This past Friday, TEDxUTK hosted “A Whirlwind of Opportunity” in an effort to encourage students to expand their horizons with intellectually-stimulating speakers.
     
“‘TED talks’ is a nationwide lecture circuit, and TEDx is a branch of ‘TED talks’ that are independently produced events at colleges around the country,” said Matt Burkhart, a student from Pellisippi State who volunteered to assist with filming the seminar and lighting.
   
 The whole idea behind TEDx is to promote innovation across college campuses.
    
According to the its website, TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission: “ideas worth spreading.” The website said the program was designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at a local level.
    
“The speakers will be experts in a certain field and they’ll come in and talk about some certain advancement or idea and the purpose of it is to expand our horizons as humans,” Burkhart said. “We had one guy talk about nuclear power and one guy talk about earth housing, really just things to help out the environment and advancing technology, things like that.”
    
Christine Ware, senior in psychology, was in charge of coordinating volunteers and finding sponsors for the event.
   
 “Basically Lindsay Hummel ,the coordinator, thought of the theme ‘A Whirlwind of Opportunity,’ which actually is the title of the big art sculpture by the library on Pedestrian Walkway,” Ware said. “It’s all really big ideas that might happen in the future, and we wanted to create a culture here for that.”
    
The event was free and open for anyone to come and was divided into two sessions.
    
“So basically TEDx is all about these exhibits that happen nationwide, and they're all for free, and speakers are brought to speak on whatever topic the event is about,” Ware said.
    
Ware also added that the speakers were all found on the TEDx website, which has many resources and information for anyone interested in the TED organization. TEDxUTK also has a Facebook and Twitter that students can access for more information about upcoming TEDx events and other related information.
    
“Utilizing social media has been a huge help for this event because we were able to post updates and things like that,” Ware said.
    
Ware was pleased with the success of the event and was hopeful that there will be more TEDxUTK events in the future.
   
 “As far as future events there’s nothing set in stone yet, but the organizer wants to bring TEDx again in September and there’s a strong likelihood that could happen because we had great attendance, which is fantastic,” Ware siad. “We’re looking at about 75 percent capacity, which is great, so we’re hopeful.”