Transcriber: Oyama Akinori Reviewer: Jin GE
So, I actually really wanted to be here last year and I didn't make it.
And, I spent the entire year regretting it
because they kept hearing about all these wonderful stories and what happened.
TEDx started off as a little experiment about just over two years ago.
At that time, we at TED thought
that possibly 10, maybe, 20 people would show up and host a TEDx event.
We are humbled daily by what this program has grown into,
events like this happening all over the world.
Everything from a shanty town, to this type of extraordinary event today,
to an event that happened on a floating hotel
in the middle of Amazon rainforest for 600 people.
So, go back into a little bit of TED's history.
It started as a for-profit conference 25 years ago.
Chris Anderson took it over in 2001
and turned it into a non-for-profit conference.
In 2006, we put TED talks online for free
with the mantra of ideas worth spreading.
At the time in 2008, when Chris and I started talking about the TEDx program,
we knew three things.
We knew that people were connecting to TED talks online
in this amazingly personal, powerful, and passionate way.
We also knew that a lot of people
were connecting and watching TED talks in classrooms and in group settings,
and then having conversations around these talks.
Then, finally we knew that more and more people were coming up to us and asking us
if they could host an official conference in their city or their country.
For the small TED team, this was a very hard concept to scale.
So, we open sourced TED, and launched TEDx on a university campus.
Just over 2 years later,
here are some of the stats so you can get a sense of the growth.
We've had 1,700 events held.
We have another 1,000 events planned.
We've had over 300 events on university campuses
with another over a 100 events planned.
This slide can just give you a sense of some of the amazing growth.
These are just the events that had happened on university campuses.
So, there are the stats and there are definitely lessons learned.
It has been an amazing journey,
but I become frequently obsessed with what I think are the real stories.
Stories like you just saw in that video.
Not every TEDx event prepares such an amazing story
about the connections and the projects coming out of TEDx events,
but really the amazing connections and stories that do happen at these TEDx events.
at these TEDx events.
The memes, the themes, the ideologies,
that are spreading globally around the world.
The unique voices that are bubbling up from these TEDx events.
Voices we may never have heard from had it not been for TEDx.
Also, the cross-cultural pollinations, a lot of these TEDx events' live streams.
When you have a TEDx event in Taipei, that live streams their event
to mainland China, to all university campuses.
Some really interesting things start to happen.
So, what I would like to really do with my remaining few minutes
-- I always say it's not my story, but the story of all these amazing people
putting on these events around the world--
is read some of these stories in their own words.
The first one I am going to read comes out of an event called TEDxShekhavati.
This happened in a rural village in India
where the organizer had gone this incredible,
personal journey to allow event to happen
because the elders of the village felt incredibly threatened
by a conference of ideas.
This is an email I got after her second event a year later.
"The usual villains are still there, but their voices
were much lower compared to last year.
The most beautiful outcome was that our venue was a low-cost school,
which is around 80 years old, there were no toilets in the school,
but because of TEDxShekhavati, the school finally got toilets
bought by the community members.
It finally is getting a coat of paint too.
And, the best part is that one of the local politicians who represents Fatehpur
has also attended the event and has donated money
which will be used toward building two new classrooms in the school."
Then, a couple of quotes, this is from TEDxSkopje.
"As a small and impoverished country, I think Macedonia needs more TEDx.
This event bolstered our confidence and our belief in human potential.
We need more shining eyes as Ben Zander put it."
And then an email I received from an organizer of a TEDx event
in an Ivy-league school that would remain nameless,
this came from a student:
"I just wanted to let you know that I took more from the talks today,
than I had from any of my classes, maybe, ever, at"- name of the school.
(Laughter)
And, then, my final piece comes, from an email I received recently
from one of my favorite TED speakers, he actually curated a session at TED in this year
at TED this year.
He said, "I am sitting at the end of the world,
nearest small town over 6 km away.
Huge oil field surrounded by massive dunes, nothing else.
With the heads of the world's largest oil company and his hot-shot team
and a lot of very smart, young kids, co-ed.
What is the most impacted youngsters in the past two weeks,
not Japan, or the turmoil next door, but TEDxRiyadh and TEDxJeddah.
It's what everybody is talking about.
It's a lead topic on Facebook and Twiter."
So, TEDx is creating this amazing ecosystem
of inspiration across the planet,
and it's sort of this unique network of voices, ideas and passions.
It really is truly exciting.
So, I want to thank Carole and amazing volunteer team for putting on this today.
I want to thank you for being here to share in this global conversation.
Thank you. (Applause)