How TEDx Became a Reality at Bard: The Power of Yes

By Tom Chitwood ’26

The journey began with a few simple words said in a meeting for a job I had gotten in my first weeks on campus that, as far as I could tell, remained largely undefined. Those words, said by the man who would ultimately become the mastermind of the operation, were: 

“How do we feel about TEDx at Bard?”

The answer we landed on fell somewhere between, “Let’s do it!” and, “How the hell do we do that?” I was fully on board with the first and had little idea how to answer the second. But I was gripped by the puzzle of figuring it out, so I said yes.

That, it turned out, was one of my rare moments of brilliance.

The weeks that followed proved that second question to be an incredibly frustrating one. We had to find people with interesting ideas. We had to find people who wanted to listen to those ideas. Not only that, we had to find enough of them to fill a room. All this, of course, was assuming we could find someone to pay for all of that.

Things started slowly — our meetings amounted mostly to large brainstorming sessions. As our vision came together, things were very unclear. What was clear was that we were in over our heads. 

When we applied for our license at the end of 2022, we had a few vague details sorted out. We had Olin Hall reserved for the day, we had an Eventbrite account setup to start selling tickets, and we had a few inspirational phrases that had hardened onto the whiteboard in our meeting room. 

When we came back from winter break, we had our pitch meeting. Our bosses had managed to wrangle people representing the different offices and organizations on campus and had somehow convinced them that listening to us was a good use of their Friday afternoon. 

Of those who had said yes to the meeting, a handful decided to jump on board. For the first time, we had sponsors and with that came a sudden sense of urgency. The first thing they told us was that we had asked for entirely too little budget (they were right — and it wasn’t close).

From there things began to move more rapidly. We held recruitment workshops and ran around campus stapling posters to corkboards.
It is here that I should confess to a certain amount of pessimism. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in what we were doing, but I thought that other people would look at us and see two first-years, new to both the college and the world, with a weekly meeting in a dimly lit room and a few inspirational phrases that had hardened onto a whiteboard.

That pessimism was broken after we held a workshop to recruit speakers. Afterward, we went to a restaurant in Tivoli and I got the chance to chat to Stacy. Stacy was a graduate of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) and now worked promoting educational opportunities for people in prisons. She told me all about the political importance of prison populations, about the ways that people in power try to keep them uneducated, and she smiled politely while I asked stupid questions.

In that conversation, I saw the need for the conference. I saw why so many people had a faith in us that I couldn’t quite understand. It wasn’t about us — it never was. It was about the community of ideas, that a single conversation or a single talk could open up a whole world that was previously invisible. Our job, when the time came, was to get out of the way.

That newfound optimism proved correct. Within two weeks, our tickets were sold out. Where I had been expecting a handful of speakers to apply, we ended up with 39 pitches. Our team of students grew first to three, then four, then five.

Over the next few weeks, we were busy interviewing everyone from students to professors to alumni. Without exception, I was struck by the eagerness they had to share the things that they loved (or hated, or both). Equally striking was the enthusiasm people had to learn from one another, to share in each other’s experience and experiences.

Before long, we were downright successful. 

With the start of summer fast approaching, we had our list of speakers nailed down and an inbox full of inquiries from people hoping to be on both sides of the stage. We had planned initially on having ten speakers and ended up stretching it to twelve. Even then, it was a tough list to narrow down.

In the final weeks of the semester, our bosses asked if we wouldn’t mind staying a few days into summer. There was a tradition each year of highlighting a few student projects before the Board of Trustees (who, it turns out, drink coffee out of the same silver urn that shows up at every Bard event).

It was then, standing with the full attention of a room of people who our boss had somehow convinced, for a second time, that listening to us was a good use of their Friday afternoon, that I realized that this whole crazy journey had started because, in a meeting with nothing else to do, I said yes.
 

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TEDxBardCollege is happening on September 30, 2023. In-person registration is closed, but the event will be streamed. The streaming information will be sent out via a newsletter, which you can up for right here.

Organizers: Thanasis Kostikas ’26, Tom Chitwood ’26, Emily O’Rourke ’25
Communications Coordinator: Alex Nguyen 
Runner: Luca Heidelberg
Staff Mentors: Chaya Huber, Sarah deVeer

SPEAKERS 
Ahed Festuk
Alejandro Crawford
Aleks Demetriadas
Anastasia Dzutstsati
Eban Goodstein
Hannah Park-Kaufmann
Jillian Reed
Joan Tower
Lauren Graham
Masha Zabara
Michael Sadowski
Stacy Burnett
Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz und Gaffron

Post Date: 09-19-2023