December 2012. It is a memorable month for a memorable year. The world is supposedly ending next week. The Beatles and Nirvana merged, sort of. Most importantly, on December 12, 2012, Sarasota held its very first TEDx.

TEDxSarasota, which shares the namesake and general objectives as the official TED conferences but is also entirely independent, was held at the historic John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. In keeping the “theme of twelve,” the event lasted for twelve hours (again, on the date 12/12/12). It truly was a day of ideas worth spreading.

The day was divided into sections of live lectures, video presentations, and communicative activities in the TEDx WonderZone. Each third of the day corresponded to creation: Creating Connections in the morning, Creating Change in the afternoon, and culminating with Creating Opportunity in the evening. Aside from the four outstanding TEDTalks that were screened (this one by Chade-Meng Tan was my favorite), the day was jam-packed with free-thinking local leaders, creators, and true change agents from across the Sarasota area.

TEDxSarasota easily surpassed my expectations. With a day chock-full of presenters, valuable insight was gained every minute of the day. Let’s take a moment to summarize some of the highlights:

TEDxSarasota Speakers’ Roundtable

• The day started with rock- a couple of guitar performances, and a presentation from Tony Michaelides, a.k.a. “Tony the Greek,” one of the men who put David Bowie, The Police, and U2 on the map. His point? Keep plugging away- you’re going to work through lots of terrible jobs to get through to what you want to do, but it’s always worth it. I was able to speak with him later in the day about the role perseverance played in his life, which was just one of the themes throughout the day. In addition to that, we spoke at length about how technology is disrupting the music industry’s recording and promotion standards – for the better. A kid in his bedroom has just as much access to instrumentation and promotional tools that are packaged with his laptop that even the biggest names in British rock couldn’t even dream of in their heyday. It is truly remarkable how easily accessible new markets become even to the youngest of minds.
• A memorable presentation for its message as well as its flash was by Theresa Rose’s “The Hoop Revolution.” Her story was about her revelation of non-doing. In her life, her inactivity was driving herself to ruin by causing her ill health, a lack of morale, and was effecting her relationships with the people she loved. She decided to change herself by trying all sorts of activities, mental and physical, but nothing resonated with her as much as hula hooping. The hoop, it seems, ignited her passion for life. When she started hula hooping, she was hardly able to do it for the people in her own house. Now, with the confidence bestowed upon her by her dedicated practice, she could hula hoop for crows of people with the utmost confidence, transferring her passion and humor to each person in the crowd. The biggest thing I took away from it was: have fun and move. The word “exercise” can have negative connotations to it. The word “fun” never does.

Theresa Rose

• Dr. Nick Whitney’s “The Secret Lives of Wild Animals” was as funny as it was revealing. Aside from being an excellent presenter with great stories about using his children as research assistants, Dr. Whitney detailed his work in tagging marine wildlife with accelerometers, which are easily identified in our cellphones and video game controllers, to study the behavioral motion of marine animals. This is beneficial to the animals, humans, and the environment. For the animals, researchers can study the behavioral patterns of a tagged animal to know when it could be in trouble and reach it in time to save its life. The example benefit for humans was a bit odd, but in essence, accelerometers could be attached to jumping tank fish to further learn about the conditions in which the tank fish jump out of the water, so that boaters and fishermen can be made aware of when not to enter the waters and avoid getting hit. Lastly, for the environment, the benefit for tagging marine wildlife is to understand normal behaviors from abnormal behaviors, because if there is a reading of a large number of subjects that is out of the ordinary, that could mean that something greater is happening across the animals’ environment.

Dr. Nick Whitney

In my past travels, I have seen what the world’s foremost innovation areas have to offer. I’ve strolled the Googleplex in Silicon Valley, had coffee at Amazon’s Seattle office, and seen the innards of a cutting edge data center in London. The one area that I see Sarasota having the most in common with is Silicon Hills in Austin, Texas. This lesser-known compliment to California’s Silicon Valley is home to a plethora of tech firms both big and small, including Blizzard, Apple, HP, Cisco, Hoover’s, Intel, Oracle, and plenty of others. Even though Austin is the capital of Texas, it hardly seems representative of the things that come to mind when you think of Texas – cowboys, blonde hair dye, and giant steak dinners. Austin is weird. So weird, in fact, that its slogan is “Keep Austin Weird.” Likewise, Sarasota has many features and qualities that separate it from the rest of the state – world-class cultural institutions, bike trails, and the nation’s top beach destination in Siesta Key. Between Austin and Sarasota, there is actually quite a bit in common. The year-round climates are nearly identical, both regions attract young, creative students (hipsters abound!), there is essentially one main hangout street in each city (6th Street in Austin and Main Street in Sarasota), and they are both contain huge geographical areas in their city limits. The latter point is recognizable in Austin, because the tech firms are fairly spread out throughout the city’s surroundings, as opposed to consolidating in the city center. Sarasota can attract these high-quality firms and place them the exact same way, as we have so much land available to do so. Since seeing Silicon Hills, I’ve always imagined Sarasota becoming a great tech-destination. With the momentum following the valuable insight and connection from TEDxSarasota, we can turn Sarasota into a desirable tech hub. We can call it “Silicon Sands.”

Going forward, the lessons and connections from TEDxSarasota cannot be forgotten. Our community must communicate and stick together to drive the point that we can – and yearn to – become a greater technological destination. We have the environment to attract tech companies to our region. We have the right people that are creating the foundation for things to come. What we need now is for the organizations that promote Sarasota as a place to live and work to come together with the area’s innovators to put their heads together to place Sarasota on the technological map. We can do it. TEDxSarasota proved to me that we’re already doing it. By the time the next TEDxSarasota occurs, we will have made even more great strides towards this goal.

Let us work with one another in speech, with our Facebook and Twitter profiles, on the beaches and trails, in our storefronts and markets, and on our streets and neighborhoods to let it be known that Sarasota is going to be a truly-connected tech destination. The only thing that can hold us back is our own resolve. I’m ready. Are you?