It’s officially the final day of the 2010s decade. To embark on this journey to the future, we decided it was necessary to be introspective and appreciate how far TEDxOhioStateUniversity has come. We started our organization near the beginning of this decade in 2011, and we’ve grown tremendously ever since. TEDxOhioStateUniversity has finished the 2010s decade with an incredibly strong year. 2019 was such a great year for our organization, and we’ve decided to lay out why it was an excellent year for us through a 2019 recap!
The beginning of any year is always a busy season for our organization since we hold our annual conference early in the spring semester. This year, we started 2019 even more active than ever before because we had a critical salon event to bring to life before our annual conference. TEDxOhioStateUniversity’s first event of the year was a salon event, Featured in Film, and it explored the restrictive implications of female representation in film. Our TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon team experimented with the TED format, and instead of presenting the information through a traditional TED talk format, we had reputable professors, Dr. Linda Mizjewski and Dr. Ila Nagar, further explore points and discussions presented in TED talks. This format allowed our speakers to engage with the audience and create an environment where the conversation wasn’t as one-sided; rather, it was collaborative.
After the great turnout we had from Featured in Film, we were ecstatic to present our annual conference to everyone who bought their tickets. In 2019, our theme was Fuse, and the motive behind the theme is that we wanted to create a breeding ground of thought leadership that will allow Ohio State’s best ideas worth spreading to shine on our stage. TEDxOhioStateUniversity 2019: Fuse effectively executed that notion. Our 13 speakers, mainly professors and one student, thematically explored a wide variety of narratives, including scientific revolutions and innovations, racial identity, sexual identity, concepts of community, and so much more in a relatively short time span. The Fuse experience comprised of TED talks expressed in a number of formats such as dance, spoken word, musical performance, and traditional TED talk format, a catered meal, and an audience gift that was curated with environmentally-sustainable intentions. Fuse was such a success, and we completely sold out. We haven’t completely sold out in the past several years, so we are incredibly thankful to have ended the decade by selling out our annual conference. The entire organization worked blisteringly hard to curate an inclusive event of many ideologies, and our PR team, along with the rest of the organization, publicized Fuse to everyone because it meant a lot to us, and we’re so thankful for everyone who attended Fuse. Fuse wouldn’t have been such a success without the hard work of our organization, our incredible speakers, and the immense support from both Mershon and the Roosevelt Coffeehouse. Cheers to a significant annual conference, and be ready for the next big thing, Magnify 2020.
The fun TEDxOhioStateUniversity activities didn’t end with Fuse; our salon committee expressed tremendous effort to keep our Ohio State community engaged with meaningful conversations after our main event, Fuse. Until the end of the year, our TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon team showcased four more salon events and one event with our Outreach Committee. The four TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon events included Connect, Implant, Vital, and What on Earth?. Each of these events dabbled into a plethora of niche ideologies and created unique experiences for attendees. TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon: Connect was in collaboration with the Marketing and Logistics Department in The Fisher College of Business, and the event served as a pivotal networking event for students to interact with logistical situations with logistics professionals. TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon: Implant explored innovation and the importance of biobased products, and the event itself was a part of The Ohio State Time For Change week, which is a university initiative to make the campus community more environmentally conscious. TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon: Vital was the first salon event in the 2019-2020 academic season, and the event had four student speakers who all sparked compelling discussion about the state of our healthcare system in regards to college students. Finally, our final salon event of the 2019 year, TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon: What on Earth? comprised of three student speakers who all proposed personal narratives about one’s relationship with nature. Overall, our salon committee had SIX salon events in the span of a year! Shoutout to the salon committee for continuously showing their hard work and keeping the TED spirit alive throughout the entirety of the year.
An integral part of our student organization is our incredible outreach committee. Our outreach committee goes out into our Columbus community, and they create a safe environment for the community to engage with explorative topics discussed in TED talks. The committee runs a highschool program called All That, where they become mentors for high school students, and they allow those students to explore and find their own identities within a variety of TED content. Our outreach committee often collaborates with another student organization, Refuge, for their scholarship event. The refuge event comprises of students who come from families seeking asylum in the U.S., and the event allows these students to win a scholarship by performing their own TED talks. These talks are coached by the Outreach committee and interested TEDxOhioStateUniversity members. In addition to All That and Refuge, the outreach partnered with the salon committee to host a salon event, TEDxOhioStateUniversitySalon: Resilient. Resilient was in collaboration with the Columbus Care Coalition, a Columbus organization that works deeply with our outreach committee. Our outreach committee spreads TED’s mission of ideas worth spreading beyond campus borders, and we’re grateful for their passion as community builders.
TEDxOhioStateUniversity went through some innovative internal changes towards the end of the 2019 year. We gathered a number of new members, and we’re immensely excited about the many fresh ideas these new members have already instilled. TEDxOhioStateUniversity acquired an official 501(c)3 non-profit status! Early October, we revealed the theme for our 2020 annual conference, TEDxOhioStateUniversity 2020: Magnify. After an intense speaker and emcee application pool, we successfully selected our speakers and emcees, so be excited about those reveals soon! Shoutout to our Content committee for always putting their best foot forward when coaching and selecting our speakers. They are the reason for the eloquent quality of our speakers and the content of their talks. Also, the quality of our TEDxOhioStateUniversity event experiences wouldn’t be as marvelous without the effort from our Logistics and Design committees! 2019 was an evolutionary stepping stone for our design committee as we now have animations as part of our event experiences and PR content.
2019 was an innovative and astonishing year for our organization. We’ve come so far in the past few years, and we’re incredibly excited about the future. In 2019, we had six salon events shortly after attaining the TEDxSalon license. We had our first sold-out, annual conference in a while. These achievements are the products of the hard work we put into this organization. For our members, TEDxOhioStateUniversity isn’t just another student organization. Instead, it’s the creative space where we can show off our skills in something we are passionate about. TEDxOhioStateUniversity always has and will continue to showcase Ohio State’s best ideas worth spreading. Thank you for a breathtaking year, AND BE EXCITED FOR 2020! Magnify will be the best annual conference yet.
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