TEDx is far from extinct at UCLA.
After a two-year hiatus, the revived organization, which organizes speaker series, hosted a May 26 event at the Northwest Campus Auditorium. The organization renewed its license with parent company TED in December and planned the event – which featured ten speakers and a theme of renaissance and revival – during winter and spring quarter.
Fifth-year art history and materials engineering student, Cylin Wang, restarted TEDxUCLA and now serves as its lead organizer and curator.
TEDx aims to spotlight local speakers in events across the globe while keeping a TED Talk’s branding, she said. While official TED Talks are far more curated, limited to just a few conferences a year, the parent company licenses its name out to independent organizations, such as UCLA. As a collective, the organization hosts tens of thousands of speakers each year.
“Sometimes, UCLA’s so siloed,” Wang said. “What I think is so powerful about a local TEDx event is that it brings communities together, and speakers are just part of the community.”
Wang said the club got its license from TED in December and became officially recognized as a club during spring quarter. The goal this year was for the 15 primary members to lay the groundwork so the club could continue to put on the event in following years, Wang said.
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For over a decade, TEDx events at UCLA were coordinated through UCLA Extension rather than a student club, Wang said. She added that while some support for prior events came from student volunteers, operations had slowed after the pandemic because of a lack of student involvement.
Scott Hutchinson, who originally founded TEDxUCLA in 2011, he was concerned about the event’s future following the pandemic. Hutchinson said he sought to find a qualified successor, and Wang understood the core of TEDx’s mission.
“The optimism of the talks, the ‘what’s possible’ versus ‘what’s wrong,’ is so contagious and so interesting for people,” Hutchinson said. “It propels people into action. I think it propels people into majors that they didn’t know about. I think it gives a voice to people.”
Part of what inspired Wang to lead the endeavor was her early interest in TED Talks after her freshman year at UCLA, she said. Starting out as an economics student, Wang recalled watching a talk about development of mushroom leather, which inspired her to pursue her degree in materials engineering, she added. Wang said she reached out to Hutchinson after attending a live TEDx conference in the hopes of showcasing diverse topics on campus using the same platform.
TEDx is not about promoting one’s brand, Wang said. Instead, it is about giving passionate people a stage to spread that enthusiasm about a given topic, she added.
“We’re looking for people really haunted by an idea,” Wang said. “I’ve been telling all the speakers, if you succeed, people should forget everything about you, but remember one or two things from your talk.”
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Kaitlyn Garcia, a fourth-year international development studies student, said her main goal as a social media organizer for TEDxUCLA was to capture student voices. Garcia said she thinks about her job through the lens of exercise, repeatedly telling herself to complete one more rep – or in this case, to make one more post. She added that she feels inspired to make the event the best it can be, and excited for students to learn something new or further their knowledge about any given field.
“The main goal should be to wake something up in the person,” Garcia said. “As long as it wakes something up, some inspiration, motivation for the person, I think the job is done, because a talk can change everything.”
To spread the word about the event, Wang and Garcia approached ASUCLA to see how they could help publicize the May event, which resulted in TEDx and ASUCLA collaborating on a line of promotional cloud-topped drinks at Kerckhoff Coffee House, Bruin Buzz and the Music Café. Wang said the crossover was made purely for promotional purposes, and none of the proceeds went toward the club.
Ultimately, Wang said she wants TEDx to be an equalizing space, one where individuals different from one another can exchange thoughts through the power of dialogue. This year was about getting things started and allowing future students to operate the event with ease, Wang said. She added that she hopes that TEDxUCLA will continue after she has graduated.
“This year, for me, it’s not about being perfect,” Wang said. “It’s about, one, laying that foundation, … and two, bring this back to awareness.”
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