Although TedX is a fairly new club, as it was only created last year, every student on campus knows its purpose — the creation and viewing of TedX conferences, where speakers discuss ideas. Each conference that the club attends revolves around a theme.
Read to find out about some students’ favorite conferences.
Striving for perfection
As a fairly new club, TedX met their fair share of difficulties with their first conferences. Speakers ended up cancelling. Tech problems popped up during presentations that had already been pushed back.
As a Public Relations officer, senior Julianna Liu spent her time convincing speakers to attend the MVHS conference. And to her surprise, she was successful. Of the five speakers who agreed to come, one travelled from Hawaii to make it there. He spoke of his path to overcoming his homelessness and how he transformed that into a path to success.
But amidst the conferences that she has attended, Liu can’t help but admit MVHS’ is her own favorite. Saratoga’s TedX conference may have made her extremely envious, but it was her conference that heightened her excitement.
One day in boredom, Liu looked through Ted talks and noticed that a video that MVHS Ted talks had uploaded got a considerable number of hits. For her, this was the best part of the conference; it made her really proud.
The stress and teamwork that came with creating the event is a huge memory for Liu, who believes that the people that attended did enjoy it and she remembers her mom’s beaming pride at the speakers that she was able to get.
“We grew something out of nothing,” Liu said. “Teamwork got us through.”
Magnetically mesmerized
Hoverboards can be created through the use of magnetic fields. The hoverboard was actually created in the process of scientists trying to create a house that could be lifted off of the ground in the case of emergencies.
For senior Evan Zhang, Saratoga’s TedX conference of 2014 was extremely informative. He heard many ideas that he had never thought of before.
“I learned to do more with what I learned,” Zhang said.
However, this came to be a bit of a struggle. He may have had all of these brilliant ideas floating about in his head, but he had nowhere else to go to share them. All he could do was spread these ideas to some friends, he couldn’t act upon them.
To him, a speaker speaking about the creation of the hoverboard stood out the most. The hoverboard uses a magnetic levitation to lift itself up and Zhang thought that it was a well-prepared and well-practiced platform.
But a major reason why the Saratoga conference stood out to Zhang was the professionality that the conference had.
Application of teaching
Sophomore Albert Yang’s favorite conference was the one at MVHS, where he met the speaker Matt Abrahams whose performance stuck out to Yang.
Not only did Yang leave Abrahams’ presentation with new ideas and ways to apply old ones, he also left with the knowledge of how Abrahams was able to make a general statement that stood out. It wasn’t just good ideas, it was a good performance as well.
From the ease and agility of Abrahams’ talk, Yang learned to better his own skills as a presenter, and to present a concept with good command of the stage. He learned that slowing down is okay to do as a presenter and also learned how to change his presentation skills to ease his audience during different times of the days — both as a student presenting a speech and a teacher.
Teaching small children computer science isn’t the easiest job, but Yang manages well. He understands that catering to his audience’s’ needs as young children can help him interact with each student without rushing, which leads to an optimal presentation.
But the smooth and confident perfection of Abraham’s speech still runs in the back of Yang’s mind as he tries to tweak his own speeches to meet the level set by Abrahams.
