Youth-operated TED event to be hosted on campus

A TEDxYouth event will be hosted at OCU. 

The event will be 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 27 in Kerr-McGee Auditorium in Meinders School of Business.

The theme of TEDxYouth@OKC is “live your best life.”

The event will feature performances, workshops and speeches. TEDx events are TED events that are independently organized, and TEDxYouth events are organized by, or geared toward young people.

Twenty speakers are scheduled to give talks. Each speaker is a high school or college student from Oklahoma. The speeches will cover a wide variety of topics including mental illness, nutrition and climate change. The event also will include a variety of workshops over these topics.

“I really want to go,” said Hailey Terrell, psychology sophomore. “I like watching TED talks on YouTube. They’re very informative.”

Taylor Glaspie, psychology senior, said the event is good timing due to finals week.

“It’s definitely something to take your mind away from studying. It’s a nice little break,” he said.

High school students are organizing the event.

Delaney Barghols is the licensee and head organizer. She is a junior at Crossings Christian School in Oklahoma City. She said she’s always been interested in TED talks.

“Over the summer I was doing some research on them, and I realized that you could host your own event,” Barghols said. “I thought it would be a really cool chance for me to meet some other people in Oklahoma City with different ideas, and I thought it would just be really fun to plan so I went for it.”

The young people presenting offer a unique perspective, Barghols said.

“Teenagers and young adults in Oklahoma are the future and they are the ones that going to be coming up and making decisions,” Barghols said. 

Brody Smith is the event’s video and production manager. He is a junior at Noble High School in Noble, Oklahoma. He said the coordinators hope to make this an annual event.

“Right now we are looking for a student who is willing to take this on and be the licensee, and then we’ll try to do the same thing we did this year and take it from there,” Smith said.

Maddie Dunn is an executive producer for the event. She is a senior at Yukon High School in Yukon, Oklahoma. She said local TEDx organizers were helpful in the planning process.

“TEDxOKC even brought out a bunch of our executive team to their event to ask questions and to see how everything is run,” Dunn said.

Tickets for TEDxYouth@OKC can be bought at the event’s Eventbrite page. General admission tickets are $15 and premium tickets are $30.

Anyone interested in volunteering at TEDxYouth@OKC may sign up on the event website’s volunteer page.