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TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

speakers

Seth Tichenor: Why philosophy?

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“Why phi­los­o­phy?” Seth Tichenor has been answer­ing that ques­tion for more than 20 years.

For Seth, it’s just the way he thinks. He remem­bers hav­ing his first philo­soph­i­cal thought at age 3, but it wasn’t until col­lege that he real­ized it was what he want­ed to do.

“I was talk­ing with a friend,” he recalls, “when he point­ed out that what­ev­er I do, I’m going to approach it from a philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tive.”

Seth, a 2018 TEDxSalem speak­er, real­ized that he would always ask ques­tions such as “why do we do it this way?” “how might oth­ers do this?” and “even if we could, should we?”

Now he talks phi­los­o­phy to any­one will­ing to lis­ten, whether it’s part of his work as a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor, life­guard, swim instruc­tor or dri­ver for vis­it­ing musi­cal acts.

Seth describes him­self as an Ore­gon native and a for­mer All-Amer­i­can swim­mer liv­ing in Asto­ria with his part­ner Gad. He finds a way to use all his pas­sions to bet­ter the com­mu­ni­ty. He spends a lot of his time as a life­guard and swim instruc­tor. With all the water sur­round­ing Asto­ria, Seth sees it as a pub­lic ser­vice.

But the Philosophar­i­an project is his pas­sion.

The Philosophar­i­an project aims to bring phi­los­o­phy into the lives of every­day peo­ple. It start­ed with pro­mot­ing local phi­los­o­phy talks and grew into a larg­er project that includ­ed a road trip of prac­tic­ing “guer­ril­la phi­los­o­phy tac­tics.”

Seth bemoans the fact that study­ing phi­los­o­phy doesn’t finan­cial­ly pen­cil out for most stu­dents. The Philosophar­i­an vision treats phi­los­o­phy as a nor­mal part of the real world. It was inspired by stu­dents who were inter­est­ed in phi­los­o­phy, but who didn’t have room for it in their class sched­ules and Gad’s back­ground in Alter­na­tive Edu­ca­tion and Kines­thet­ic Learn­ing.

In his free time, Seth stays active with hik­ing and water sports. He is a com­pet­i­tive swim­mer in mid­dle dis­tance but­ter­fly and freestyle.

“I’m like Seabis­cuit,” he said, com­par­ing his water skills to the race horse. “I’ve got finesse.”

His swim back­ground also influ­ences the way he thinks. Seth describes his world and his phi­los­o­phy as being dynam­ic and emerg­ing, much like water.

“Water makes its way into a lot of my think­ing,” he said. “My class­room looks out over the Colum­bia, and I will make a ref­er­ence to water at least once a week in my lec­tures.”

Seth also enjoys paint­ing and doing cos­tum­ing work with Gad. He has been a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy for 23 years and teach­es at Clat­sop Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege. He was named teacher of the year in 2015. He has an M.A. in Phi­los­o­phy of Reli­gion from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty and is a PhD can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii at Manoa in Com­par­a­tive Phi­los­o­phy.

If you have ever won­dered how phi­los­o­phy might be rel­e­vant to you, come see Seth at TEDxSalem and expe­ri­ence his guer­ril­la phi­los­o­phy tac­tics for your­self.

Speak­er: Seth Tichenor

Favorite Book: The Glass Bead Game by Her­mann Hesse: “It real­ly dis­cuss­es the strengths and lim­its of for­mal intel­lec­tu­al aca­d­e­m­ic work.” Or Can­nery Row by John Stein­beck.

Favorite Music: Chet Baker’s jazz, Arcade Fire and art rock, old punk, under­ground hip hop such as Dead Prez.

Favorite Food: “Thai or Indi­an food with vibrant tastes – I’m aes­thet­ic, but not a good sense of smell. I also got a taste for that kind of food while attend­ing grad school in Hawaii.”

Favorite Drink: “I’m very fond of Fort George Vor­tex IPA, or a well-made Man­hat­tan or a Moscow mule.”

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

TEDxYouth@Salem: The kids are alright

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Among her many after­school activ­i­ties, Megha Joshi plays vio­lin in a stu­dent orches­tra. It’s the col­lab­o­ra­tion she enjoys the most about per­form­ing.

“Play­ing with a col­lec­tive group of peo­ple to cre­ate an amaz­ing sound is an irre­place­able and reward­ing expe­ri­ence,” she said.

Now she’s help­ing orches­trate her own TEDx event.

On Novem­ber 11, TEDxYouth@Salem will kick off its inau­gur­al event at the Elsi­nore The­atre in down­town Salem. This event will be run by teens, from the speak­ers to the event orga­niz­ers.

A vet­er­an of TEDxSalem, Joshi’s own expe­ri­ence last year at “Rev­o­lu­tions” inspired her to approach TEDxSalem co-cura­tors Bri­an Hart and Car­lee Wright ear­li­er this year about devel­op­ing a TEDx event for teens.

“A lot of my friends start­ed to ask me how they could get the same oppor­tu­ni­ty,” she said.

“After the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence of giv­ing [a TED talk] as well as being an audi­ence mem­ber, I real­ized that this event had to be shared,” she said.

The pri­ma­ry goal, said Joshi, is to inspire youth to get out into the com­mu­ni­ty and make a dif­fer­ence; “to take action on their ideas.”

“By build­ing this event from the ground up by youth for youth, I hope to real­ly get in touch with the teenage com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

Joshi is no stranger to extend­ing her­self — In addi­tion to school­work and youth orches­tra, she also works part-time study­ing nan­otech­nol­o­gy and bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing at OHSU’s Zuck­er­man lab.

It’s her ener­gy that has tak­en a once-intrigu­ing idea and made it real, accord­ing to Bri­an Hart and Car­lee Wright.

“We have want­ed to do a youth event since we start­ed TEDxSalem, but we did not have enough resources,” Hart said.

“Thanks to Megha step­ping up, now our vision is becom­ing a real­i­ty, but bet­ter — not only does this event fea­ture youth speak­ers, but it is also ful­ly youth dri­ven.”

“We are proud to be men­tor­ing Megha and the team she has cul­ti­vat­ed,” Wright said, “espe­cial­ly when, accord­ing to the Ore­gon Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion 2014–15 Stu­dent Enroll­ment Report, Salem-Keiz­er School Dis­trict is the sec­ond largest in the state with just over 40,000 stu­dents.”

“TEDxYouth@Salem is giv­ing those stu­dents a plat­form to share their ideas worth spread­ing,” Wright said.

Although the event is tar­get­ed at youth, TEDxYouth@Salem is not just for teens, accord­ing to Joshi. So who should come?

“Every­one!” Joshi said. “Any­one who is will­ing to open their eyes to new ideas and lis­ten to what youth have to say will def­i­nite­ly enjoy this event.”

And what should peo­ple come away with?

“For the younger crowd, a sense that they mat­ter in the com­mu­ni­ty, and their actions can influ­ence many peo­ple,” Joshi said. “For every­one else, a new per­spec­tive on some­thing we may take for grant­ed.”TEDxYouth@Salem in Salem, Oregon

TEDxYouth@Salem

9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Novem­ber 11, 2017

at the Elsi­nore The­atre in down­town Salem, Ore­gon

Tick­et infor­ma­tion com­ing soon
Check back with the TEDxSalem home page for the lat­est!

How TEDxSalem ended up with a majority woman speaker roster

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The most impor­tant task for the orga­niz­ers of TEDxSalem is curat­ing inter­est­ing, chal­leng­ing and fun talks — the essence of a good TEDx con­fer­ence. And tru­ly awe­some talks are insep­a­ra­ble from the speak­ers’ iden­ti­ty.

Rep­re­sent­ing diverse abil­i­ties, cul­tur­al back­grounds and gen­der iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is key to putting on a well-round­ed event. Some of these goals came eas­i­er and more nat­u­ral­ly than oth­ers.

“Since we start­ed TEDxSalem, we have always strived for more diver­si­ty in our speak­er line-up. We want TEDxSalem to rep­re­sent a spec­trum of races, thoughts and ideas and we dreamed that one day we might have an event that was half male and half female,” co-cura­tor Bri­an Hart said. “Some years find­ing women proved very dif­fi­cult, not many were apply­ing and our efforts to reach out to some of the amaz­ing women in our area were not pan­ning out. Rather than get­ting frus­trat­ed, it was a chal­lenge that we took on with Mox­ie, we knew we could do bet­ter.”

This year, the seeds we have been plant­i­ng over the past three years, reach­ing out to women that we admire and want to show­case, seem to final­ly be sprout­ing. Out of 13 speak­ers, 11 of them are women.

“What was once a dream of hav­ing a 50/50 ratio has been sur­passed by a woman dom­i­nat­ed line-up,” Hart said. “We could­n’t be more thrilled.”

How did this hap­pen?

Well first, we built rela­tion­ships with poten­tial women speak­ers that did not pan out in pre­vi­ous years, but sev­er­al of whom agreed to speak this year. Sec­ond, we hap­pened to pick most­ly women in our blind (as in no names or bio­graph­i­cal data) selec­tion process from our appli­cant pool. Com­bine the two process­es togeth­er, and we end­ed up with 11 women.

And trust us, these women are doing some amaz­ing work out in the world and they very much need to be heard — not for their sake, but for ours.

Achiev­ing the per­fect bal­ance may not be pos­si­ble, but tak­ing spe­cial care to rep­re­sent the tra­di­tion­al­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed is a goal that is worth the effort. Feel free to keep us account­able, but real­ly, help us expand and deep­en our reach into diverse com­mu­ni­ties.

Do you know of a per­son of an under­rep­re­sent­ed group who would be a great future TEDxSalem speak­er? Please reach out to us at info@tedxsalem.us. Because the rela­tion­ship we build today may lead to a new rev­o­lu­tion.

TEDxSalem-IV-women

 

 

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for stu­dents. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Announcement: Welcome, speakers of TEDxSalem 2017!

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One of the hard­est jobs the TEDxSalem team has is select­ing speak­ers, espe­cial­ly when, like this year, we receive almost 50 well-thought appli­ca­tions on inspir­ing, con­tro­ver­sial and infor­ma­tive top­ics.

It was not an easy task to nar­row down the selec­tion, but after much delib­er­a­tion, we are proud to intro­duce the class of TEDxSalem 2017.

Alia Bra­ley | Direc­tor of Pro­grams at the Albert Ein­stein Insti­tu­tion
Gina Ochsner | Award win­ning author and writer in res­i­dence at Cor­ban Uni­ver­si­ty
Jer­ry Braza | For­mer pro­fes­sor, Bud­dhist teacher, author and con­sul­tant
Karen Hol­man | Chem­istry Pro­fes­sor at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty and punk rock­er
Kathryn Cel­leri­ni Moore | Artist In Res­i­dence
Megha Joshi | Stu­dent and inven­tor
Nick Sym­monds | Olympic Ath­lete, Out­door Enthu­si­ast, Writer and Entre­pre­neur.
Rebec­ca Mait­land-Court­ney | Cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty thinker and activist
Renee Mitchell | Mul­ti­me­dia artist, teacher/facilitator, com­mu­ni­ty advo­cate and cre­ative rev­o­lu­tion­ist
Ter­es­sa Raiford | Con­tem­po­rary Civ­il Rights leader and com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er
Vanes­sa Tim­mons | Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Ore­gon Coali­tion Against Domes­tic & Sex­u­al Vio­lence
War­ren Bin­ford | Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Law at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty, Direc­tor of the Clin­i­cal Law Pro­gram
Yese­nia Gal­lar­do | Co-own­er of Poda Foods

As the months lead­ing up to TEDxSalem 2017 unfold, you will be hear­ing more about them and their top­ics, so stay tuned.