As spectators entered the sold-out Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium on Wednesday night for Syracuse University’s first ever TEDx talk, there was an air of excitement buzzing through the auditorium.

The simply decorated stage, adorned with two couches, a round red rug and an array of props, including a globe and an outdated phone, awaited the event’s 15 speakers.  Each would provide adages on “Emerging Technologies and Human Relationships,” the theme for the TEDx talks, and how those topics interact with one another.

With speeches varying from topics like “How Digital Currencies Can Prevent Crime” and “The Promise and Peril of Our Cities,” the TEDx speakers kept the audience engaged, enthralled and, most importantly, impressed and inspired.

Arel Moodie, one of the crowd’s favorite speakers of the night, made a mark with his enthusiasm and relatability in his discussion of “The Real Art of Becoming Likeable.”

Audience members scribbled significant quotations — like “little hinges swing big doors”— into their keepsake TEDx SU notebooks throughout Moodie’s talk.

Key points of Moodie’s talk included the notion of, “it’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know” as an antiquated idea. He professed to the audience that the key to getting ahead is really about who likes you.

The new approach to the old saying resonated with junior public relations major Maria Veronica Roman.

“I really enjoyed Arel because he went against the grain of what people usually say,” she said.  “It doesn’t matter what I know or who I know because if nobody likes me I’m not going anywhere. I think he shed light on a topic that most people don’t touch on because they believe that who you know is all it takes.”

As speakers flowed on and off the stage with ease, the audience remained captivated with the intensity that each speaker left behind with his or her message.

Ronald Taylor, a junior performing arts and education major and speaker at TEDx, used an analogy of a household commonalty, an egg, to help unlock the potential that lies within everyone. He said that the shell of an egg is what we show to the world and the inside is our potential.

During his talk, titled “Spoken Power: Unlocking Voices and Changing Mindsets,” Taylor remarked that people must be reminded that their voices have power, even if they were once unnoticed. He said it is up to the individual to recognize how it can be used in times of various struggles to redirect the ways in which they live.

An information management graduate student, Rebecca Wessel, took Taylor’s message to heart.

“Unlocking your voice and power — I think it’s something that more people kind of need to do in their lives and to sort of realize that you can’t let external forces affect you so much, as long as you realize it and know how to apply it,” Wessel said.

Timi Komonibo, a fashion and philanthropy graduate student, presented a speech called, “How I Found My Heart in a Walk-In Closet.” She also found herself enjoying the talks as an audience member, listening to the work of her fellow speakers.

“It was really nice to see how people finally got comfortable with their speeches and really let their personalities show,” she said. “It was great to see that these great ideas that came from different people had so much overlap. So the diversity of the ideas, and still that same core theme that we could do something about things in our world was very empowering.”

Brandon Beltran, a junior finance major, said “The Gamification Journey,” a speech by Dr. Scott Nicholson, the director of the “Because Play Matters” game lab and associate professor in the School of Information Studies, stuck out the most to him.

“The process that Dr. Nicholson labeled ‘the recipe’ had six steps — choice, engagement, exposition, information, play and reflection — that can be used to apply how people who play games are motivated to pretty much any activity in life,” Beltran said.

As the audience shuffled out of the auditorium, whispering amongst themselves about their favorite speakers of the night, the messages in the talks of TEDx SU were kept up in conversations.

Assistant event coordinator Stephanie Bronfein, a sophomore in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries, said that being a part of the TEDx planning experience was fulfilling.

“This is the first time I’ve felt I have left a mark on SU. All this came about in a grassroots fashion in which we all helped because we are big fans of TED,” Bronfein said. “When this is over, I think we will be proud to have been part of this event.”

Published on April 10, 2014 at 12:46 am

Contact Lauren: ljporter@syr.edu