Making Waves Conversations
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Debra Hopkins – Breaking The Chains: Empowering creativity and community through art and connection
The power of art is immense. It can evoke emotions of all kinds, from the most profound sorrows to the highest joys, simultaneously or separately. For many people, art is a form of therapy that...
Eason Yang: Not Entirely Dead – A comeback kid designing for belonging and dignity
Most of us have faced a gap on our resumes, whether due to maternity or paternity leave, creative sabbatical, or just giving the finger to the nonprofit industrial complex when we’ve had enough.
Jill Greenbaum: Drawing the Future: Visual Storytelling for End-of-Life Choices
Through her unique visual storytelling approach and compassionate guidance, Dr. Greenbaum invites individuals to engage in deep conversations about their hopes, fears, and wishes surrounding their own mortality.
Nicole Gibson – Love as a Catalyst: Harnessing Emotions for Global Change
Even those who believe they are entirely rational make 80% of their decisions emotionally. Understanding our emotions and nuanced emotional patterns offers profound insight into why we experience what we experience in life.
Dr. Philippa Hardman – The AI Education Revolution is Coming – or is it?
Despite the promise of so-called disruptive education technologies like the MOOC, education technology has failed to deliver on its promise to transform both the reach and quality of education.
Sarah E. McDonald – Cancer: How we show up for others in crisis
At 44, Sarah McDonald was newly married, newly promoted, and planning pregnancy. It felt like a time of new beginnings when suddenly she was diagnosed with a rare, incurable cancer. Two months later, she was...
Asude Altintas – Bringing Heart to Science Education
Asude will talk about the “double-winged” approach in education. She learned about this idea at YGA, an NGO in Turkey. They believe children need to be double-winged, competent, and compassionate to make a positive impact...
Oz Rashid – The People Analytics Revolution is Coming – Are you Ready?
Companies have long been focused on traditional workforce performance metrics, including attrition, engagement, and tenure. Still, new methods of measuring human potential and productivity are revolutionizing how job candidates are identified, hired, and retained across...
Kurt Wenner – The Geometry of Creativity – Five Creative Principles
Through a deep understanding of artists’ geometry, Kurt has discovered the Five Creative Principles that are fundamental to the existence of form. This insight reveals a new connection between math, art, and nature and how...
Ryan Ford – Set Fire to Design Process—Throwing away unrealistic frameworks and moving forward
In this conversation, Ryan will disrupt the inaccurate application of Double Diamond and Design Thinking, the mistaken beliefs and pressures resulting from them, and a more realistic way to represent the workflow behind modern empathetic...
Shaun Tomson – The Code to Ride the Next Wave of Purpose
Purpose is the motivational power that enables individuals and organizations to thrive. Why is purpose important in life and business? Large-scale, longitudinal studies of over 73,000 people have shown that having a purpose in life...
Greg Tehven – Rallying your community around a collective future
The Grand Farm Education and Research Initiative, powered by Emerging Prairie, are accelerating the research and innovation by creating the prototype for the first fully autonomous farm, impacting North Dakota, the United States, and the...
Rich Jacques – Finding Your Voice: Exploring the Creative Process
The idea that we can be creative has always fascinated Rich. It seems the way is to let go of our thinking mind…of all our assumptions about ourselves and life, and relax into a flow...
Peter Winick – Living in the Age of Thought Leadership
In this session, we will explore why thought leadership benefits individuals, teams, and organizations incredibly.
Evan Hirsch – Rethinking Big Data, You and Your Health
How do you use emotional awareness to change how healthcare works. Evan brings a career in design thinking to help solve the problem of how all of us interact with the healthcare system.
Majid Abai – Winning the Lottery – a metaphor for a life’s journey
Most of us have dreams of one day winning the lottery. We imagine how our lives would change if we won and the things we would do with that money. But have we considered other...
Mark Oehlert – Shifting the Bedrock – Why we need to make the foundations of business more human-centric
In this conversation, we will touch on why so much of what we talk about in regard to innovation in the corporate education/training space has been and will be surface-level until we change the fundamental...
Kathleen Cohen – Narrative Architecture vs. Virtual Worldbuilding
We will discuss how we hack feelings of safety and happiness in themed attractions as Experience Designers and how these core principles could be considered in virtual world-building and/or the Metaverse.
Chris Hill – How food will bring back our sense of Community
Chef Chris Hill believes the dinner table is the center of the community, both in and out of the home, and has ideas for how we can regain this sense of Community.
Richard Culatta – Education in an Evolving Digital World
EdTech expert Richard Culatta argues that technology can be a powerful tool for learning, solving humanity’s most challenging problems, and bringing us closer together. He offers a refreshingly positive framework for preparing kids and educators...
Brooke Ishibashi and Matthew-Lee Erlbach – The Important and Often Hidden Role of Arts and Culture in Today’s Society
In this episode, we discuss the mobilization effort for protecting the arts and culture sector of the U.S. through the grassroots campaign Brooke Ishibashi and Matthew-Lee Erlbach co-founded.
Penelope M. Meurer – Virtual “Super-collaborators” in a Post-Covid World
How we partner is continuously evolving, and Penelope’s examination of differing perspectives on work forums provides an avenue to advancing recognition of the value of the virtual environment.
Joshua Page – College Is Not The Only Option
We need kids to know that college is not the only option, that the trades need them. I believe getting into a trade saved my life; it gave me purpose and a sense of pride...
Jeremy Kermit – Self-Evident Truths: Wisdom from a Dying Man
Jeremy has Glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer with no cure. Speaking of death in western cultures is taboo and challenging. In this conversation, we’ll talk about facing that reality and his choice to live...
Greg Melling – Why the Metaverse Matters
With the recent renaming of Facebook to Meta, the launch of the Omniverse by NVIDIA, and the proliferation of AR (Augmented Reality and VR (Virtual Reality), it is finally time for the Metaverse to become...
Sam Kadi – Creativity in times of confinement
Filmmaker Sam Kadi has been creating films under extreme conditions well before the Pandemic. His TEDxSantaBarbara talk spoke about how he created a film to capture the Syrian crisis without ever being able to travel...
Mike Fero, Ph.D. – Organism Making and Modding
Until recently, modifying microbial, plant, and animal cells has been a slow and artisanal process. However, with advances in technology allowing researchers to read, write, cut, copy and paste DNA much more easily, systems can...
Jonathan Brill – Future-Proofing Your Business in Our Rogue Wave Era
At this moment, rogue waves are forming under your business. If you thought COVID was a surprise, prepare for bigger waves. Ten barely manageable undercurrents are colliding to create a sea of radical systemic change....
Julian Reeve – Taking Control: The Great Career Migration
Covid-19 disrupted the global labor market in unfathomable ways. Millions lost jobs or were furloughed, and those fortunate enough to stay in employment faced the daunting task of adapting to life working from home. The...
Claudia Weintraub – Shape the future by shaping the education system
Charter schools provide more than a “cafeteria” style of education. Indeed, they provide a “farm-to-table” model, where students’ passions and dedication are essential to preparing them for this century and for their future, rather than...
India Rose Matharu-Daley – The Future of Work: Millennials in Sustainable Business
India Rose Matharu-Daley believes that we can create a fairer, greener, and more prosperous future through business for good. She aspires to help solve the world’s greatest challenges, including climate change, at the nexus of...
Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE – Children can only aspire to what they know exists
“Children can only aspire to what they know exists” is Ger Graus’s mantra and he sees his and KidZania’s approach to education and entertainment as a significant piece in the large jigsaw which portrays a...
Marco Pinter, Ph.D. – Inspiring Movement in a Sedentary Public
Movement and dance are enormously valuable for physical and mental health, yet are rarely tapped into. Dr. Pinter creates interactive artworks designed to unlock and inspire movement and has opened the new Museum of Sensory...
Melissa Yamaguchi – Beyond Vision and Purpose
Having vision and purpose isn’t enough, you must take action. The four roadblocks people often unknowingly or knowingly run into cause entropy. Your mind is the biggest cause of your inaction. What if one of...
Lynda Weinman, Patrick Hall – Kindred Spirits, a collaboration between traditional ceramics and 3D printed clay
During the past year’s shutdown, Patrick and Lynda got busy. They collaborated on a series of pieces that combined traditional ceramics techniques and 3D clay printing. The result is that they both pushed their work...
Bishop Lamont – Standing out within an industry that keeps artists boxed into predictable molds.
With the emergence of social media, streaming platforms, and new technologies, the journey of an independent artist establishing a global reach and taking control of their destiny can be a challenging yet significantly rewarding one...
Bittersweet Gratitude – Concert and Conversations with Creators
To close out the year and to find an appropriate way to celebrate our 10th year of TEDx in Santa Barbara we’ve asked friends to join us for a concert followed by a series of...
Cooper Bates – Redefining the relationship between Performance, Art, and the Audience in a Sequestered Society.
Cooper Bates produced a one-man show and since sheltering-in-place has had to figure out how to be an actor in a virtual world. We’ll talk about the role of the audience in art and the...
Donna Weng Friedman – Pandemic Empowerment: Finding Resilience in Music and Stories
In collaboration with WQXR, Donna Weng Friedman created Heritage and Harmony, a virtual concert that is both a recognition of the tremendous contributions to the musical canon by classical musicians of Asian descent and a...
