The Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) will this weekend participate in the first TEDxBeaconStreet conference at the Lincoln School in Brookline, Mass.
Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) events feature enlightening talks given by experts in a wide variety of fields. TEDx events aim to bring the TED formula to local communities around the world, and Tufts alumni have established TEDx franchises in Kabul, Afghanistan and Tehran, Iran, according to IGL Director Sherman Teichman.
Teichman said Managing Curator of TEDxBeaconStreet John Werner approached Teichman with the concept of TEDxBeaconStreet and asked him to be one of the event's curators and a speaker. According to the organization's website, Werner established TEDxBeaconStreet in an effort to bring TED to the Greater Boston area.
In his speech, Teichman will highlight the significance of IGL's local and worldwide initiatives.
"I want people to know what we do with immersive education, what we do around the world and what distinctive things we are engaged in," he said. "This plays into TEDxBeaconStreet's emphasis on education and interface, which also incorporates what [Werner] is calling explorations or 'Adventures.'"
The IGL and members of the IGL's Synaptic Scholars program will be organizing Adventures for TEDxBeaconStreet.
Through these Adventures, community members will be able to take part in activities with conference speakers, according to Synaptic Scholar Gavin Murphy, a junior and member of the TEDxBeaconStreetBraintrust, the conference's leadership board.
The main Adventure organized by the IGL will take place next semester, according to Teichman. Through the IGL's Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES) program, the IGL will hold an Intellectual Roundtable at Boston University from Jan. 25 through 27.
The Roundtable will feature as its keynote speaker Captain Wayne Porter of the U.S. Navy, the chair of Systemic Strategy and Complexity at the Naval Postgraduate School, Teichman said. Porter is notable for co?authoring the Pentagon's essay "A National Strategic Narrative" under the pen name Mr. Y.
"The ALLIES roundtable with Captain Porter highlights exactly what I'm going to be talking about at the conference," Teichman said. "It is the resonance of a different kind of educational approach with immersive learning backgrounds."
Members of the Synaptic Scholars program have prepared other Adventures for the conference, including one that involves bringing youth from disadvantaged areas to the event, according to Synaptic Scholar Tara Kola, a member of the TEDxBeaconStreetBraintrust.
"I think TEDxBeaconStreet and its mission really align with what Synaptic Scholars stands for, which is expanding the intellectual community and offering experiences for the community," Kola, a sophomore, said.
"We will be able to partner with a force with a similar goal and allow for some sort of synergistic product to come out of it."
According to Teichman, Tufts' participation in TEDxBeaconStreet will help expose the school and the IGL to the conference's acclaimed speakers.
"It's fun for some of our Synaptic Scholars who are helping to organize and attend this intellectual festival that is also activist?oriented," he said. "It will increase our ever?expanding network of contacts on the behalf of our students."
Werner was interested in creating a framework for TEDx that is much more interactive than normal TEDx events, according to Teichman.
"People will be able to question the conference's speakers and meet them in more intimate settings," Teichman said. "There will be less of what [Werner] thinks is the sterile environment that sometimes accompanies other TEDx events."
The Adventures will allow attendees to experience first?hand the speakers' diverse interests, Murphy said.
"One of our speakers is a world?championtriathlete, so we get people to set up at South Station and go on a bike ride with her," he said. "Another speaker is a marine biologist, so we get people to go out on a lobster boat with the biologist and a lobster fisherman to talk about ecosystems."
Murphy noted that the conference will be very accessible, especially for students.
People will be able to attend the conference at the Lincoln School's auditorium in person and can also apply to view it from the school's cafeteria, where the conference will be live?cast. The conference will also be live?cast to the Google headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
Murphy believes that the Adventures will intellectually stimulate the community.
"[Werner] said that when you were five years old, you thought that going to a park was a huge adventure," he added. "Our goal is to do that, but for adults."
