At the harvest-table arranged buffet dinner — picture fried chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, heirloom tomatoes and fresh cantaloupe, all from P. Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farms estate — and looking out over the dozens of speakers and their families who participated in his first organized TEDx event, Salil Joshi said he hasn’t yet gained the angle of repose on this thing.
“It hasn’t hit yet.”
TED is a 30-year-old nonprofit speaker conference (originally concentrating on technology, entertainment and design, hence the name) that arranges for experts to give 15- to 20-minute presentations on a range of general interest subjects. Most fans of the series watch these free online. The “x” in this case means it’s an independently organized event, in the mold of the series, and away from Long Beach, Calif.
On July 24, Joshi and others put one on at the Ron Robinson Theater. The speaker list included local luminaries such as Clinton School of Public Service Dean Skip Rutherford, Arkansas Baptist College President Fitz Hill, Acxiom Corp. longtime CEO Charles Morgan and hip-hop artist Chane “Epiphany” Morrow.
“You know a city like Little Rock which is a developing community has to always support its students, and what I mean by students is, we learn every day,” Joshi said. “And there’s not a step that you take forward or backward that you don’t have something to reflect on. … And what TED does, it gives an individual the ability to resonate with someone else’s life story.”