Transcriber: Amaranta Heredia Jaén Reviewer: Krystian Aparta
This year, TEDx celebrates its 5th birthday.
Many of you in this room already know
that TEDx is a TED initiative
that provides a free license to any individual anywhere in the world
to produce a TED-like event in their own community.
And it turns out that TEDx itself is an idea worth spreading.
In just 5 years, over 10,000 events took place in 160 countries.
and nearly 2500 cities.
That means that today and everyday,
an average of 10 TEDx events are taking place
somewhere in the world.
TEDx audiences get together in theaters,
in public places,
in schools and in universities,
in libraries, in the workplace,
and even inside of prisons.
Talks from TEDx have helped us build a massive digital library of ideas.
50,000 talks in 60 languages
that have been viewed over 300 million times
by curious minds around the globe.
As you can see, TEDx is truly a global phenomenon
at incredible scale, at incredible speed.
But it is first and foremost about local communities.
TEDx organizers from around the world take the spirit of TED,
infuse it with a whole lot of local flavor,
put their own personality into it,
and it's that combination that makes TEDx events special.
I wanted to show you just a few examples
and in honor of our theme,
I'm going to keep it right here in the South.
Let's start in Brazil.
(Cheers)
(Applause)
When the UN conference on sustainability came to this city in 2012,
a group of TEDx organizers put together TEDxRio+20,
which was a conference designed to look at sustainability
from an uniquely Brazilian lens.
Over in São Paulo, organizer Elena Crescia is passionate
about equal opportunity for women.
(Cheers)
(Applause)
She ensures that her speaker line-up as well as the organizing committee
are at least 50% women, 100% of the time.
And over in Nicaragua, TEDxManagua created a program
where they give free tickets to school students
who complete eight hours of community service.
This program became so popular...
(Applause)
How adorable are these kids, by the way!
The program became so popular
that the organizers had to build a special online tool
to facilitate the exchange between the students,
the schools and the TEDx organizers.
Then they opened up this tool and made it available to other organizers
and to other non-profits.
Over in Colombia, organizer Felipe Spath is taking TEDx events to rural areas.
He invites farmers to his events via cloth billboards.
He curates talks about topics of daily life,
like seed sharing and craft production.
And in Paraguay,
the organizers of TEDxAsunción are committed to public access.
Their event is taking place on a closed university campus,
but what they do is to put giant screens in town squares,
and they open up their event to the entire public, for free.
And last but not least, in Argentina,
TEDxRiodelaPlata is one of our largest events.
(Applause)
Just last week, more than 10,000 people gathered in this theater,
and the organizers there are passionate about education.
They take their best talks and convert them into online courses.
Through a partnership with local schools, these are being used to teach students
about topics in arts, technology and science.
And these are just five examples.
There are 5,000 of them, but our time is very short.
If you'd like to learn more,
about the very local flavor of our truly global community,
there's no better way than meeting a TEDx organizer.
In fact, there are 150 of them in this conference,
many of them are sitting in this room.
So in closing, I'd like to ask all the TEDx organizers to stand up.
(Applause)
On behalf of all of us at TED...
thank you all for your boundless energy
and absolute commitment to ideas worth spreading.
We really appreciate the positive impact you are making.
Thank you very much for your attention.