In a year marking the 10th anniversary of TEDxSantaBarbara, the conference is looking to honor another significant marker in our community – the 50th anniversary of the modern environmental movement. Santa Barbara is the birthplace of world change, including the concept of Earth Day that began in 1970. In honor of this movement, we are making a focused effort to lift up current environmental issues and climate activism and provide more opportunities to meet with experts to start conversations that will lead to local action.

In this episode of Behind the Scenes, TEDxSantaBarbara Executive Producer Mark Sylvester talks Dr. Andy Brooks of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and UC Natural Reserve System at UC Santa Barbara. They talk about the upcoming March TEDxSantaBarbaraSalon Sea Level Rising: The Local Socio-Economic Impacts and the April TEDxSantaBarbaraAdventure at the Carpinteria Salt March, part of the UC Natural Reserve System.

Both events will have several world-class experts to answer questions and guide the conversations. The first two events are the result of a partnership with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and UC Natural Reserve System at UC Santa Barbara to bring relevant local research topics to the TEDxSantaBarbara community. The Bren School’s mission is to solve environmental problems and train the next generation of environmental leaders. Learn more at https://bren.ucsb.edu. UCSB’s seven Natural Reserves are living laboratories for scientific research, education, and public outreach. Learn more at https://nrs.ucsb.edu. The first two events are thematically paired to look at the issue of sea level rising from several points of view.

Tickets for the Salon and Adventure are at https://TEDxSantaBarbara.com

Mark Sylvester, the Executive Producer of TEDxSantaBarbara, sat down with Youth Interactives' Estrella Campos, Operations Director, to talk about their role in the upcoming event.

Youth Interactive will be serving a few functions for the event, from an intimate dinner for the Speakers to the Green Room for them on the day of the event and the festive After Party.

Youth Interactive, located at 1219 State Street in downtown Santa Barbara is around the corner from the New Vic and will be a perfect venue for us.

The students in the program will be invited to watch the talks via simulcast provided by a local technology company, LogMeIn. This is the fourth year that GoToWebinar has been used to stream the event. Now students will have free access to the show from 10 am to 5 pm. Students who wish to watch from home can click here to register. https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4363363918667989515

Youth Interactive is a space created for our local students who want to take their artistic side and blend it with a business sensibility. They have mentors for the creative and commercial aspects of their fledgling businesses.

We're looking forward to a long and beneficial partnership with Estrella and the team at Youth Interactive.

Our September 24th Salon, Words Words, Words. is going to be perfect for anyone who reads, loves books, and is concerned about the future of literacy.

In this podcast, TEDxSantaBarbara's Executive Producer, Mark Sylvester, talks with our Guest Moderator, Jessica Cadiente, Library Director, Santa Barbara Public Library. She's been at the library since 2016. By all accounts, Jessica has added tremendous vitality and vision to the program. She looked through almost 100 TED talks relating to our topic and settled on five that look to be informative and fun. Jessica will expertly guide the discussion through the evening and lead us through a narrative arc that starts off talking about language and its power and then transitions to the power of language in books.

Jessica has curated several show TED talks to help us understand our topic while having fun at the same time. She picked one talk suggesting texting is making us not as smart and possibly killing language. Another talks about our overuse of some words, which strips them of their meaning.

This evening is definitely for those who value ideas and the pursuit of learning. Our format will allow for amply conversation between each of the talks.

You can find tickets at https://tedxsantabarbara.com/salons/ - we only have 40 seats, so you don't want to be disappointed. Our last Salon sold out. We begin at 6:30 at the Chapala Center in Downtown Santa Barbara.

Our July Salon is shaping up to be a very lively evening, talking about food from a variety of perspectives. Food is a big topic and one that we're going to approach one Talk at a time.

In this podcast, TEDxSantaBarbara's Executive Producer, Mark Sylvester, talks with our Guest Moderator, Jessica Vieira, Director of Sustainability at Goleta-based Apeel Sciences. She's on the front lines of the battle to reduce food waste. She talks a bit about Apeel and the innovative technology that they're using to solve this problem. She'll go into greater detail at the Salon.

Jessica has selected five TED talks for the Salon that will introduce us to the challenges that our food system is facing from multiple angles. We'll then focus on how technology is addressing one of the biggest challenges facing agriculture. We'll also talk about consumer behaviors and how our attitudes towards food will evolve, and finally, we'll explore some of the most cutting edge research in food production.

If this is your first Salon, you picked a great one to attend. It seems that everyone is interested in food. We only have 40 seats available for this Salon.

Tickets at https://tedxsantabarbara.com/salons/

Our August TEDxSantaBarbaraAdventure is going to be at the 103-year-old Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Dr. Krista Fahy is the Curator of Vertebrate Zoology and will be leading us on a tour of the Collections and Research Center at the Museum.

In this Behind the Scenes Podcast, we talk with Briana Sapp-Tivey, the Director of Marketing and Communications at the Museum. She gives us a bit of the backstory of the Museum and what to expect during our Adventure.

The Museum also has their Butterflies Alive exhibit that will be next to the area of our tour and the Prehistoric Forest that has nine animatronic dinosaurs that you'll be able to see and hear when you join us.

The event starts at 5:30 and lasts until 7:30. Cost is $50. Tickets are available at https://TEDxSantaBarbara.com/Adventures

This Adventure is limited to 30.

There's so much history in the area of Santa Barbara we call the Funk Zone. We've created our first Adventure to explore the tastes, sights, and sounds of the Funk Zone in this narrated, interactive tour, led by our Tastes of TEDxSantaBarbara Curator, Tara Jones Haaf from Eat This, Shoot That.

In this episode, Tara and Mark discuss the hidden gems of the Funk Zone and what she's prepared for our 90-minute tour on June 18th. She explains why we're only having 20 people join us on this Adventure, so don't miss your chance to get this unique perspective on this growing area of town.

This year TEDxSantaBarbara will produce its first series of Salons. TEDx Salons are different than our main event in the Fall and is designed to focus on a single topic by watching a series of curated TED Talks.

In this podcast, TEDxSantaBarbara Executive Producer Mark Sylvester is talking with Michael Mongold, the Director of Information Security at Santa Barbara-based Deckers Brands about Privacy in a Salon we're calling. "Who's Watching Us?"

This conversation with Michael is a sneak peek into the upcoming Salon. He's co-curated a list of Talks that we'll watch, and then he'll lead us in conversations, helping us understand the nuances of privacy.

Join us for this special evening, May 28th, starting at 6:30. The event will be at the Impact Hub's Chapala Center at 1221 Chapala in Downtown Santa Barbara.

Tickets are $20 and available at https://TEDxSantaBarbara.com/salons.

This week we talk about how we take our Theme and turn it into reality. Each year we come up with an abstract theme that gives us a lot of latitude when it comes to selecting ideas and speakers. This year we chose Yes and...

Yes and…” is a guiding principle of Improv that promotes inclusion. The Yes explains the situation, while the And allows the listener to add their own experience to the talk, and take action.

I've asked our design team to join me this week to talk about how we visualize an abstract theme.

In this episode, we talk with Christopher Foley, a member of the Core Team, who has been with us since 2010, when we produced TEDxAmericanRiviera. He’s the guy who makes sure that everything technical works as scheduled on the day of the show. In this interesting conversation, we talk about all of the other things he does to contribute to the overall success of the event. Christopher rightfully notes that it’s organized chaos on the day of the show and much of the success of the overall production belongs to Dave Jenkins and his capable crew at DAJEN Productions.

Christopher also oversees the digital marketing and has a strong belief that putting these two roles and integrating them is a successful tactic for the organization. This year the original graphic designs, created by Lilian Pham (listen to Episode 6 of the show to learn more about the design of TEDxSantaBarbara) were deployed across the web, the onstage graphics, the advertising and all of the onsite signage. Having all of this under one person’s oversight assures that we have a show that feels highly designed and professional.

In this episode Executive Producer and host Mark Sylvester explains just how we select our speakers. This week he will walk you through our selection process, and he'll make some suggestions as to how you can help us find some great speakers for 2019.

If you've ever wondered about our speaker recruitment and selection process or you're interested in being a TEDx speaker yourself, this is the episode for you.ow you can help.