TEDxBoulder: A Recap

TEDxBoulder was an epic event.  22 speakers, 22 volunteers, 8 organizers and 1400 of our great community came out to support an experiment in distributed event organization and community powered presentations on things that mattered.

Some pictures by Ryan Behner:

Photo by Brandon Harper Photo

The event seems like a dream.  Organization wise, it was about as flawless as we could have asked for.

The crowd was amazing.  Attentive, supportive and attractive.  Well, you get the point.  The venue was packed and excited.  There was a generous nervous buzz from the speakers, organizers and attendees.

The talks were all very strong, targeted and had a point.  It was guaranteed that at least one of the talks was out of your comfort zone, which is a huge win for me.

I could go on about each and every speaker.  I’m still a bit burned from the run portion of the 70.3 Sunday, so I’ll keep it short.

I learned:

• Small teams can work really well together
• Red flags are red flags, listen to your gut
• Small and big names alike have a passion and ability to step up to the plate
• Branding matters, and can lead to amazing things
• Boulder is special because there is a deep pool of amazing talent
• The organizing team stepped up and with a lot of selfless service, did an amazing deed
• You can effectively plan for unplanned things
• Big curveballs can be handled with grace, a level head always wins
• There are inspiring parts of all of our lives worth sharing

Our posters and shirts for the event netted over 1 billion ‘x’s.’

I made quite a few friends and got to welcome some people to town.  Quite an event. Quite a weekend.  I feel like this seeing it succeed the way it did.

Photo by Peggy Dyer

“Be tough, yet gentle. Humble, yet bold. Swayed always by beauty and truth.” Bob Pieh.

Beauty and truth.

TEDxBoulder, August 7th, 2010.

Arthur, Dan, Ef, George, Jamie, Jennifer and Ken, thank you.