As the first weeks of spring classes kick-off, so do increased opportunities for student engagement – even if they’re now virtual.
This Saturday, Feb. 6, Grinnell College held its fourth TEDxGrinnell conference. The event offered Grinnell students, alumni, staff, faculty and community members the opportunity to hear talks from seven different Grinnell College alumni and community members. But unlike in past years, this conference was all online.
TEDxGrinnell is an independently-organized TED event. The conference is organized by Grinnell College students and staff and is sponsored by the Wilson Center for Innovation and Leadership. Presentations resemble the style and format of a typical TED talk.
Due to the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was hosted through YouTube Premieres this year and consisted of pre-recorded talks by each speaker that lasted anywhere from 5 to 16 minutes. The conference was live-streamed to viewers and a live-chatting function was also available for use.
“Usually, it’s a bunch of people who are together in a space,” said Creede McClellan ’21, an organizer for the event who spoke with The S&B before Saturday. “This time we can involve people from all around the world.”
The theme of this year’s conference was “A Vision of Hope” and though the topic was chosen in the fall of 2019 prior to the onset of the pandemic, the organizers decided to keep it as it seemed a fitting theme to such a challenging year.
“In the last year we have had to learn many lessons in resilience, in grief and … what it means to hope,” said McClellan. “We really were looking for people who maybe faced adversity or had interesting perspectives on what it means to deal with hardship and how you overcome that.”
Meghna Ravishankar ’17, a Grinnell alum who founded TEDxGrinnell as a first-year student, returned for this year’s conference as a speaker. “It felt like a less intimidating way of learning about other things and exposing yourself to perspectives and opinions outside of the classroom without the pressure of engaging in discourse,” said Ravishankar when asked about the value of attending a TEDxGrinnell event.
Nolan Boggess ’19, a speaker coach for the event, worked directly with speakers to discuss how hope can be found during such a difficult time. “I think a lot of us are experiencing the pandemic wall right now. We’ve been in quarantine for so long and hope seems very, very hard to obtain,” said Boggess. “These talks will fill the audience up with hope and maybe give us all something to hold onto right now where everything seems so uncertain and dismal in the world.”
In the last year we have had to learn many lessons in resilience, in grief and … what it means to hope…We really were looking for people who maybe faced adversity or had interesting perspectives on what it means to deal with hardship and how you overcome that. – Creede McClellan ’21
Ravishankar attempts to define hope in her talk through stories and personal anecdotes from her own life. In the same vein, Emily Howe ’16, a Grinnell alum who has dealt with a chronic illness, presented a talk that poses the question: “How do you hope when it’s chronic?”
“When we think of hope, we’re usually thinking of hope to be better and to find a solution and to hope for something,” said McClellan, reflecting on Howe’s talk. “I think that hoping when there isn’t necessarily an end is a very interesting concept.”
If you missed the event, TEDxGrinnell will submit each talk to TED, and they will be posted on the official TED website and YouTube page approximately a month following the event’s airing.
