(Matthew R. Wilson, associate professor of performance speaks at Tedex event Saturday morning. | Taylor Bennett)
The committee involved in organizing Saturday morning’s inaugural TEDxUM event will now coordinate annual reoccurrences.
TEDx is an independently organized branch of the popular TED conferences, which host a variety of thought provoking speeches from renowned thinkers and presenters with the purpose of promoting “ideas worth spreading.”
Each of the 10 speakers delivered a speech of a 12 minute duration or less incorporating the theme “In Plain Sight.” The speeches covered a variety of interests and viewpoints involving issues such as education, nanotechnology and theatrical comedy and were delivered to a crowd of nearly 100.
“I thought the event turned out extremely well,” Elizabeth Wicks, the student organizer for TEDxUM, said. “I really felt like it was an event that we will be proud to show to the world. For all the hard work that went into it, I was definitely really proud.”
Barring unforeseen circumstances, next year will bring a new event and a new theme. The committee is also looking for ways to involve the student body in the organization of the event sometime in the near future.
“Ole Miss has so much to offer,” said Wicks. “Yet, a lot of times, some of the publicity that we get is not necessarily in the most positive light. With this TEDx and the ‘ideas worth spreading,’ we can really show the intellectual community within our University and Mississippi in general.”
The event began with a presentation by Marc Slattery, a professor of pharmacognosy, the study of medicinal drugs obtained from natural sources. Slattery made a case for the conservation of coral reefs worldwide and a process called bleaching, in which pollutants and foreign substances kill off plant life and ecosystems in coral reefs that could be vital to the development of medicine.
He said a vast number of pharmaceutical resources are at risk in these reefs. He left the audience with some tips on everyday actions that can help the conservation of the seas.
Gregory Heyworth, associate professor of English and director of the Lazarus Project, an initiative at the University focused on restoring damaged historical documents followed Slattery.
Heyworth said he is a strong supporter of TEDxUM, understanding the unparalleled opportunity it provides for the audience and faculty members of the University.
“What’s fascinating about TEDx is that it introduces not only the audience, which is quite varied, but also faculty members to research that is going on elsewhere at the University,” Heyworth said. “People cross paths who would otherwise never cross paths before.”
(Michèle Alexandre, professor of law, speaks at TEDx events. |Taylor Bennett)
Heyworth said a multitude of ancient literature and works go unstudied due to damage that makes them illegible, including thousands of lost classics and cultural insight that come about as a result of inefficient manuscript restoration technology. He went on to show how, through the Lazarus Project, these lost texts are restored using a state of the art multispectral imager. The group has been able to breathe life into countless documents, including the works of Shakespeare and the Vermicelli book, the oldest Old English manuscript in existence.
“I hope that people will become aware of the need to do what we are doing,” Heyworth said. “I’d like to see, in 10 years, a curriculum which has graduate students, as a standard practice, doing this kind of work. I think we are just at the very beginning of this new field.”
Michéle Alexandre, examined the rise and increasingly shifting connotation of the word “bitch” in modern society, and professor of pharmacy Dr. Christopher R. McCurdy, who gave a presentation the School of Pharmacy’s research regarding a drug that would be able to identify the source of and reduce pain without side effects or a chance of dependence.
Associate professor of performance Matthew R. Wilson brought his comedic charm to the stage while revealing the consistent message and content of comedy across linguistic, cultural and generational borders in the last presentation.
Wilson, who appeared in the popular Netflix series House of Cards as well as numerous traveling play productions, delivered his speech with the aid of eccentric character portrayals and humor.
“I think it’s great outreach,” Wilson said in regards to the TEDxUM event. “There’s a small audience here today, but it’s an unlimited audience on the internet. It has been a blast.”
All of the talks at the event were recorded and will be uploaded to the TED website for free viewing amongst thousands of other TED Talks from around the world. All of the videos are expected to be available over the course of the next two weeks.
