TEDXColombo Platform for insightful ‘brain food’
When organizer, Safra Anver watched her first TED Talk back in 2009, the fresh out of schooler was purely looking for “brain food”. “They were short, quirky and super insightful” she explains, and it was then that she discovered the locally produced events under the TEDx brand name.
Shanuki de Alwis at last year’s TEDx
Much like ‘How great leaders inspire action’ her favourite TEDxPugetSound’s talk by Simon Sinek, Safra began working on bringing the TEDx stage to Sri Lanka in 2010. “My niece Raaliya Hussain realized that we can actually do TED events locally and went through the process of becoming a licensee.” Safra takes us back to a call between the two of them. “She called me super excited and said Saf, we have to do this, this is TED.” The rest, as she says, is history, and TEDxColombo began as a 5 member team together with 3 volunteers- of close friends and family. The first TEDx event, under the theme “Ideas for Sri Lanka’s Future” was staged at the Punchi Theatre, Borella and organized by “Beyond Borders” a group in cooperation with the British Council. It has since been successfully followed by events in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Despite the sold out events that Safra and her team have got used to, the biggest challenge when they first started she lets on, was the newness of the brand to Sri Lanka. “At the beginning, our biggest hurdle was that no one knew what TED was” she explains. Despite the millions of followers and views of the event on YouTube, the name had yet to gain familiarity at home, and reaching out for funding and to hesitant speakers were a few of the obstacles they faced. It didn’t help that the organizing committee were a bunch of teenagers, and took a lot of convincing to prove that “this was not just an ordinary platform”.
The process has been a learning experience, not just for the growing audiences who scramble for tickets every year but for the committee as well. From losing venues literarily a week before the event to their first major event under the current committee in 2011- which was put together on in-kind sponsorships, homemade food and donations. Aptly titled “Ideas of Our Changing World”, the event was a significant one, being the first for the current volunteer organizing team. It was also the first post war TEDx event. “We brought in a lot of young voices that gave people an idea on how they could think of actions in the light of these changes instead of just merely highlighting issues of post war.” The event saw impressive audience feedback which cemented the seriousness of their work -“we realized the gravity of what we had started”.
It’s been six years since TEDxColombo was a mere exciting idea. Since then, their audiences have grown from 100 (at the first event) to last year’s crowd of 1100 people. The team that was once a few teenagers and their family and friends is now a 13 member organizing committee with over 60 volunteers. “In honest truth, I never saw this coming” Safra admits. Last year’s event found them hosting TEDx Organizers from South Asia and TED Applications Manager in Sri Lanka. The event she says has grown beyond the regiform letters painted and transformed into end to end LED walls. They curate the event differently too in the way they prep their speakers and focus on topics that were more relatable and important to Sri Lanka. 2015 also found an expanding experience with Social Spaces, Speaker meet and greets workshops and interesting menus – all at subsidized rates. Continually trying to outdo their previous work, the event has expanded to younger audiences as well with TEDxYouth@Colombo and TEDxColomboLive which is a live stream of the TED conference.
TEDxColombo 2014 was a game changer for the team, when they won the Gates Foundation TEDxChange Scholarship which allowed Safra to watch a TED conference. “It taught me what it truly meant to have a TED conference locally. The secret to their consistent stream of successful events Safra divulges are the people behind the brand.
TEDxColombo has also added to Safra’s list of favourite talks, alongside Simon Sinek. Speakers like Shanuki de Alwis , whose anxiety required her to be pushed on to the stage (but has since become a much sought after public speaker) and Chinthaka Abeysekera whose talk on garbage would become their most watched talk.
This year too, Safra and the team hope that their goal for continually upping their game will prove to be relevant and maybe even surprise some of their audience members. One of the highlights for this year, she adds is the audience themselves. “We’ve got it all covered from age, fields, designations. Want to meet a diverse range of people? This is the place. “
You can watch the live stream for “Connecting Dots” on the TEdxColombo website on September 17 on http://tedxcolombo.org/