Hacking the Red Circle

Finding ways to be creative and stay connected to your TEDx Community during these challenging times of sequestering and dealing with a global pandemic can test even the most creative Organizers. When I read about our guest, Martin Nera of TEDxUCLouvain on the TEDx Organizers Facebook page, I was intrigued about their plans that involved virtual production, strategies to engage their Community - all while focusing on creating an experience. Their theme for the event was All-Knowing Generations. TEDxUCLouvain is a University event that has been in production for five years. It was started by 4 Ph.D. students and a 100 person license. This year they were supposed to produce their live event for 800 people in April, and due to COVID, elected to postpone until the Fall and see if things changed. In fact, they didn't, they got worse, however, Martin and his team used those constraints to guide their creativity. In this episode (and sorry for the long delay between episodes) you'll hear how Martin and the team focused on living into a few guiding principles. One, Change Expectations and two, "If you don't want to disappoint, you have to surprise." You'll need to listen to the show to get the deeper and profoundly interesting way those ideas manifested themselves. Martin explains that his audience of students' lives for authentic experiences and streaming pre-recorded TEDx Talks to dorm rooms was not the experience his team wanted to deliver. Listen as he explains how they decentralized the event into forty (40) locations of ten (10) people each, created and distributed a Knowlege Box to each pod of listeners, and how they activated each pod, the collective pods and individuals to deliver a truly unique experience and refined what a TEDx event could be. Congratulations to the team at TEDxUCLouvain and the impact they made on 400 people and how they delivered on the promises they'd made to their speakers, the community and their partners.

Alerted to an amazing TEDx's theater design posted on Facebook, we sought out the organizers of TEDxHyderabad to walk us through the fantastic video and tell us the story.. Please meet Vipin and Viiveck, the co-organizers of the event and a lively pair of conversationalists who told us that story and more. Ironically Facebook came up at the beginning of the show when they told me how they hadn't known one each other, and no one on the team had known one another until a post appeared asking people to volunteer for the event. Their 2018 TEDx, with over 2,500 people, was held in the 400-year-old city of Hyderabad. Watch the video posted below to see how they transformed the space into a stunning technological wonder - and listen to the show to hear how things just barely made it by showtime. We talked about how they've interpreted the TEDx Mission of 'Ideas Worth Spreading' into their local Mission which is to "Build a community of (T)hinkers, (E)nablers, and (D)oers with the X standing for a single idea." Listen as they go into detail on how this Mission is a binding theme that pulls their team together. Team is a consistent theme for TEDxHyderabad. In their advice to existing organizers, they suggest focusing on building sustainability into the team structure. Listeners will note at the end that I was invited to join them in Hyderabad and we're going to do the next best thing which is to meet at TEDSummit 2019 in Scotland! https://HackingTheRedCircle.com

TEDxGaborone - Gomolemo Lolo Madikgetla Organizer by Mark Sylvester, Host

In 2011 Stefan Bucher, an award-winning Designer, presented at TEDxAmericanRiviera (now known as TEDxSantaBarbara.) He recently spoke with Mark Sylvester about reflections of his road to the Red Circle. Stefan speaks to audiences large and small and travels the world talking about design, typically to designers. He remarks that stepping onto the TEDx stage is unlike any other event. For Organizers, hearing this conversation will help you understand the thinking of an accomplished speaker when understanding how different the TEDx experience is - and how he'd wished he'd taken more advantage of our help. You'll get some great tips on how to coach your speakers by listening to him. Stefan's hack for speakers is to consider how you open your talk and capture the imagination and energy of the audience. He suggests using a musical opening, much like the overture to a Broadway play. You'll see how he used this in his talk from 2011. We've posted Stefan's talk below so you can watch, then listen to this episode so that you can understand the context of his answers.

On the first day of TED2019, Randy Bretz joined the show as a guest host to help me interview the founder of TEDx, Lara Stein. My favorite quote from her was "there's so much innovation on the edges." Randy Bretz wrote an extensive piece on this interview on Medium. You can read it here: https://medium.com/@randybretz/lara-stein-founder-of-tedx-and-believer-in-the-open-source-movement-7f2c949c2eb

In five minutes of listening to Mariette Fourmeaux du Sartel talk about why she has spent the past couple of years going to prison every week to help create TEDxDonovanCorrectional, you will understand how her passion drives her to continue, overcoming obstacles every visit. Mariette deeply cares for the men at Donovan Correctional and taught me so much about the challenges she and the team face in producing the event. She quoted one of the men who told her, "In my 20 years of incarceration, I've never been treated as a human until now." Wow. After the wild success of TEDxDonovanCorrectional held at San Diego’s Donovan state prison, Mariette has transferred her passion for building resilient high-performing teams and authentic human-centered leadership – honed through two decades in corporate and start-ups – into the unlikely environment that is prison. She founded Brilliance Inside, a nonprofit program to transform prison from being strictly a container of violence to a creator of rehabilitation and peace. Before this, Mariette spent 17 years in business, developing cutting-edge technologies for world-scale problems, such as a cancer-detecting medical device in Paris, d.light’s solar lanterns for the rural poor without electricity in India and a new augmented reality technology at HP, Inc. She also grew up intertwined in the creation and expansion of her family wine businesses, starting at the ripe age of 6. Mariette is a true global citizen: born in France, she’s lived on four continents and has explored some of the most remote corners of our world. Finally, Mariette holds a double materials engineering and economics degree from Brown University and a Berkeley MBA.

Monica Alba is a force of nature and the perfect person to lead the team at TEDxCancun, located in one of the most beautiful places along the Gulf of Mexico. Cancun is only 40 years old, and unlike other colonial cities in Mexico, it is full of many nationalities, creating a diverse population. Monica is also the TEDx Ambassador for Mexico, and after the first few minutes of listening to her, you'll see why New York picked her for the position. She's sees the challenge of producing a TEDx in a city of 1 million citizens as a way to open their minds and inspire them. Her latest event was themed Resonance. She said these are the ideas that need to be heard; we want to have them resonate with our community. Her advice to other Organizers was simple; be open and vulnerable and share your failures. Be able to say, "I tried this, and it didn't work out..." and learn from it.

In this special episode, recorded in September 2018 right after TEDxSantaBarbara, Mark Sylvester (me), the host of Hacking the Red Circle, is interviewed by TEDxLincoln's Randy Bretz and TEDxLaçador's Ana Goelzer. This podcast is the first time I've told my own TED story. I'm hoping it will give you a glimpse into how I think our event. Randy and Ana take a deep-dive into my motivations for producing a TEDx event here in Santa Barbara, since 2010. TEDxSantaBarbara has evolved over the years, and we've expanded into Youth, Live and in 2019, Salon events. My involvement has become more focused on the outcomes associated with a finely curated slate of speakers each year and stunning production design. We got into a great discussion about how to turn the theme influences everything starting with set design, graphic design, web design, communications strategy and most importantly the curation of the speakers. This small plate influenced the entire graphic design of the show I found in Brooklyn at TEDFest 2018. Seen on the right. For the first time, I also produced a podcast to go behind the scenes of the show, from the graphic design to selecting speakers, to talking about what it means to be a volunteer. This short-series of shows was designed specifically to bring the community closer to the core team and give them an inside look at the event. I got into a discussion about our philosophy on speaker selection, and how we brought back three of our past speakers to give the audience an update on where their idea has traveled since initially presenting it in Santa Barbara. This year we focused on the impact of ideas on our community, something I learned from several of the podcast interviews I've done with other organizers. It had a profound effect on so much of what we did. Something unique about TEDxSantaBarbara is the amount of speaker training we provide. On average, each speaker has 40+ hours of one-on-one, group and stage training from our coaching team lead by my wife and co-organizer, Kymberlee Weil. She's fine-tuned the process with her team and spends as much time as needed to be sure each speaker has everything necessary to give the talk of their lives. Randy took me on another journey into the motivation for creating this show. I spoke at length about the show has become a Master Class for me as I work on being the best organizer I can. TEDxSantaBarbara has become a laboratory for me to implement ideas I hear from these interviews. Ana wanted to know more about my journey to Red Circle and what it was like preparing for my TED talk at TEDxFargo. What a trek — shoutout to Greg Tehven, the organizer, for inviting me and creating one of the most respected TEDx events in the country. As much experience as I have with TED, it was not until I got the tap on the shoulder to walk onto the stage in front of 4,000 people that what we, as organizers, do and why we do it became instantly real to me.

TEDxLeicester, located in the United Kingdom, is organized by Siddhi Trivedi, who has a unique story; she was born in Tanzania, educated in the UK and the United States and has lived and worked across three continents. Truly a global citizen. She started as the TEDxLeicester project manager in 2015 and is most proud of the work she and her team did in 2017, hosting the very first TEDx event inside a UK prison. The aim was to build collaborative partnerships to break the cycle of re-offending. She spends a good part of the conversation detailing the challenges of producing an event inside prison walls. I loved how she phrased what it means to be an organizer, and she said that through conversations she could build partnerships, and through them, she builds opportunities. She has a unique point of view about partners and finding connections for them as a result of being involved with the event.

Gildo Conte is the Organizer of TEDxLaval, located on an island next to Montreal, in Quebec, Canada. His passion and energy are infectious, and I bet it's great fun being a part of his small, five-person team. His first brush with TED was when his kids said, "Dad, do you know about TED?" He says that it was a magical moment for him. He's purposely kept the event small, 150-250 people with nine speakers in an evening event. I love that he serves cocktails before the show. His biggest surprise was that the reach of the event in just two years has been remarkable. Gildo says that there has been a good reaction from outside the region. His biggest challenge is that the French community of Laval doesn't know about TED or TEDx. We've heard this often from other Organizers, and it doesn't appear to be isolated to any given region. As much as we think everyone's heard about TED, the reality, is they've not. In 2018 they've managed to produce four Salons, plus a Youth event. Remember, this is with a team of 5. That's impressive.

Kimberly Marcus traveled the path to the Red Circle first as a speaker then made her way to Organizer of TEDxTarrytown in 2017. She made the trek to TEDFest in Brooklyn to remove the population cap off her event. She went to Brooks Institute (originally here in Santa Barbara) to study photography and moved to the east coast in 1987, where she's a Children's book writer. If you're not familiar with Tarrytown, it's one of the river towns along the Hudson River, north of New York City. If you're familiar with the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, then you know where Tarrytown is. Tarrytown is a very diverse community in gender, race, and age. Kimberly feels that showcasing this diversity in the Talks is important. It's a small town of 15,000 people and she mentions that the 78 people who applied for 5 spots generated humbling and heartwarming conversations. When I asked what her biggest surprise was, she said, "I was surprised that it all worked." Spoken like a true first timer. We recorded this episode before she produced her second event in November 2018, and we're pretty sure it went great.

John Werner is the Organizer of TEDxBeaconStreet, one of the top TEDx events that other Organizers would love to visit. In this episode, you'll learn why John and his event have been so successful, over 86 million views since 2010. John's very generous towards everyone that has helped him build a staggeringly connected community. John's been producing TEDx events since 2010 and is deeply integrated into the TEDx Community. He's on the TEDx Board of Advisors, was the original creator of TEDx Adventures with over 365 to date, and over 10,000 attendees each year. He's a part of the TED-Ed brain trust, and you'll soon learn his deep passion for education which comes across loud and clear in this episode. John is also a TEDx speaker, having presented at TED University, TED-Ed, and TED Global. He nominates TED Fellows. His career and experience are vast as evidenced by an extensive list of accomplishments, Fellowships, and Awards on Wikipedia. John's certainly a role model. This episode covers so much ground that you don't want to read about it, you want to listen. Hear John's passion, deep thinking behind making connections and how he let's just enough chaos into the system to make it all work.

Ajit George is the organizer of TEDxWilmington, located in Delaware. He is a bundle of energy, as evidenced by the fact his tribe produces 12 events a year, with 172 speakers and 164 talks. It takes an incredible amount of organization to manage the sheer volume of speakers and attendees. They've had 7.4M views of their talks since they starting producing their event in 2011. I learned so much from this conversation, as will you. Ajit talks at length about how they plan their event and salons, find speakers and manages a team of 70 volunteers. One tip is they have their speakers write a blog post at the beginning and middle of their journey to the red circle and one at the end. I took this to heart with my journey to TEDxFargo and kept a journal as a result of this tip. Another significant aspect of their organization is they will fund any member of the tribe (as he calls them) to attend another TEDx event. This includes attending TEDSummit or TEDfest. He sent two members of the tribe to TEDfest this year, which gave me a chance to meet them in person. He believes this exposure will help broaden their experience. They pay the registration fee and 50% of the travel. Wow. He makes it a point to visit every TEDx event in Delaware and provides support in mentoring, and even lends their letters to the events that can't afford them. He also welcomes referrals of speakers from other TEDx events around the country. We spoke about how they've been able to find such a volume of speakers for being in such a small city, within a small state. He attributes this to three things: - They are halfway between Washington, DC and New York City. It's only a 90-minute train ride. They are close to the airport and positioned centrally in the mid-Atlantic region - Delaware is what's called a corporate state. This means thousands of companies across the US are incorporated in the State of Delaware and have headquarters there. This gives them access to sponsors and partners. He believes that his contacts over 64 years of life have helped him develop and fantastic network. - His alumni speakers recommend new speakers. They have an unbelievable pool of available talent as a result. They have a Speaker Ambassador as well, to focus 100% on them. He believes these alumni are their greatest resource. Ajit says that his venue selection is specific in that they look for small, intimate spaces and keeps the event small on purpose. He says he likes to keep it a ratio of 10-12 attendees per speaker. This episode will inspire you. Please feel free to share it.

How do you prepare an event for 7,000 people in rural India from 4,100 miles away in London, and don't hit the ground running until a week before the event? In this episode, we talk with Masarat Daud, the Organizer of TEDxShekhawati, located about 150 miles west of New Dehli. There were so many challenges producing this event that you'll not want to miss a minute of this compelling conversation. Masarat grew up in Dubai and has lived in London the past seven years. She and her family produce this fantastic TEDx in spite of overwhelming odds in their way. For instance, they marketed the event by printing leaflets and going door to door and talking to hundreds of families about TEDx and why it was essential to the community. Did I mention, it's also Free! And a one-woman show. Wow. Yes, she produces the event by herself. She says that now, eight years later, she feels like she's just starting to scratch the surface. What surprised everyone was that the women in the village showed up. The venue itself, loosely constructed of tarps and fabric was itself a huge risk. What else was in their way? The entire concept of an event based solely on ideas is as foreign a concept as could be imagined. Masarat's driving goal is to accentuate TEDx' mission for education, diversity and bring ideas to the community, especially girls. Her vision is that more girls will start going to school. There's so much here to encapsulate in a simple abstract. You will appreciate one of her closing comments, "Maybe the impact of TEDx is event bigger than I thought!"

Chris Daley is the Organizer of TEDxPittsburgh and is part of a regional TEDx ecosystem with ten events within a short distance. Pittsburgh is a large region, but a small city, so the challenge of colliding events and keeping an identity for each TEDx is something Chris and his team think about. He started as an attendee when the event was called TEDxGrandViewAvenue, then volunteered, became a part of the core team and in 2015 took over the lead organizer role. His background is in marketing, so he has a strong skill set which helps him produce the event. "We want to be ambassadors for the City. It's the part of the story that motivates us." Chris talks about the need for two teams and something that they're experimenting with this year. One team works on the event and passes the project over to a second team that manages the after-event tasks, videos, promotion, planning so that the first time can catch their breath. We all know how much of a sprint it is to get a TEDx produced and this strategy seems like a smart way to go. Chris also shares his team's strategy for finding speakers in this episode. We know how hard that can be, especially with an event that continues year after year. He suggests that you get out in the community and participate in local activities. Live music, Moth sessions, spoken word festivals and jams of all sorts. Chris also said that they're transitioning to 12-minute talks, down from the typical 18. Note: The guidance from TEDx in NYC is that video viewership drops precipitously after 12 minutes (my words). Good to know. Chris and his wife share duties with their TEDx as she helps with the speakers.

Scott Mallory is the lead organizer for TEDxECUAD. This is a university event held in Vancouver at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. This year was their second event, and the interview was just a few days after the event concluded. Scott talks about how art and design permeate everything about the event, so much so that Will Davis took many of the ideas presented and put them into his 2017 Innovation talk that he took on tour last year. Specifically, the Coloring Book (seen above) was something we've not seen before and indeed worthy of being called an idea worth spreading. Scott discussed how to manage a team of creative students who have tons of ideas and how those ideas create a new set of logistical challenges regarding implementing. As a professor, he uses the experience of working on the event to generate Teaching Moments for the students. He worked with the University leadership to get credits for students who worked on the event, as well as some tuition waivers (for this year at least). Great motivator. TEDxECUAD is a perfect environment for students on the team to learn about integrating their portfolio materials, high stakes work, the nature of feedback, working on teams, working with clients, collaboration, showcase work on a global, meaningful platform.

I'd been looking forward to posting this conversation with TEDxAmsterdam's organizer Paul Rispens for some time now. I'd heard such great things about the event, and it's on the list of TEDx events other organizers would like to attend. Paul has been involved with TEDx since 2009 and works with a core team of 30. This episode is a lively conversation with someone who believes that their event is a perfect blending of the best of TED with the best of Amsterdam. I thought it was interesting that they have six people on their partner team, 12 on communications, five curating and working with speakers, and 4 focused on the user experience. Paul says he spends two days a week, full time on the event in the months coming up to the show. He talks about an interesting thing they did at the end of the 2017 show, which was a surprisingly light closing ceremony. It was to support the idea of 'big questions.' Listen as he explains how it all worked. It sounds like it was a fantastic experience if you were in that beautiful theater. Paul is gearing up for the 10th edition of their show. Look at the TEDxAmsterdam website to get a sense of the excitement. They are going to mix the best of the best from the past ten years. With 850 attendees expected, this is going to be a memorable event.

Alexandra Opiel started at TEDxBuffalo as a volunteer, eventually replacing the original license holder and has run the event for the past three years. By days she's a project manager for a local Buffalo real estate development company, which is a perfect skill set to bring to the role of a TEDx Organizer. She naturally seeks out more responsibility, and it was this attitude that led her into the leadership position. Alex explains that they go about selecting a theme a bit different than I've heard from other organizers. They start by finding speakers, then once they have a full slate, they determine what the theme might be. They've had Perspectives, and Ignite as themes that have come out of this process. She says that they look for a vague term that is inspiring and lends itself to a cool logo yet doesn't lock them into a corner. Their event is under 600 people, and they've found a great venue that allows them to have a more significant event than their old location which only held 100 attendees. One of the things that they do differently is to hold the event on a weeknight instead of a whole day, then follow it with a great after party. I love that they have food trucks at the event to feed people during the break. The event starts around dinner time, and a Buffalo favorite is Pirogi's and BBQ and Vegan offerings. The food trucks allow people to buy what they want, and how much they want, so there's no waste. And doesn't add to the TEDxBuffalo budget. They've been able to produce the entire event for under $10K, and keep ticket prices to $20. This puts a challenge on the team to come up with a low budget way to create experiences. She says that it helps to have the event on a Thursday evening, which keeps costs down as well. She's surprised at how big the TEDx world is. Her experience at TEDxBuffalo, which focuses exclusively on Buffalo ideas, people, and food, had her thinking that TEDx was just limited to her city. This perspective changed dramatically when she went to TEDFest in 2017 and saw how vast the world of TEDx really is and how different everyone's events are, while still falling under the umbrella of Ideas Worth Spreading. TEDFest also opened her eyes to resources like the Hub and the TEDx organizers Facebook page.

This was the first mother-daughter podcast we've done. Mom is Grace Belangia, organizer of TEDxAugusta and Chloe Belangia, her daughter, is the organizer of TEDxGeorgiaTech. It was great to meet them in person at TEDFest and have the opportunity to enjoy the family dynamic in action. You'll love the back and forth between these two energetic TEDsters. Both are highly accomplished in their fields and bring a lot to the table with skills that help them produce their events. There was a lot of real-time idea sharing going on too that was fun to watch. This is one of those episodes that it's nearly impossible to write cogent show notes because of the back and forth between these two powerhouses. You're going to want to set aside some time, as you'll also want to take notes. Plenty of great ideas here. What you're going to learn is the difference between the challenges facing a University event vs. a Community event, and ironically how similar they are in some areas. They reached out to us on Facebook and thought their story would make a great show - they were right. If you have an exciting story to tell to the TEDx organizer community, let us know. Find us on Facebook.

Samuel Titera came to TEDxPrague through the route of being one of the four original Czech translators for TED talks. When he learned that TEDx was being organized in Prague for the first time, he offered help as a volunteer and soon became one of the core organizers. His first brush with TED was Barry Schwarz's talk on the Paradox of Choice. Nowadays he focuses on supporting team communication, finding and preparing speakers and organizing TEDxSalons with scientists. Samuel now lives outside the city and our conversation centered on his focus on family and his new community. He describes himself as a why-keeper and continually is asking that question of the team. He says he enjoys staying in touch with the 150 past speakers while helping build a stable team centered on sustainability and passing knowledge along to new team members. This was a deep and thoughtful conversation as if we'd been friends for many years, which led to truly candid moments. I loved his quote, "Don't be afraid to take time off." This is so true (We took a 3-year hiatus ourselves). As a musician himself, he is adamant about having music at TEDxPrague, including having a quartet in the audience one year. You'll enjoy this show as it was one of the more personal conversations centered on how he feels about the event, instead of focusing on operational aspects of producing a TEDx. Note, Samuel has personally translated 104 talks into Czech. Huzzah.