rgo 2012
TEDxFa
City 2.0
October 14, 2012
Ecce Art Gallery
100 Attendees
With “City 2.0” TEDxFargo sought to explore new possibilities for our community and new ways of thinking to help us solve challenges that our region faces.
VIEW THE PLAYLIST
Pam Moret
Say No to the Dress
Pam Moret is the CEO at Bright Peak Financial and Senior Vice President, Strategic Development at Thrivent. Moret is a passionate innovator with a successful 30 year track record in financial services. She has worked for two Fortune 500 financial services companies in a wide range of senior positions. Her most recent venture — brightpeak financial – is a start-up financial services division of Thrivent Financial that is committed to building economic resilience for young, middle class families, most of whom are ignored by traditional financial services companies. Offering essential “no-gimmick” products through innovative business processes, brightpeak financial expects to make it possible for thousands of families to find their path to financial security.
Mike Allmendinger
A Unique Sense of Place
Mike Allmendinger is the Land Elements Principal and Kilbourne Group General Manager. He has the wonderful opportunity to work with two organizations that thoughtfully create experiences for people in our built environment. Land Elements is a Landscape Architecture firm that focuses on creating a unique sense of place for outdoor spaces and Kilbourne Group is a catalyst of inspiration and action for vibrant downtown communities.
Michelle Weber
How to Reconstruct Education
Michelle Weber is the West Fargo STEM Center Principal. She has worked in education for 22+ years as a teacher, counselor and administrator. She has spent a majority of those years trying to uncover how to invite school success by asking what are the essential components to eliminate school dropout.
Mike Draper
The United States of Midwest
Mike Draper is the Owner of Raygun. He has explored the Midwest casually since moving back to Iowa from Philadelphia in 2005. And in 2012, Mike and his printing+design company RAYGUN set down to write the definitive guide to Midwestern history and culture, with an eye on where the Midwest will be in the future.
Jackie Brookner
The Fargo Project
For humans to survive, ecological artist Jackie Brookner says it is not enough to change the ways we fuel, feed, entertain and shelter ourselves. Something much more basic has to happen. We need to mainstream a different understanding of who we are, as individuals and as a species. She calls this “the being of human,” and says it is about the “verbing” of our existence. Within this context, Brookner introduces The Fargo Project, the recipient of a prestigious “Our Town” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Fargo Project is transforming a functioning 18-acre storm water detention basin into a prairie commons, through a community driven process that fosters collective creative agency.
Mike Crenshaw
The Pandora Project
Mike Crenshaw is an activist. The Pandora Project’s vision is to end this pattern of destruction by creating a living, sustainable, self-sufficient society modeled on the relationships found in natural ecologies and dedicated to a respect for all life. By integrating natural systems and processes into the fabric of every day life, we hope to create a world where nature is understood and appreciated, not as an expendable resource to be dominated and conquered, but as an extension of our very selves; an interdependent web of life that we are passionate towards, responsible for, and interminably a part of.
Bill Holsinger-Robinson
See, Make, Play
Bill Holsinger-Robinson is the Founding Executive Director of the Art Prize (www.artprize.org), co-founder of HUB Grand Rapids (www.hubgrandrapids.org) and lead organizer for TEDxGrandRapids (www.tedxgrandrapids.com) shares his experiences creating impactful events in Grand Rapids, MI. Bill’s talk SEE, MAKE, DO reveals that, when it comes to turning a broad community into active participants, fun and playfulness may be a necessary feature.
Eric Watson
The Wow Effect
Chef Eric Watson openly shares his philosophy on the importance of trusting intuition, past experiences, successes and failures as a way to create confidence. He focuses on the early stages of his culinary education, making special note of criticism from the mentors that motivated and helped him find his way. It has been quite a journey from culinary tradesman to that of an artist and chef. Eric has worked at many award winning restaurants throughout Colorado, Rhode Island, Arizona, Hawaii and North Dakota. He remains optimistic about the future of his business here in Fargo.
Marjorie Schlossman
What An Artist Looks Like
In her talk, abstract painter and teacher, Marjorie Schlossman, encourages all people attracted to making art to actually begin to do art. She encourages the would-be artist to disregard potential critics and to make a poem, a song or a painting regardless of location, age, gender or previous experience. She secretly hopes to start an international art movement in Fargo, North Dakota, or at least to instigate some excellent work.