Why TEDx Matters in the context of Trinidad and Tobago

Today our blogpost comes from our chief instigator and TEDxPortofSpain co-organiser, Keita Demming. He shares with us, insights into why he feels so passionate about TEDxPortofSpain.

In a context where citizens are willing to pay more for entertainment than education, where governments use public funds to build personal infrastructure versus social infrastructure, and where media houses are censored by government ministers for doing their jobs, events like TEDxPortofSpain could not be more relevant.

TEDx events were created in the spirit of TED and its mission of “ideas worth spreading”. TEDx programs were designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. In plain words, TED is providing local organizers with a platform in which they can share local ideas or messages with a new, and what was previously an inaccessible audience. TED is allowing local organizers to borrow its social capital and leverage it for non-partisan objectives.

Without TED’s brand, TEDxPortofSpain would not have been able to get the kind of sponsorship that we have, the interest of speakers, a captive audience, or the more than 500,000 views that two of our talks have received. TEDx stages give the everyday activist (e.g. Ron Finley and Bandi Mbubi), the ignored academics (e.g. Brene Brown and Hans Rosling), our everyday superheroes (e.g. Angela Patton and Hawa Abdi + Deqo Mohamed ) and the ideas of caring citizens (e.g. Candy Chang and Beth Noveck) a platform they would not have otherwise had access to.

Very few projects that I can think of, other than Green Screen, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival and The 2 cents Project, have been able to gather a bi-partisan following of like-minded Trinidad and Tobago citizens who are interested in a better, or the best island we could have. Few projects have  been able to bring the usually party-divided conversation into a neutral space. Few projects have been able to create a community of people interested in a better tomorrow. Few projects have been able to garner deep interest from our diasporic communities, and attract young people to socio-political conversations. Projects like these matter because these projects plant the most powerful kinds of seeds. The seeds of ideas and community.

It is easy to compare TEDx events in countries like Canada and the United States and become cynical, but we need to remember the very real differences between these contexts. TEDx events address the issues most relevant to the community it is hosted in. So, in more developed countries, TEDx events have speakers on topics like biomimicry, space exploration and 3D printing. Although these topics are important, in a developing nation they are not exactly our most pressing needs or our top priorities. They are not the intractable problems of poverty, incest, crime, child mortality, corruption, equal access to healthcare or homophobia. These countries we compare ourselves to are at a different stage of development. They are better at addressing some of these social issues and as result they can focus on topics like space exploration, cyborgs and cognitive surplus. Although these topics are relevant to us, we need to place different weight on them.

We need to remember that TEDx events, address issues most pressing to the community it is hosted in. I am in no way saying the TED or TEDx model is perfect. Nothing is. We need to recognise the strengths and tremendous possibility of TED and TEDx events within our contexts. TEDx events in countries like Trinidad and Tobago are very different and have very different kinds of potential when compared to TEDx events in countries like Canada, United Kingdom, The Netherlands or the United States.

TEDx events matter to us in a more visceral way.

The exposure that the TED platform has given us in three years, would have taken us ten or fifteen years to build or develop (or maybe never). Some may argue that TED is and has been benefiting from our free hard work. I will argue that working for social justice and equality has always been a voluntary position. You have always had people on the frontlines and people on the sidelines. Where you stand is a matter of life circumstance, what you can risk, and what you are willing to risk.

TED has loaned us its social capital, loaned us its credibility, loaned us their brand, and as a result, we must be good stewards of that brand. We, as event organizers, have a responsibility to our community to find truly remarkable speakers for the TEDxPortofSpain stage. These speakers must address our issues, and must not, or cannot be politically- motivated, but the advancement of your country.

If you would like to support this kind of an event, visit our website, suggest a speaker, buy a ticket, share our talks, join our mailing list, or help us get sponsors, because initiatives like TEDxPortofSpain matter to all of us.