TEDxOcala to celebrate milestone

Dr. India White gives her speech during TEDxOcala in the Dassance Fine Arts Auditorium at the College of Central Florida in Ocala, Fla. on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2022.

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Posted October 22, 2024 | By Susan Smiley-Height, [email protected]

TED was born in 1984 out of Richard Saul Wurman’s observation of a convergence among technology, entertainment and design. The first TED event, which Wurman co-founded with Harry Marks, did not turn out as hoped and it was six years later that the duo tried again.

TEDx is a grassroots initiative in the spirit of TED’s mission to share “ideas worth spreading.” TEDx events include live speakers and recorded TED Talks and are organized independently under a free license granted by TED. More than 3,000 events are held annually.

TEDxOcala is celebrating its 10^th anniversary and this year’s event will take place Nov. 9 at the College of Central Florida. The local event is organized by Manal Fakhoury and a team of other volunteers. She recalled how she first learned about what has become a global outreach.

“I remember driving from Tallahassee to Ocala and listening to the radio. I had never heard of TED Talks and I was so intrigued that I looked it up,” she recalled. “Wurman said that in the ‘80s he was traveling a lot and the most interesting conversations he was having on flights were people in technology, entertainment or design. He was an architect. He noticed some intersectionality because the people in technology wanted to meet people in design, etc., and as he recognized that, he came up with this idea. The first TED event in 1984 was described as eclectic right from the beginning. He had, for example, Steve Jobs unveil the first MAC there; someone had to leave early to go accept their Grammy; a CEO passed out these shiny, round things—CDs. A lot of super cool things happened.”

After the second event in 1992, “They did a third event and then it became an annual event and there came a point where he sold the company.”

According to its website, TED became “one of the intellectual and emotional highlights of the year. That was certainly true for media entrepreneur Chris Anderson, who met with Wurman in 2000 to discuss the conference’s future. A deal was struck and in 2001 Anderson’s nonprofit Sapling Foundation acquired TED. As of July 1, 2019, TED is owned by TED Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation.”

Fakhoury said “they basically turned the company upside down. What they recognized is that people who were attending–like Oprah, Al Gore, Jeff Bezos–was that they wished they could share it with others, their families. So, they turned TED into a media company, and they got millions of views. And then they wanted to duplicate it and that’s when TEDx was born.”

She said TEDx events now are “done all over the world. Probably on average any day of the year, there are 11 to 12 events happening somewhere around the globe. They are done in prisons, third world countries, villages … It’s huge. You apply for the license. They have criteria, including who can and cannot be your sponsor. For example, Lockheed Martin cannot be your sponsor because it is a weapons company.”

Fakhoury said the TEDx format is “not about a motivational speaker. And they don’t want necessarily professional speakers. They are looking for ideas that spread. And we even have a saying that ‘ideas that spread win.’”

As for the Ocala version, “We believe that at our event, the audience is just as important as the speakers. I’ve told our team we want to make this one of the best events in the world. And by that it’s for the speakers, for the volunteer team, for the audience, for the sponsors. We are not into just repeat, repeat, repeat. Every year we have to make it better,” Fakhoury said.

She said organizers are given the freedom to select a theme. This year’s theme in Ocala is “humanity.”

“This year we chose our theme like that,” Fakhoury said with a snap of her fingers. “The idea with the theme is that it doesn’t force you to use the word humanity in your talk. But when we think about humanity, so many things can be part of our humanity, whether it’s the work we are doing, the relationships we are building, whether it’s a world affair and things that are happening. And quite honestly, to me, the world is on fire. It’s sad that we can grace this earth and allow the damage, the death, the destruction just to happen. It’s just really devastating. With TED, the thing is to make the world a better place community by community.”

Fakhoury said the best talks need “to be memorable, they can be emotional, and they can be novel because you want to be learning something new.”

“Our speakers this year, we have 13, and the topics vary from the role of AI in our humanity to heroic anarchy as a new coined term to understanding the grieving process; it’s a variety, all different topics,” she shared.

Here are this year’s speakers:

• Angela Redondo Lightfoot is a martial artist and equestrian and has more than two decades of experience in coaching and development.
• Anne Vogt McCune is a wife, mother, grandmother, author and has served on many boards and helped run events that have had city, state and worldwide impact.
• Emily Kathleen Callahan is an acute care nurse practitioner who works in emergency medicine in the U.S. and internationally. She recently was evacuated from Gaza after treating burn victims with scarce supplies, navigating security operations and doing her best to get her team out after 26 days of intense bombing.
• Hanna Barakat is a researcher specializing in human-computer interaction and science and technology studies. She represented Palestine at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, in the 100-meter sprint.
• Jad-Évangelo Nasser is a multilingual global inclusion specialist with Palestinian roots and Haitian heritage and 10-plus years of experience in DEI, cross-cultural communication, film, media and higher education.
• Jasmine Marie Cruz is a marketing specialist in brand development and graphic design with a passion for personal growth and community empowerment.
• Julie Ducan has thrived in Ocala for 14 years, working, building businesses and raising two girls. Her profession is based around creating experiences for people within the events and entertainment sphere.
• Laura Duksta is the author of the “New York Times” bestseller “I Love You More,” and her titles have sold more than 1 million copies in eight languages. She shares a message of love through books, speaking engagements, music and school programs.
• Mark Cummins is an author; decorated U.S. Marine; coach, teacher and speaker; Boston Marathon and IRONMAN athlete; and high school and college football coach.
• Scott Martin, founder of Groundswell Origins, has spent more than 25 years working in all types of marketing and branding as an agency owner and strategist to national brands. He is an author and podcaster.
• Seweryna Dumaisnil, known as Sev Joy, is a women’s empowerment mentor, leadership trainer and bestselling author.
• Tiffany Edith is a teacher, tutor and enrollment counselor at a global online school. She has acted, sang, done street poetry and won multiple speaking awards.
• Tom Puketza has produced several stage plays, studied film accounting under an industry veteran and served on the board of The Acrosstown Repertory Theatre. He is the owner of Finale Events, president of a nonprofit and coaches speakers professionally.

Each speaker is limited to 18 minutes.

“The original idea Wurman had was 18 minutes. He felt that was long enough to hold people’s attention and that you could teach something without it becoming a lecture. My guidance to our speakers is if you have a six-minute idea or a seven-minute idea, let it be. The sweet spot is about 12 minutes to 14 minutes,” Fakhoury said.

The event is interactive, with built-in breaks and lunch, and even a “swag bag.”

“An important thing with the TED format is audience engagement, so we have a committee that plans something different each year. We encourage people to move around and exchange ideas,” she noted.

R.J. Jenkins–an Ocala-based educator, higher education administrator, and institutional consultant–was a speaker last year.

“Being a speaker at TEDxOcala was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It encouraged me to take an idea that had long mattered to me and bring it to life for a wider audience. The process was exhilarating and humbling in equal measure and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to be challenged in the best possible way,” Jenkins said.

Fakhoury, who volunteers with numerous local organizations such as Toastmasters, she is part of a Gavel Club at the Marion Correctional Institution, Ollin Women International and the American Heart Association, said she loves TEDxOcala.

“Of all the volunteer work that I do, and I love many of the things that I get to do, like the prison in terms of giving me fulfillment, this TEDx event is my favorite thing to be a part of. I’ve had people say that when they moved to Ocala, if there’s a TEDx event here, then we know it’s a happening city. I love that,” she stated.

“This is an opportunity for people to do something they may never have done before or to just use it as a day of self-reflection, networking, idea sharing,” she added. “They won’t be disappointed. That’s what the audience needs to know—they are going to walk away with some great ideas.”

TEDxOcala will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 9 at the College of Central Florida, 3001 SW College Road, Ocala. Tickets range from $25 to $75. For details, go to tedxocala.com