Happy New Year…Save the Date!

Hap­py New Year!

A great deal of thought is put into every aspect of TEDxSalem, from the speak­ers to the loca­tion, the recess activ­i­ties to the food served. One of the most excit­ing aspects of plan­ning our event each year is pick­ing a theme. But sur­pris­ing­ly, it is not always as easy as it sounds.

The con­cept of theme is some­thing in the back of our minds all year round. We want an idea that is focused but open, unique but under­stand­able. When get­ting down to busi­ness for select­ing this year’s theme, we talked about it for days. Back and forth, a few ideas here and there. A thought ran­dom­ly in a mes­sage. A note scrib­bled in the mid­dle of the night.

As my co-cura­tor Bri­an Hart will tell you, the themes for our first two events seemed to come to us pret­ty easy, but this year it was hard to find the right word for TEDxSalem 2015.

“We want some­thing that push­es bound­aries, some­thing that doesn’t sound too com­mon, but is instant­ly rec­og­niz­able and gets you in the right mind­set,” he said.

Sit­ting at the Gov Cup, where the mag­ic hap­pens, bounc­ing ideas off one anoth­er. The con­cept of courage was brought up, but courage just did­n’t have the right ‘oompfh.’

Then we start­ing brain­storm­ing. It went some­thing like this…

Car­lee: brave, brav­ery, courage, fear­less, adven­tur­ous…

Bri­an: That’s it! FEARLESS!!

After the ini­tial excite­ment sub­sided, we thought about it fur­ther to make sure it was indeed the right word — the right theme.

“It passed every test,” said Bri­an. “I imme­di­ate­ly thought the ques­tion: ‘What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?’ I think about this ques­tion often and I try to live life as if I could not fail at any­thing I want­ed to accom­plish. Way back, when we were cave­men and women, our fight or flight instincts saved our lives, but now a lot of our fear is hold­ing us back from our true poten­tial. I thought about how fear­less our speak­ers are for get­ting on stage and shar­ing their idea worth spread­ing, how our plan­ning team and all of our vol­un­teers are fear­less, and how our atten­dees are fear­less leav­ing their inhi­bi­tions at the door and look­ing for­ward to what the day will bring.”

It takes courage to be fear­less, but being fear­less holds some­thing a lit­tle more than just courage. It is that extra step, that abil­i­ty to face any­thing, to take on the most dif­fi­cult sub­ject or task with a cer­tain ener­gy.

Be fear­less.

And mark your cal­en­dar. We look for­ward to see­ing you on Octo­ber 3 at TEDxSalem 2015.