First-ever TEDx event at UOIT hailed a major success
February 24, 2011
They arrived with energetic and curious minds, and even braved a nasty snowstorm on a Saturday night to be there. And when the hundreds of undergraduate students left the University of Ontario Institute of Technology's (UOIT) Regent Theatre on January 22 to head back out into the snow, they did so having benefitted from a concept simply known as TED.
UOIT's Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), an entrepreneurship club, generated plenty of attention about TED as the group played host to TEDxUOIT, the university's first-ever such event. The theme entitled Ideas for a Sustainable Future featured a series of presentations and videos by professors, experts, and public policy advisors from both the Durham Region and across the globe. Notable guests included UOIT's Dr. Peter Berg, and associate professor of Physics in the Faculty of Science and director of UOIT's Energy and the Environment program. Dr. Berg's research interests are proton exchange membrane (PEM) and molten carbonate fuel cells, traffic flow, energy-economic models, and the impact of a world oil production peak on the global economy.
"Our goal was to help local students and faculty understand the importance of sustainable energy both today and in the years to come," said Greg Rozdeba, second-year Business student at UOIT and TEDxUOIT organizer. "We believe this conference was significant in examining sustainable energy opportunities available to the local community, as well as in evaluating current public policy regarding energy resources in the Durham Region."
For the uninitiated, TEDx stands for Technology Education and Design and is a set of independently organized conferences or talks that are offered for free viewing online (the x stands for independently organized event). The premise is quite simple: speakers are given up to 18 minutes to express their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Topics typically involve the research and practice of science and culture.
"TED is all about an exchange of ideas worth spreading," said Dan Hernden, second-year Commerce student at UOIT, event co-organizer and the president of SIFE-UOIT. "TEDx events are able to connect people gathered in a lecture hall to an international online audience by using a variety of social media tools and a live video stream. We are delighted that so many students took part in this groundbreaking event at UOIT, and we are grateful to the Faculty of Business and Information Technology (FBIT) Student Society and Your Student Association for their support, which will hopefully lead to more TEDx events at UOIT."
Admission to the four-hour event was free, but was open only to faculty and students at UOIT and at Durham College.
"We are all affected by energy resources in our daily lives - be it the hydro that heats our homes or the gasoline that fuels our vehicles," added Hernden. "While many people find sustainability a difficult or trivial topic to study in detail, it is still important for us to understand how worldwide pollution, population growth, and climate change issues will affect our quality of life in the foreseeable future."
TED began with little fanfare back in 1984 as a one-off event, but has been an annual undertaking since 1990. Now owned by the non-profit U.S. organization the Sapling Foundation, hundreds of TED events are now available free online, and some have been viewed millions of times for a steadily-growing global audience. Past presenters at TED events include such notables as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, anthropologist Jane Goodall, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and many Nobel Prize winners, to name just a few.
"TEDxUOIT completely captures the essence of UOIT's motto: Challenge Innovate Connect," said Dr. Pamela Ritchie, dean, FBIT. "We salute these enterprising students in our faculty for taking the initiative to make this event a reality and for setting the stage for TEDxUOIT happenings."
For more information about TEDxUOIT, please visit http://tedxuoit.com./; twitter.com/TEDxUOIT, or facebook.com/TEDxUOIT.
For more information about TED, please visit http://www.ted.com/tedx.
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