The TEDx Factor: TEDxBloomington Featured in Btown Banter

April 16, 2014

The TEDx factor

By Ryan Piurek

By now, I suspect you’re familiar with TED — the now 20-year-old event series that has spread knowledge and ideas to tens of millions of curious souls around the world. Perhaps you even have your favorite TED talk. (I’m partial to Susan Cain’s “The power of introverts” and Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My stroke of insight.”) Or maybe you have a friend or colleague who’s shared with you a TED talk he or she found particularly inspiring.

If you’re like me, you’ve watched these videos in the privacy of your own home or workplace – not that there’s anything wrong with that. But there’s an X-factor to TED that even its most devout followers might not always recognize, one that organizers of this year’sTEDxBloomington event on April 26 — the third such event to be held in Btown in the past four years — are focusing on more than ever before: community building.