TEDxSalem - Jan 29, 2011

The Conception:

When Raghavan conceived the idea of conducting a tedx event, I was dumbstruck. He spoke to me about the famous Tamil writer Late Sujatha Rangarajan, who in his biography, had mentioned TED as "One good website for Life". He explained me how we can make it ‘happen’. Till then I had thought organizing tedx events are something “out-of-our-capability” type of programmes. Intrigued and interested, first set of discussion started in the month of October 2010. When Raghavan and Suganthi threw light on this, I started following Ted.com. Rules and regulations were thoroughly discussed and slowly it sunk in me that materializing our event, TEDxSalem, is possible and is within our reach.

The Preparation:

This followed a lot of further discussions amongst us and it was time to start putting the plan into action. Reshma, Deepika, Latha and myself, making a small group initiated this action plan.Our first step was to finalize the venue. One fine evening in the first week of November, with lots of jitters and expectations, we went to Sona College of Technology. This was the venue unanimously voiced out by our team members. I know we did not make much of an impression on the Secretary whom we met and spoke to, in order to get the permission to use the venue for our mammoth task. With little apprehension and not to discourage us, the secretary of the college gave us his consent to use the premises. We came out of his office exuberant, that our first task was a success. Rain drops were trying to connect the evening sky to the earth, and my heart started singing "there shall be showers of blessings....". Yes! It was indeed a promise made by God to us, to be with us all through this event.

One after another, string of events started taking place, all pieces of jigsaw falling in place to form the perfect picture. Applying for license, checking out for potential sponsors, reaching out for perspective audience, printing of posters, etc etc were made possible fostering teamwork. We had to educate our community people about TED and TEDx events and we had an overwhelming response from them. We could see in their eyes that here are a bunch of people who are trying to do something good to the society and their co-operation was outstanding.
It was exciting to see a lot of students eager to be a part of the team. Everyone had realized that none of us is as good as all of us :) Amazed at the outstanding ideas presented by the team members, and with increased motivation, I could see our event taking shape, members working round the clock. We got our license approved. Raghavan and Suganthi spent sleepless nights constructing our website and Bala Murali, Vidhya, KTR contributed their part for it. Works on designing the posters for display, printing the tickets, selling them, went in parallel with the hunt for our speakers. We used graffiti as our new marketing tool.


All these made Raghavan book his flight ticket from Texas to India. He wanted to witness the delivery of his brain-child. Having put his heart, mind and soul to this event, it was warranted that he be with us on the grand day, in spite of his financial stress. And finally he was here by the second week of January 2011 to take charge of the arrangements along with Suganthi. Deepika and Naresh, with an enthusiastic team of students, made sure time and again that our event was finding its way to the grand day Jan 29, 2011. Bala took charge of the striking stage decoration. Simple yet creative decorative works by Surya and group found their apt places in the auditorium. Our PC Sriram, Shakthi Arun captured every moment of the hard work done in preparing for the event, in his precious camera. Raghavan, Shakthi, Bob and Vigneswaran spent early hours shooting the walls painted by the quotes of MMM corner Pasupathy. Reshma helped in communicating with the educational institutions who were our primary sponsors.

THE Day:

Though we had to introduce TED and TEDx to our speakers, upon explanation, great thinkers like Gnani and Madhan, accepted to share their ideas of innovation to the audience immediately. They were to speak on any idea, that is worth spreading! The D-Day arrived.

Our first speaker was Aparna Ramesh - who spoke on exploration of the soul through dance and music. Next came Gnani, a famous journalist and a theatre person, who made us dive into the thoughts on ethics, and how inseparable it is to our lives! Vernacular architecture marvels by Durga, five ideas on better life by Bret Adams, Professor.T S Subbaraman's Classical tamil venpA on Physics Light & Sound, which is definitely an idea worth spreading, Cartoons which is possible only by creative thinking - an inspiring talk by Madhan, creating millions of smiles through holistic education-a silent revolution being created by Aarti C Rajaratnam to the Salem community, a graffiti artist who writes inspiring quotes on the walls of the Salem city in Tamilnadu, MMM Corner Pasupathy! Creativity in its best - talk by theatre person Kalieaswari... Oh! I should say we really had a wide variety of speakers, who had touched many lives in one way or other through their creative ideas.

Our interval sessions were filled with talks and discussions with the speakers. Salem special “Thattu vadai set”, a hygienic, healthy snack containing fresh vegetables was served to all the people with tea/coffee. Vidhya and team did a marvelous job of blogging and tweeting. Karthik was sending messages about the number of hits of our web cast link, making us feel all excited. Not less to mention the work of Cheythanya and his team, who made paper bags to give an eco-friendly thanks to all the audience with a medicinal plant in it. Raghavan and Suganthi shared the entire story of formation of the team, our plans, its execution etc. The crowd cheered as every member of the team was introduced and brought on stage. There was a mixed feeling of laughter and fun, pride and humility, comfort and dismay, anxiety and reassurance, expectations and disappointments in the air, but it ended up with many proud moments.

At the end of the day, Secretary of Sona college, appreciated that he never expected such a successful event, and that we had proved our mettle. His parting dialog was that he was indeed happy and proud to have given permission for such an event to take place in his college premises. Every speaker congratulated and appreciated our story of formation of the team. The event's success was reinstated, by the number of mails and calls that we had received from the audience, many volunteering to join our team.

The Learning:

Completion of the event was one big responsibility off our shoulders. Our hearts were brimming with satisfaction. We learnt the flaws we had made in conducting the event, but could do nothing to put it straight at that point of time. It is natural to see great team work among friends in school, colleges or in work place. But team spirit in an event like this, where members come from different streams of life all meeting one another just for the event is simply outstanding! Truly every team member added value to the event. I can proudly vouch that every one of us had thoroughly realized the meaning of the team work, "alone we could do so little, but together we could do so much"!

TEDxSalem may be considered just an event by many. But for us, the team members, it had been a platform to realize our potential, to discover our hidden talents, to venture new strategies, to reach out to new people, to learn new software, to work as a team with unknown people, to raise up to the occasion, to adjust with difference of opinions, to expand our comfort zone.... and more than all, TEDxSalem has helped every one of us rediscover ourselves!