Quick Take
For the first time since the pandemic, TEDx Santa Cruz will present a number of TED talks by local speakers to a local audience, presenting, consciously or not, a profile of what Santa Cruz County believes itself to be.
In many ways, TED is a brand like any other brand — Apple, Starbucks or Costco. For millions of consumers, it’s a familiar touchstone to a specific product, practice or standard. But in other ways, it has a unique standing in the marketplace.
TED is about a style of presenting information or “Ideas Worth Spreading,” bringing brevity, punchiness and an easygoing kind of authority to the structure of a traditional lecture. But it’s also about adaptability. TEDx is the name given to the TED style adapted to a local or community level. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing that a progressive college town like Santa Cruz would embrace.
And it has.
TEDx Santa Cruz lands on April 13 at the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo College, with 19 separate “TED talks” of roughly about 10 to 12 minutes each — TEDx standards suggest a talk between two and 18 minutes — punctuated by performance and musical interludes in a sold-out event that is to last from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The April 13 event marks a return of the TED idea to Santa Cruz. There have been five such events, the first in 2011 and the most recent in 2019. Next week’s event is the first since the pandemic and the event’s coordinators want to pick up right where they left off.
“I think it’s going to feel a lot like the old days, by the quality of the speakers,” said TEDx co-producer Nada Miljkovic.
The roster of speakers is a strong indication of the event’s primary aim: diversity of voices. In background, gender, age, geography and areas of interest, the roster reflects a wide range of perspectives. The topics include neuroscience, climate change, incarceration, the news media, food, language, even the night sky.
The 19 TED talks include 22 speakers. Those speakers include drag performers Kat Armstrong and Jorge Guillen in a talk titled “Someone Like Me: Drag Matters.” Luna HighJohn-Bey is a resident historian at the Museum of Art & History who will talk about history’s relevance to community-building today. UC Santa Cruz professor Galina Hale discusses the intersection between climate change and economics. Astronomy Ph.D. candidate César Rojas-Bravo conjures humankind’s common bonds all under the same night sky.
The chosen speakers come from an original pool of 130 applicants. Miljkovic said that the leadership and those who chose the final lineup were as diverse as the speaker roster itself.
“[In previous events], we always made sure we had gender parity,” she said. “And we always tried to make sure we had diversity. But when you have a leadership team that is diverse, then you get a much more diverse program.”
TEDx also decided to set up at the Crocker Theatre at Cabrillo because it is centrally located within Santa Cruz County, to draw more of its audience, its speakers and its area of concern from Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley.
Whether it’s intentional or not — this year’s theme is “Rising Together” — TEDx Santa Cruz presents a portrait of the community as it likes to see itself.
“As we whittled down to 19 talks,” said Miljkovic, “we started seeing some themes come up, such as how we change. And then we started seeing how, oh, that talk would really echo or amplify this other talk. So as we were putting that final list of talks together, we were already starting to see how the program was emerging. It’s a tasty dish that has all the flavors of our beautiful diversity.”
TEDx Santa Cruz at the Crocker Theater on April 13 is already sold out, but it will be live-streamed in real time, and the talks posted after the event.
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