By Menachem Wecker
The 20 presentations at the TEDxPotomac event at GW’s Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre last week featured the founder of Craigslist, a 7-year-old tap dancer, a Paralympic ski racer and the founder of an encyclopedia of earth’s species.
The daylong event, which was co-sponsored by GW’s Office of Alumni Relations, Graduate School of Political Management, Law School, School of Public Health and Health Services and Office of the President as well as about a dozen companies, was loosely affiliated with the larger nonprofit TED, which stands for technology, entertainment and design.
Founded in 1984, TED is a conference devoted to what it calls “ideas worth spreading.” Former speakers at annual TED conferences include Bono, Gordon Brown, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Frank Gehry, Al Gore and Billy Graham.
TED’s annual conference in Long Beach, Calif., which features 50 speakers each delivering 18-minute talks, draws more than a thousand people, and TED has expanded to TEDGlobal (held in Oxford), TEDIndia, the TED Prize, the TED Open Translation Project and TEDx events, which are independently organized TED-like conferences.
All of the 20 presentations at the TEDxPotomac event responded to the conference theme, “Beyond Politics: Innovation, Inspiration and Insight.”
In his talk “Trust Is the New Black,” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said 2010, which he called a “pivotal year” and a “tipping point” for both social media and online communities, is the new 1517.
Mr. Newmark explained his excitement about discovering the enormously successful “nerd/policy wonk partnership” between Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of movable type, and Martin Luther.
According to Mr. Newmark, after the “nerd” Gutenberg invented mass media, it took decades before it was widely adopted after the “wonk” Luther used the press to disseminate his religious ideas and create the Protestant Reformation with his 95 theses in 1517.
By spreading his message, Luther reversed the flow of power from the “very narrow elites” to a broader network, according to Mr. Newmark, and in so doing, he lost control over the message. “We see the same thing now, particularly in U.S. politics, where social networking has been used successfully,” he said.
Both the Obama campaign and the Tea Party movement have leveraged social media to mobilize followings. “However, social media is a grassroots thing, and we’ve seen in every case, the grassroots takes control of the message, and the results aren’t predictable,” said Mr. Newmark.
In an interview with George Washington Today, Mr. Newmark said TEDxPotomac was his fourth visit to GW’s campus. “I like it a lot. I’m nostalgic for campus life, even though it’s been 35 years,” he says. “I’m kind of jealous, because so much is happening right now. It seems like GW is the hub of a lot of things that are going on with open government.”
Mr. Newmark, who says he has been spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C., lately, says he spends his time multitasking: working on customer service for Craigslist, social media and blogging for Huffington Post and The Hill.
He never manages to unplug, he says, nor would he ever want to. “When I fly, I’m highly biased by what routes are covered by Wi-Fi,” he says. “Being six hours without connectivity is a big problem for me.”
So what is Mr. Newmark’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
“People in school now need to establish an online reputation and identity for future employment and effectiveness,” he says. “Then they need to seriously engage, and then keep engaging, with their peers and also with people who are doing things they believe in.”
Other speakers at the conference included Warren Brown, J.D., M.P.H. ’98, who left a career in law to found the bakery chain CakeLove, and Josh Sundquist, a Paralympic ski racer, author and motivational speaker who lives in the District.
Roshini Thinakaran, founder of the multimedia project Women at the Forefront, spoke about two women she worked with in Kabul: Zohra, a writer, and Safia, a photographer, who despite threats continue to document life in Afghanistan.
Frances Moore Lappé used her 18 minutes to address the topic “Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want.”
“Who among you woke up this morning and asked, ‘How am I going to heat the planet? How am I going to make sure another child dies of hunger?’” she asked. “But that’s what we are doing.”
According to Ms. Moore Lappé, there is enough food in the world “to make us all chubby,” but there is an “assumption of lack” that needs to be overcome. She said people tend to see what they believe, and the erroneous belief that there is not enough food for everyone becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone cooperated, there is an opportunity to channel the “fear of lack” into courage to solve the world’s problems, she said.
One of the most engaging speakers was Shannon Hader, director of the D.C. HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD and TB Administration, who addressed “Challenging Conventional Wisdom: The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth?”
Dr. Hader, a self-declared “data dweeb,” refuted several misconceptions District residents have of AIDS. Not only are there misconceptions, she said, but people simply do not take the initiative to get tested. The irony? The place in the District where the highest percentage of residents gets tested is jail.
Matt Lindsay, M.B.A. ’07, director of alumni communications who was instrumental in bringing the event to GW, says the university very much appreciates the doses of inspiration, innovation and insight that the TEDxPotomac speakers like Dr. Hader brought to GW.
“It was a great opportunity to hear from notable speakers, to network, to be inspired and to ruminate on some big ideas,” he says.