Ned Parks always has something special with his coffee in the morning.
“I have my coffee over a TED video,” said Parks, 54, of Bath Township.
He has been watching TED Talks videos for years and is one of two local men who brought TEDxAkron, a local version of the TED Talks phenomenon, to Akron.
“I try to watch one a day,” said Parks, who joined with Sam Falletta, 38, of Green more than a year ago to organize the local TED group.
TED, a nonprofit devoted to the concept of “Ideas Worth Spreading,” was organized in 1984 by Richard Saul Wurman. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.
The group has two annual conferences, a TED Conference in Long Beach, Calif., and a TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. The national and international conferences are expensive to attend: $7,000.
At the conferences, participants hear speakers give 18-minute talks on a wide range of topics.
Parks said his “bucket list” of things to do includes getting to a national or international conference someday, but having the local TEDx conference “is a way to be involved” at home.
The first TEDxAkron program was held last October and speakers were asked to talk on the subject of rebirth.
The next local program will be from 8:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 26 at the University of Akron’s Student Union Theater, where participants will speak on the subject of the unexpected.”
About TEDxAkron
Falletta was working on getting a license from the TED organization to begin TEDx- Akron when Parks contacted him and asked if he needed help.
Falletta, president and chief executive of Incept, a marketing firm, said he had been watching TED videos for years and thought it would be a great idea to organize a local event.
Neither Falletta nor Parks is paid to organize the event; TED rules prohibit organizers from being paid. Speakers aren’t paid, either.
All money raised through the sale of $50 tickets goes into the program and lunch.
“They are like mobile Chautauquas,” said Parks, comparing a TED event to the 19th- century idea of Chautauqua, N.Y., camp-style educational meetings founded in part by Akron native and industrialist Lewis Miller.
Falletta said there are about 1,300 local TEDx events around the country. There are TEDx groups in Cleveland and Columbus.
Parks said that there are three things not allowed in terms of talks: “No politics, no religion and no selling. Those three are taboos. Anything else is a go.”
That does not mean that there cannot be a spiritual component to talks, Parks said; it just cannot be the main theme.
One of the speakers at last year’s conference was Chuck Sandstrom, former head of the Barberton Community Foundation who suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was assaulted in 2009 outside an apartment building he owned in Akron.
Sandstrom spoke of how the assault changed his life.
“The surprising thing about the assault that ended our lives is that we lived through it!” he told the audience last year. He then spoke of how forgiving the man who assaulted him, Michael Ayers, has led to rebirth.
“We know that the path of forgiveness can take ordinary people on an extraordinary trip.” Sandstrom said in his talk.
Sandstrom and his wife, Auburn, have become friends with Ayers’ family and the man who assaulted Sandstrom now writes a letter to him every week.
Auburn Sandstrom said she and her husband appreciated being included in last year’s program.
“It was a huge, huge honor to be invited to give a TEDx talk,” she said. “TED gives legitimacy to the very best in all of us and allows us to see and hear each other all over the world. It gives me a feeling of hope and joy about the potential of the human race, that we may not ultimately goof it all up for ourselves.”
From Spain to TED
One of the speakers scheduled for this year is Ted Senf, 62, of Hudson. He will talk about what he learned while making a 28-day walk called the Camino de Santiago across Northern Spain.
Senf, a corporate trainer for Allstate Insurance, said he learned about the notion of “traveling light” while backpacking in Spain.
Senf first gave the speech he plans for Akron at a TEDxAllstate program.
He said TED videos give him “access to some of the best and brightest minds around the world (I am not including my mind in that elite category) on almost any topic imaginable.”
“The fact that every talk is 18 minutes or less makes it even more brilliant,” he said.
There will be a new dimension at this year’s conference, the two Akron organizers said.
Participants will be asked to get involved in some type of community action to give back to the community. The specific event will be announced the day of the program.
With a community event planned, Falletta said, the idea of TEDx is in a way expanding to include not just Ideas Worth Spreading but also to Action Worth Doing.
About 100 people attended last year’s event, where speakers included University of Akron President Luis Proenza.
This year, about 300 are expected to pay $50 to attend.
Organizers offered scholarships last year and will offer some this year as well.
At the end of last year’s conference, Parks said, “everybody was, ‘Oh, my God’ ” about what they saw and heard.
“It is an opportunity to hear things you don’t normally hear anywhere else and just expand and get out of your bubble and out of your mental ZIP code and think about something and hear something that is different from where you normally sit every day,” Parks said. “Hopefully, the idea is something way ahead of you, it is way out there.”
For more about TED Talks, go to www.ted.com and for TEDxAkron, go to http://tedxakron.com. Nominations are being taken for people to speak at this year’s event and can be made by going on the TEDxAkron website.
Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.