{"id":46261,"date":"2010-09-27T10:57:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T10:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/2010\/09\/27\/tedx-yerevan-first-tedx-event-in-s-caucasus-updated\/"},"modified":"2010-09-27T10:57:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T10:57:00","slug":"tedx-yerevan-first-tedx-event-in-s-caucasus-updated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2010\/09\/27\/tedx-yerevan-first-tedx-event-in-s-caucasus-updated.html","title":{"rendered":"TEDx Yerevan: First TEDx Event in S. Caucasus (Updated)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On Sept. 25, TEDx Yerevan \u2014 the x means that the event is independently organized but can borrow the TED name \u2014 took place in Ani Plaza Hotel in Yerevan.<\/p>\n

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The event, under the theme of \u201cBeyond Borders,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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That former speaker was Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.com and founder of Breadpig, Inc. (an uncorporation), and the first speaker at Saturday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

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Alexis\u2019 TEDtalk was a continuation of his earlier talk on the positive impact of social media. He again brought an example of how \u201credditors\u201d (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\u2019s donation!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexis wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t given live but was streamed by video, which, supported his argument quite nicely.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other speakers at the event, among many others, included Vardan Hovhannisyan, documentary filmmaker and founder of Bars Media, who screened his latest doc \u201cThrough the Eyes of a Donkey:\u00a0 A Donkey-mentary\u201d; Michael Aram, a designer who has lived and worked in India since 1989, who spoke about \u201cThe Outsider Perspective\u201d; Sona Hovhannisyan, a professional pianist and manager who nicely combined the two in her talk \u201cAll I Know About Management is Music\u201d; Timothy Straight who asked, \u201cWhere is Eurasia?\u201d; Raffi Kassarjian, CEO of iCON Communications who raised the pressing issue of the \u201cElectronic Brain Fill\u201d and re-attracting \u201cEconomically Successful Emigrants\u201d to Armenia; and Father Ktrij Devejian, who concluded the event by asking each of us \u201cWhat Are You Worth?\u201d<\/p>\n

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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\u2019 credit, the audience was informed that the next TEDx Yerevan event would be TEDx Yerevan Women \u2014 an event that would take place in December to coincide with TEDWomen, \u201ca global TED conference about women.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Through Facebook, organizers have stated that the videos of all the talks will be available at http:\/\/www.tedxyerevan.com\/<\/a> sometime this week.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

TED is a non-profit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[Editor’s Note: the name “Karl Armen” was corrected to “Michael Aram” on Sept. 28, 2010.]<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sept. 25, TEDx Yerevan, under the theme “Beyond Borders,” took place at Ani Plaza Hotel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[15830,16219,16217,15828,15829,16218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}