News (13)

As TEDx organizers, we're big proponents of making evidence-based decisions. As Canadians, we take our quality of life seriously -- it is one of the things that helps define us as a nation, together with the principle that we need need to keep developing those standards for all Canadians. When it comes to something so seemingly nebulous like "social progress", it can be daunting to try and nail down how to measure that in a meaningful way. It's essential that we do so, however, so that we can hold useful discussions about how to move the needle as a country, or as a region or city within our larger national structure. Through a great friend of ours (thanks, Camille!) we recently were introduced to the amazing folks at the Social Progress Imperative. Haven't heard of it? Neither had we, but we're eternally grateful for having been introduced. Philosophically, we're very…

As we plan for our 2021 events, we continue to find that we sit at the intersection of so many great ideas and too little time to pursue them all! Of course, that's probably an enviable place to be. We'd all be in a much poorer place as a species if good ideas were highly scarce. At the same time, it also makes it more important for us to continually curate the ideas that are best suited to our current time and place in history. Especially as we start to emerge from the pent-up nature of the pandemic, we anticipate that people will be even hungrier for the types of ideas that help us make sense of the next step. We have lots to recover from, and a vast number of choices to make as we attempt to move forward as societies in a post-pandemic world.

As current news reports are constantly reminding us, our journey with COVID-19 is far from over. Many of us are likely tired of living through a major historical event and continally unprecedented (modern) times. The urge to get back to "normal" is strong, even though we don't know what that will mean for us going forward, or when it will happen.

It's actually a bit misleading to describe this year's ENGAGE: Deeply event as our "deepest, most engaging event ever."  The truth is, we'd like to think that ALL of our events over the last decade have been part of building toward this year's culminating event for our 10th anniversary of operating as a team.

Okay, let's re-title that to "We're playing with fire... but safely!" We're incredibly excited to be holding the first of our long-anticipated campfire events, part of our ongoing TEDxCalgary Adventures series.

A week after the event, it's easier to gain perspective on what our ENGAGE: Intentionally salon meant as a formal kick-off to our year of engaging with ideas.