The Impact of TED: How Organizing a TEDx Event Changed My Life and Helped Launch Meow Wolf

Technology, Education, and Design (TED) is an acronym that most of you are likely familiar with, although more commonly known as TED talks. TED was founded in 1984 when Saul Wurman and Harry Marks recognized a convergence among three fields, technology, education, and design. TED was a conference that included a demo of compact discs, e-books, 3-D graphics from Lucasfilm, and a demonstration of fractal geometry theory to map coastlines. The conference didn’t make money and it would be another six years (1990) until it would happen again, at which point it became an annual event held in Monterey, California. At the time it was an invitation-only event.

I can’t recall when I first discovered TED; I was in my late teens or early twenties when I started devouring the different talks, presenters, subjects, and ideas that TED posted online for free. TED talks were fairly new and meeting someone who shared an interest in TED, regardless of whether there was an interest in the same lectures, inspired an immediate connection. Relationships and communities were built around these lectures. I watched several lectures before I happened upon Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture, “Do Schools Kill Creativity,” but that lecture changed my relationship with TED. I’m not alone in the lecture’s influence, education reform, because of the lecture, was suddenly as important to me as anything. It’s hard to define what I got from TED and how the lectures motivated me but whatever it was it was visceral.

In my thirties, I lost interest in the internet losing touch with TED because of that, but I still occasionally return to the old lectures by Brenè Brown, Daniel Tammet, Amy Cuddy, Simon Sinek, Susan Cain, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Jill Bolte Taylor dozens of times. The world has changed since I started watching TED talks, the way that we share ideas and our relationship to ideas has changed and I’m not so sure that it’s for the better. We accept and reject certain principles and notions without much thought and reinforce ideas associated with brands or platforms, certain acceptable ways of thinking, without much thought. I’ve seen evidence of this in lectures over the last decade or so. Sifting through the thousands of lectures presented by TED became tedious (I liked it when they categorized lists as “Interesting,” “Though-Provoking,” and “Humorous.”). It made it easier to weed through the lectures.

Around the time I was losing interest in the internet, and TED was at its peak, I was asked to help organize the first independent TED event in Santa Fe, New Mexico: TEDx AcequiaMadre. TED hosts two official conferences yearly, one in Monterey, California, and a second in Edinburgh, Scotland. Beyond the two official conferences, there are hundreds of events organized under the umbrella and the policies of TED that are semi-independent of the organization. These events are distinguished as TEDx “Independently organized TED events. This was a brilliant move by the TED organization and allowed for a wider spread of unique and progressive ideas. TED and TEDx conferences intend for their attendees to network so that these Ideas Worth Spreading wouldn’t remain only ideas. The conferences promote actionable change—at least they are designed to. I don’t know that people know how to turn ideas into progress anymore. Progress for progress’ sake hasn’t served us as well as we hoped.

            I was excited to be part of this team of five bringing TEDx to Santa Fe, it was an opportunity for me to give back to TED, and I was hoping that it would help me find a sense of direction that I was struggling with at the time. We met at a now-defunct joint in the Railyard where we snacked on tortilla chips, salsa, and queso while plotting venue ideas, catering options, branding, ticket pricing, marketing, soliciting volunteers, attracting sponsors, blogging, and most importantly, choosing speakers. TED provided a strict set of guidelines that we were required to adhere to when organizing this event, some of which were challenging to manage. We wanted to call the event, TEDx, “A City Different,” because that’s a common, local nickname for Santa Fe, New Mexico. Someone had bought the license and domain name for TEDx A City Different, but they continued to pay the licensing fees, and then actively did nothing to move forward with the event. We asked him if he wanted to become an organizer, but he declined. Instead, we called the event, TEDx “AcequiaMadre,” which translates to “Mother Ditch.” Another, albeit less sexy Santa Fe, New Mexico nickname. I didn’t vote for the name.

We made plans for Santa Fe University of Art and Design to host the event in their “The Screen” theatre, which couldn’t have been a better location. I nurtured the hope of the Lensic Theatre hosting the event, I can’t remember why they didn’t (perhaps there were scheduling conflicts), but “The Screen” was perfect. We looked into having Jambo Café, a popular fusion of African and Caribbean foods in the city diff…I mean, Acequia Madre caters for the event. I started encouraging local celebrity giants such as George R. R. Martin, Sam Shepard, and Zac Condon to speak alongside renowned bibliophile and Santa Fe local Noemi De Bodisco, Biologist David Krakauer, and Meow Wolf founder Vince Kadlubek. Of course, I imagined this event to be the single greatest TED event in the history of TED events (I still believe it was possible). My fantasies proved to be set a little too high, my vision a tad grandiose, but this was Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the city deserved nothing short of spectacular, in 2012 at least.

Somewhat late in the event planning one of the five of us, I can’t remember who invited a sixth member to join our team. Events such as these should themselves be the highlight, not anyone or all of us responsible for organizing the event, nevertheless, there always seems to be one person who cannot see beyond their reflection, someone who does nothing short of demand distinction. For that person, this event would be less about the speakers, the city, the ideas, and the experience, and the event would be more about him.

The guy who joined the event team late, without communicating with the rest of us, went behind our backs and paid licensing fees, in his name, unilaterally seizing control of the operational ideas and declaring himself the final word for the project. He used the position to further his ambitions and career. He was responsible for choosing the name ‘Acequia Madre,’ he opted for a simple brown bag lunch with plain sandwiches and bags of chips and a cookie (the business and community collaboration we could have developed with Jambo Café would have been extraordinary), he made several independent decisions that encouraged most of the planning committee to exclude themselves from further planning. We were on our way to developing something remarkable, and something that would reinvent itself every year or two and continue with a legacy. TEDx Acequia Madre was never resurrected after the event date of November 3, 2012.

Regardless, the event happened, which was the important thing after all, although there were planning details that could have been better and could have gone smoother. Aside from writing the blog describing the real-time progress organizing the event I was allowed to invite Vince Kadlubek, the founder of the art collective Meow Wolf, to speak. Vince was a huge success. Kadlubek later spoke at TEDxABQ (Albuquerque) and TEDx Portland. George R. R. Martin attended TEDx Acequia Madre, Martin, and Kadlubek connected after the event, and George R. R. Martin invested in Meow Wolf’s, helping the collective quickly expand. Meow Wolf is now one of the most important and innovative art collectives in the country, with permanent installations in Santa Fe, NM, Las Vegas, NV, Denver, CO, and Grapevine, TX, as well as hosting concerts and a variety of community events in their prospective communities. And I planted the seed that supported that growth, which I’m very proud of, and that’s exactly what TED was meant to do.

Overall organizing TEDx Acequia Madre was an incredible experience. An experience that I value. I am a better person because of TED. The speakers do more than lecture, network, inspire, and challenge others to bring out the best of themselves. At least that’s been my experience with TED. I’m grateful to have helped, even if only in some small way, in the development of Meow Wolf. The art collective has provided jobs to hundreds of artists across the country and allowed them to explore and develop themselves as artists which might encourage others to inspire. Again, that’s the point of TED, and perhaps that’s why I feel so much pride, knowing that I helped bring like-minded organizations together, even if my experience was short-lived.