For as long as Laurie can remember, she wanted to know two things: where do you get all of your ideas? what are you doing… now? Hearing the first question over and over can swell your ego; but the second question keeps you grounded. It’s nearly impossible to explain your ideas and an idea in progress usually looks like a big mess. However, most people don’t know where ideas come from; using a stick figure with a lightbulb over its head, Laurie describes its symbolism for an idea, but that it’s a process, no an isolated a-ha moment. But, we’re seduced by this icon; that’s why peopleRead More →

We all deal with fear. Fear always breeds mistrust. Mistrust justifies being prejudice all day long. We’ve seen this in our own backyard. In our own city. Faith and courage are not the solution. Beauty is the solution to fear. The beautiful things in our life overcome the most fearful things in our lives. When I see the beauty in them, I conquer the fears I have about them. Fear knows it can control our emotions but only beauty can shape our souls. Naeem shares stories from his experiences and his family’s experiences of fear. The beautiful moments that pushed the fear in all ofRead More →

It sounds like modesty, but it’s called the Impostor Syndrome. Lou Solomon’s therapist told her that she has been suffering from it for years. Today, Lou helps people call out the imposter like thinking. You can’t call it out completely – but you can definitely call it out. Lou became a self-researcher from the inside out. The imposter syndrom is a feeling of phoniness and unworthiness when it comes to people thinking about success. It’s as if we have snuck in the backdoor of life’s theater anf onto the stage and there’s a big bouncer up there and if he sees us, we’re out of here.Read More →

  Importance of being concise. Be precise. 5 years ago, Scott walked into the room of his family watching internet videos of sharks. Instead of scooting them out the door and away from the screen, he observed how his children watched the videos. They were very aware and concerned about the time that was left on the video. With his background with film he thought, what if we put time into videos? After experimenting with possibility he eventually scraped the idea.  Soon after he was reading a new script and got the idea that maybe he should try limiting a script to 100 words. The firstRead More →

“What is your goal for the audience?” asked Mike Watson, TEDxCharlotte MC. “One, I want them to grow and two, I want them to grow,” replied Ben Vangrift.   What if no one told you that you should pursue a single career path, would your life be different today? We have been mislead by society for a while that specialization is great. It’s not, it’s incest. By nature, people are polymath, or a person of encyclopedic learning. We were born polymaths. How did math, government, society, technology, etc. come about? These are things that we think and interact with on a daily basis. Yet aRead More →

When was the first time you considered your gender? So you remember the day when you said “Am I man or I am a woman?” Almost immediately after birth, you are checked into a box of being feminine or masculine.  As a child, Lara’s femininity was too strong to keep inside even though she was born male. When she was young, Lara’s father struggled with her expression of femininity at a young age. While her mother offered the freedoms to explore which every identity she desired, her father replaced the heels and make up she loved so much with combat boots and toy guns. GenderRead More →

We’ve got a problem with calories. We’ve tried burning, losing, cutting down, no cal, low cal, 50 cal, 100 cal, but we haven’t been able to do it. Let’s talk about storing or pushing them to the cloud to become food for an unnourished kid. Hold onto this: calories are the new air miles; we live in a culture that has millions of platinum level flyers. Using a hyper-focused timeline, he describes the launch of tech and inventions over time – making a reference to Ted Sorenson’s speech for JFK. None of the technology that was needed to go to space had been invented yet;Read More →

Education isn’t the only thing, it’s everything. James E Ford has a problem: “I am obsessed with education.” I cannot look at anything without connecting it back to education. It’s like “I’ve decoded the matrix.” He is fully aware that not everyone can look at things like this, but he spends so much time attending conferences and without fail sees that the conversation of education is limited. He wants to change the way we think about education. STOP looking at it as an isolated entity and realize it’s buried in the foundation of everything. Hyperbolic? Maybe. He asks the crowd to close their eyes andRead More →

The same way you can see the color blue in your mind, you can taste flavors. There are natural, new, better flavors waiting to be discovered. And those flavors are hiding in your backyard. So where did some our favorite flavors come from? Bacteria, fungus, yeast, etc. Water, hops, grain, and yeast make up beer. Different species of yeast can produce different flavors. This makes sense because it is the same for plants – think lemon vs apple. There are tens of thousands of yeast species. We only are using two right now. One of these yeast species tastes like horse sweat. We have only usedRead More →

What if I told you that you can overcome anything? That you are indeed, unbreakable? Would you believe me? If you told yourself those things, would you believe you?  Resilence, how it’s built you up through the most painful moments. Brought up in Oakland, California in the 80s moving through out the projects around the city Charles, recalls jolting memories of his mother, an addict, who deep down loved him dearly. The letters from his father who was incarcerated and later died in jail after a fight with other inmates. He shares memories of the day he found his mother’s boyfriend dead of a drugRead More →