Epress.am News from Armenia
On Sept. 25, TEDx Yerevan — the x means that the event is independently organized but can borrow the TED name — took place in Ani Plaza Hotel in Yerevan.
The event, under the theme of “Beyond Borders,” was initiated by Kristine Sargsyan, an organizational development consultant and project coordinator, who got the idea when she translated a TEDtalk for her 8-year-old son. She then obtained the license to host a TEDx event in Yerevan and (based on one of the rules of the TED Conference) obtained a former TED speaker to sign off on the event.
That former speaker was Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.com and founder of Breadpig, Inc. (an uncorporation), and the first speaker at Saturday’s event.
Alexis’ TEDtalk was a continuation of his earlier talk on the positive impact of social media. He again brought an example of how “redditors” (Reddit.com users) came together to support a cause: this time it was DonorsChoose.org, an online charity connecting donors to classrooms in need: redditors raised more money in 8 hours than Hillary Clinton’s donation!
Alexis wasn’t the only famous name to appear at TEDx Yerevan: last-minute guest speaker Serj Tankian gave a talk on the benefits of holographic performing, a fascinating and eco-friendly approach to concert performances. The talk, incidentally, wasn’t given live but was streamed by video, which, supported his argument quite nicely.
Other speakers at the event, among many others, included Vardan Hovhannisyan, documentary filmmaker and founder of Bars Media, who screened his latest doc “Through the Eyes of a Donkey: A Donkey-mentary”; Michael Aram, a designer who has lived and worked in India since 1989, who spoke about “The Outsider Perspective”; Sona Hovhannisyan, a professional pianist and manager who nicely combined the two in her talk “All I Know About Management is Music”; Timothy Straight who asked, “Where is Eurasia?”; Raffi Kassarjian, CEO of iCON Communications who raised the pressing issue of the “Electronic Brain Fill” and re-attracting “Economically Successful Emigrants” to Armenia; and Father Ktrij Devejian, who concluded the event by asking each of us “What Are You Worth?”
A number of attendees at the event who live-tweeted snippets from the talks, noted that out of 18 speakers (which includes Serj Tankian), only 4 were women. None of the older TEDtalks that were screened by video were given by women. To the organizers’ credit, the audience was informed that the next TEDx Yerevan event would be TEDx Yerevan Women — an event that would take place in December to coincide with TEDWomen, “a global TED conference about women.”
Through Facebook, organizers have stated that the videos of all the talks will be available at http://www.tedxyerevan.com/ sometime this week.
TED is a non-profit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.
[Editor’s Note: the name “Karl Armen” was corrected to “Michael Aram” on Sept. 28, 2010.]