Friday, January 23, 2015YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Attendance at this year’s TedXYoungstown was more than double that of the inaugural event last year, its organizer says. A total of 235 people registered for the day-long event, taking place today in the Ford Theater at Youngstown State University’s Bliss Hall.
“Last year we only had 100 people, which is what we were restricted to,” Lori Shandor, TedXYoungstown Curator, says. “So we’re not a sellout crowd but that’s great news because we have some room to grow here.”
The event features a lineup of 14 speakers addressing a range of topics that run the gamut from additive manufacturing and maker communities to bioethics and Ohio as a political swing states. The talks revolve around “Breaking Boundaries,” this year’s theme.
“We’re looking at the boundaries that have been broken, the boundaries that will be broken and the boundaries that we should be breaking,” Shandor says. These can be physical, emotional or psychological boundaries.
Kicking off the morning was Jamie Marich, a clinical counselor in Howland and author who spoke on emotional trauma. Though many people associate emotional trauma with post-traumatic stress disorder, Marich says she took a “broader approach” in her talk, “really looking at trauma as all human wounding that just tends to come in various degrees.” Taking the necessary steps to heal those wounds “will ultimately lead to a more
Marich also discussed how serving as a humanitarian aid worker in Bosnia from 2000 to 2003 got her interested in mental health. She acknowledges that she had her own experiences with trauma before going to Bosnia, due to bullying largely from peers and family issues, and her experiences there helped her to heal and ultimately set her on her current path.
Other speakers included Kevin Bachhuber, founder of Big Cricket Farms in Youngstown, which raises crickets for human consumption. His talk revolves around his experiences in his first year of business and sharing “some of the stories of the adventures of bug farming.”
Bachhuber wants his audience to understand that what he does is fairly normal. “At the end of the day, whether you’re raising chickens or crickets, it’s just agriculture,” he remarks.
Midway though the morning session, John Mela of Boardman said he was “pretty impressed” with the presentations so far and felt he could apply what the speakers said.
“I didn’t expect the speakers to be as polished,” he says. “What they had to say I found very useful.” He found Marich’s talk on trauma to be “very pertinent to where we are now as a society.”
Nick Chretien, a YSU sophomore studying business and economics, was among the volunteers for the event. “TedX talks is a great opportunity to get involved on campus,” he says.
Chretien also felt Marich’s speech was beneficial to the audience as well as the talk by Iron and String Life Enhancement Inc. founder James Sutman on giving and Bravura 3D LLC founder Brian Alls’ presentation on maker communities. "It was very educational and gave a great message to the audience,” he says.
“It relates so well to the city we live in today.”
Copyright 2015 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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