Inaugural TEDx Youngstown focuses on innovation

January 22, 2014 at 12:57p.m.

Youngstown

It’s the first of its kind in the Mahoning Valley — a gathering of thinkers and doers who want to spread innovation.

TEDx Youngstown runs all day Friday at Youngstown State University’s Williamson College of Business and features speakers from varied fields and all walks of life. TED — Technology, Entertainment and Design — started in the 1980s and continues as a series of conferences around the world.

It’s a “forum for people to come together and make great things happen in a community, the nation and the world, to incite things, to begin conversations around the ideas and ultimately to motivate action,” said Lorilyn Shandor, curator of TEDx Youngstown.

TEDx events are independently organized but still must be licensed by the TED organization and meet and follow its criteria. The organizing committee was given 35 pages of rules follow to ensure the event maintained the TED ideals and offered a TED-like experience, Shandor said.

Attendance was limited to 100 by organization rules and tickets are sold out. But attendees aren’t just business people and technology nerds.

“It’s all over the board,” Shandor said. “We have everyone from recent college graduates to retirees, every profession, every gender, every race. That’s one of the cool things about it is the diversity.”

Jeff Hoffman, founder of Priceline.com and a serial entrepreneur, is one of the 18 conference speakers.