers, she said. Some­times small talk would not be enough for a skep­ti­cal stranger; more often than not, though, Woods’ pie pitch would find a will­ing par­tic­i­pant.

“There’s some­thing about break­ing through that bar­ri­er,” she said. “I don’t know how many times I had peo­ple say to me, ‘This is the best thing that’s hap­pened to me today!”

Fail­ures hap­pen. “Usu­al­ly if [a pie] didn’t turn out, I fig­ured it was me, not the pie,” Woods said. She remem­bered a par­tic­u­lar pecan pie she tried to show off at a cook­ing class she was tak­ing at Carl’s Cui­sine on Chemeke­ta St. In a hur­ry, she had failed to give the pie enough time to set. “I opened up the car­ri­er and there’s this gooey mess all over the bot­tom.”

Blend until ingre­di­ents come togeth­er. Woods sees pie giv­ing as “less as grat­i­tude than just a gift, free of all encum­brances, grace,” she said. It took rough­ly a month to work up the nerve to approach her first stranger, she said. But the reward of mak­ing peo­ple hap­py made the chal­lenge worth­while for her.

“I got the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that I touched someone’s life,” she said.

For Woods, pie pro­vid­ed struc­ture to a life in tran­si­tion. It forced her to get out into the world. And in hand­ing home-baked good­ness to peo­ple some­times far from their home, she brought the world a lit­tle clos­er to hers.

“Each pie is its own jour­ney,” she said, from her kitchen to points unknown, and the sto­ries told and expe­ri­enced in between.

“That’s what life is about, our sto­ries.”

 

– To see Vick­ie Hardin Woods and oth­er TEDx Salem 2015 speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.

 

Meet Patrick Moreau, an Emmy-winning filmmaker

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Patrick More­au is a film­mak­er, a sto­ry­teller, an inno­va­tor and an Emmy-win­ner (five times over).

He had no inter­est in film, had nev­er even picked up a cam­era, but two years into a psy­chol­o­gy degree, some­thing changed.

“While in uni­ver­si­ty, I was learn­ing about all these cool, tough issues. I was real­ly inter­est­ed in explor­ing why and how…different ways of liv­ing, how peo­ple approach the world,” Patrick said. “That led me to film­mak­ing. I fell in love with the idea of telling a sto­ry and its impact on peo­ple.”

Out of the blue, Patrick got a call from a poten­tial client. They were look­ing for some­one who could tell a sto­ry dif­fer­ent­ly, with emo­tion.

“At the time, we were shoot­ing 30 to 40 wed­dings a year. One of our wed­dings went viral,” Patrick said.

That viral video helped Patrick’s com­pa­ny, Still­mo­tion, land the gig to cre­ate “A Game of Hon­or,” a TV and web series for NFL.com. It doc­u­ment­ed the NFL sea­son through episod­ic sto­ries.

His back­ground in psy­chol­o­gy com­pli­ments his sto­ry­telling abil­i­ty pro­vid­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of char­ac­ter and the abil­i­ty to cap­ture that under­stand­ing on film.

“A Game of Hon­or” won three Emmys includ­ing Out­stand­ing Sports Doc­u­men­tary, Out­stand­ing New Approach to Sports Pro­gram­ming and Out­stand­ing Sports Pro­mo­tion­al Announce­ment.

Filmmaker Patrick Moreau

But that series was only the start, a jump­ing off point for Patrick and Still­mo­tion. Patrick was a fea­tured speak­er for the Social Inno­va­tion Sum­mit at the Unit­ed Nations. His team has gone on to chase cadets through the forests of Vir­ginia and explore child slav­ery through the eyes of a 9‑year-old girl sell­ing lemon­ade. His pas­sion for film­mak­ing has led him to ded­i­cate sev­en years devel­op­ing and teach­ing edu­ca­tion­al sto­ry­telling work­shops.

As he aims to make the unthink­able, approach­able, he speaks to the heart with his visu­al sto­ry­telling.

Come hear Patrick’s sto­ry on the TEDxSalem stage on Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 3. Get your tick­ets here.