Written by Michele Kelly, TEDxNaperville Marketing Director
Let’s talk family history. In 1984, TED began as a conference paying homage to its now familiar motto: Ideas Worth Spreading. Thought leaders like digital soothsayer Nicholas Negroponte and mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, among others from technology, entertainment and design, shared the stage along with demos of the revolutionary Macintosh computer and Sony compact disc. Wow, how time flies. Nine hundred TEDTalks later, TED has become a global community of idea seekers and collaborators.
Now, the “x.” TEDx is a license from TED. That little criss cross letter stands for “independently organized” TED event. Our curator for TedxNaperville, Arthur Zards, even joined 600 other like-minded leaders at the first ever TEDx Summit in Doha, Qatar this past April. The theme? The Power of X http://tedxsummit.ted.com/.
So, our internal team at TedxNaperville did something that Midwesterners love to do: we kicked that little “x” ever so slightly. We tilted it 45 degrees so that it stood elegantly on one leg like the Joffrey Ballet’s prima ballerina. We stood that plus sign on its head, tiptoed a few steps back, very quietly, and saw the power of the + — the antithesis of kryptonite but just as bright.
As you would expect, the meaning of this symbol is completely open to interpretation. Positive? Adding? Growing? Moving? That answer depends on you. Two probably won’t be the same, but all will be equally relevant.
Now you know the theme of TEDxNaperville on November 9: +. What does it mean to you? Let’s start sharing.