Second Annual TEDx Features Array of Guest Speakers

[Editor’s Note: The first half of the event was covered by Allison Terry.]

An astronaut pushed the universe’s limit. A soldier’s best friend died. A producer played as an adult. A student lost his faith. A pastor vowed to end sex trafficking in one generation.

The string of these diverse speakers made their way across the Allen Theater as Tech Texas University hosted its second annual TEDx event Saturday.

The popular brief lecture event, TED, began as a platform for ideas worth spreading, according to the TED website. At the first conference more than 30 years ago, “TED Talks” centered around technology, entertainment and design.

In the spirit of TED, local organizations may set up a TEDx conference, or an independently organized event. Texas Tech’s TEDx focused on the theme, “What If?” and presented 14 speakers who discussed a variety of topics. In accordance with TEDx guidelines, the university also screened TED Talk videos.

Jeremy Snead: What if we rediscovered play?

Jeremy Snead, creator of Media Juice Studios and director and producer of commercials and short films, pulled up a slide titled “Achieving Altered Sword Wifpy.”

“What does that mean?” Snead asked. “The answer is, that doesn’t mean anything because that’s not what I’m talking about today. What I’m talking about is: What if we rediscovered play? I was playing with you there.”

Snead explained how in normal human development, individuals learn the concept of play at a young age and can often forget how to play as adults.

As Snead grew older, he said, he developed an interest in filmmaking.

“I developed a spirit of play, ” Snead said of when he had desired to create films but still needed to maintain his day job.

Snead explained there are three steps in developing play. The first, atonement play, concerns getting in tune with a personal connection. The next step, body play, is about learning equilibrium. Object play involves playing with toys. Next, social play incorporates other people within the activity. Pretend play deals with imagination, and storytelling play concerns pretend play but with a setting. The final type, creative play, is a fully developed embodiment of all types of play.

“I’ve got this passion,” Snead said of his personal crisis in 2007. “I want to be a filmmaker. I want to make movies. I’m reading about screenwriting.”

The producer then described how he used the play method in order to keep his steady occupation while pursuing his interest. In the atonement phase, he read a book on screenwriting. Utilizing body play, Snead reintroduced himself to cinema from an educated perspective, re-watching classic films. Object play dealt with camera, while social involved the cast and crew. In pretend and storytelling, the producer developed a story and created a new world of his own. Finally, in creative play, he utilized everything he had learned to produced something entirely new.

This creation was “Video Games: The Movie,” a documentary detailing the history and future of the art of video games.

“That was an idea,” Snead said, “a concept that had never been realized in film.”

Joshua Willms: What if we searched before belief?

Joshua Willms, a doctoral student at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, explained he grew up in the church in his small hometown.

“One of the things my friends and I would do,” Willms said about his time as an undergraduate student, “is we’d drive around, and we’d hold our breaths, and we’d only take a breath when we saw a church.”

After a laugh from the audience, Willms recalled how devastating it had been for him when his father renounced his faith. In college, he began his own personal quest to find truth in religious belief.

“I had only been looking for arguments that supported my current world view,” Willms admitted. “What are the odds that I just happened to grow up in the one, correct religion? Or even the one sect of the one, correct religion? I realized that this one colossally unlikely, so I decided to adopt a new golden rule, treat others’ arguments the way you want yours to be treated and treat others’ beliefs the way you want yours to be treated.”

Willms said he then spent the next year learning about 35 different world religions and spoke to people who practiced them when he could. The student recalled his search came to a turning point during his junior year when he discovered the arguments he used to support his belief in Christianity were no longer valid.

“I lost my faith,” Willms said. “This wasn’t easy for me. It was terrifying to have to look at the world from a completely new perspective. It was horrible for me to lose God, and I also lost some of my closest friends, even ones that I had known for my entire life. But, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my intellectual integrity for social acceptance.”

He discussed after this conclusion how he redoubled his efforts to seek the truth and began double majoring in classics, alongside biology. Willms wrote a thesis on a physics argument that questioned the possibility of Christianity. He simultaneously joined a Christian student organization and a secular one.

His findings?

“Figure it out for yourselves,” Willms said.

Katharine Hayhoe:  What if climate change is real?

Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Texas Tech Climate Science Center and associate professor at the university, mentioned the Lubbock area has been getting something it typically does not see.

She pulled up a photo of herself wearing an Angry Birds hat and holding snow.

“When I was scraping the snow and ice off of my car,” Hayhoe said, “I was tempted to think, ‘where is global warming now? I’d like a little of that.'”

Despite the recent cold front, the scientist then pulled up of a series of graphs, displaying the spike in global warming that has been measured since industrialization.

“We have to look globally,” Hayhoe said. “We can’t just look in the place we live.”

Ron Milam: What if we understood war through families’ stories?

Ron Milam, Texas Tech associate professor of history, asked the audience to imagine war. Instead of watching combat news coverage, see war as families do, Milam suggested as he screened a photo of a soldier returning to the United States in a flag-covered casket.

When Milam served in the United States Army in the Vietnam War, he had a best friend named Ed. Ed had been in the army several years prior to coming to Vietnam and had five children. Milam had a new baby.

“Maybe someday your son, Ed, and my son, Alex, will have the chance to meet each other,” Milam said, repeating what he said to Ed during the war. “That was my goal. Two hours later, Ed was dead.”

When the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was finished in 1982, Milam said, he began visiting the monument every year, reading his friend’s name on panel 04W, line 53.

He began searching for his friend’s son, Ed, but he had no luck until four months ago when he received an email from young Ed, asking if Milam could tell him about his late father.

“Now I have this opportunity to bring Ed back, to make Ed alive again for his family,” Milam said. “It’s so hard to imagine a stranger like me knows more about Ed than his kids.”

Savannah Barksdale: What if global communication isn’t long distance?

The youngest speaker of the event, 18-year-old Savannah Barksdale, began rhythmically.

“I know it takes two things to change the world,” the agricultural communications major said, “time and action. The first I don’t have. I don’t have time; it’s given to me. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much time I’ve been allotted. That leaves me with only one option I have control over: action.”

Barksdale wondered if our society could communicate and receive communication by limiting the distance between information and ourselves.

The student referenced Life Hack, a social media publisher, and said the average social media user confronts 54,000 words per day. Barksdale equated that number with reading “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen three times a week, every week, and she noted it is easy to filler pieces out with that amount of information.

“It’s extremely easy for me to distance myself from information that does not directly reflect to me,” Barksdale said. “It’s easy for me to discount statistical information that I don’t think will happen to me.”

She said when she first heard one in seven women develop breast cancer, it was simple to disregard the information.

“Christy Barksdale, middle-aged woman, two kids, shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes that reveal a spirit inside that is much too young for her age,” Barksdale said. “Two years ago, on New Year’s Eve, she became the one. The one woman, of faceless women, became my mom.”

Barksdale admitted she has been drowning in information for as long as she can remember, and it is easy for her to change the TV channel, close her laptop or turn off her phone when confronted with too much information.

Millennials like herself are often called “connected,” but she questioned the idea and encouraged the audience to be open to information.

“Nowadays, communication isn’t long distance until we make it that way,” Barksdale said.

Bryan Padgett: What if we could end sex trafficking in one generation?

“Last night, while we were sleeping, the equivalent number to everyone in this room was forcibly taken from their homes or place of work or place where they recreate,” Padgett said. “They are being used for purposes against their will, mostly in the areas of labor or sex.”

But, he believes the world’s people can end this slavery of 27 million people — in a generation.

The pastor referenced Voice of Hope, a rape crisis center in Lubbock and said the organization completed research by surveying law enforcement officials. The report showed 88 percent of the officers came across a minor in the commercial sex industry at least once a week.

“One hundred percent of those knew those minors were there against their will,” Padgett said. “This isn’t Thailand’s problem; this is Lubbock’s problem, too.”

How did our area become involved with this? The pastor believes it boils down to pornography planting the seeds of violent sexual desire.

“How do we stop this?” Padgett asked. “Men. Men are the problem. I think men are the solution. We need moms and dad and grandpas and grandmas and teachers and coaches and uncles and cousins and friends and many others that will be intentional and work very hard to cultivate the soil of the next generation of men.”

Padgett took a red marker from his pocket and drew an “X” on his hand in solidarity to “End it,” an organization dedicated to dissolving the sex trafficking industry.

“What we need today,” Padgett began, “are men and women who will raise the next generation of men to see women and view women with respect and honor and dignity.”

Kitty Harris Wilkes: What if No Lives Were Wasted?

“This is probably the first time and the last time I’ll be on the red carpet,” Kitty Harris Wilkes said with a laugh, while standing on the red rug placed on the stage for speakers.

Wilkes is a professor at the university and faculty member in the addictive disorder and recovery studies program in the Texas Tech College of Human Sciences. Wilkes is also the director of recovery science research.

She alluded to her struggle with addiction.

Many children live in fear in their current home life situation, she said, due to a family member with a drug or alcohol addiction.

With her current work at the university, she wishes for all to be free from the chains of drug and alcohol addiction as well as freed from incarceration on drug charges.

[Editor’s Note: The second half of the event was covered by Sarah Self-Walbrick.]

Laura Heinz: What if our libraries were on fire? 

Heinz, the head of research, instruction and outreach for the Texas Tech library, began her TEDx talk with fire. Literally.

Heinz came out with a book and a lighter as if she was going to burn it. She said this represented what was currently happening to public libraries across the nation. Heinz said the future of libraries is uncertain and needs innovation.

Heinz talked about her experience with the public libraries in Lubbock. Heinz was a member of the committee that decided the future of the Godeke Library in Lubbock, the only library south of 19th Street. She said it was difficult to find the best way to utilize the library and keep it relevant.

She said libraries need to encourage people to come back to a place they enjoyed as children. Heinz told a story about her experience at libraries as a child and how it was one of the first times she felt independent. She hopes more people come to embrace that independence again.

After her talk, Heinz said she hoped she encouraged at least one person to visit his or her local library soon.

Patricia Hawley: What if we brought color to “Fifty Shades of Grey?”

Hawley’s talk was about a very popular topic right now, E.L. James’ book, “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Hawley, Ph.D., a professor of educational psychology at Texas Tech, said she has been researching sexual fantasies, like the ones discussed in the best-selling book, for years.

Hawley’s research has focused on what women and men really want in their sex lives. In her research, Hawley studied what roles each sex fantasizes about. Despite what “Fifty Shades of Grey” suggests, she found both women and men like to fantasize about being the dominant or submissive sexual partner, with many preferring the latter.

A big part of Hawley’s presentation was emphasizing women should not be ashamed of their fantasies, since many women have them. She said the popularity of romance novels proves that.

In an interview, Hawley said her research is important because it shows women they can embrace their sexuality.

“I saw this talk as a sort of public service,” Hawley said, “to try to free women up to enjoy their erotic side and not feel so sick about it.”

Calder Hendrickson: What if outside-the-box thinking happened inside the box?

At six feet and eight inches, Hendrickson towered over the audience. Named one of Forbes magazine’s top 30 under 30 in energy 2015, Hendrickson also towers over his industry.

Hendrickson is the founder of AquaSmart, a company that produces sand that absorbs water. He said it may sound like a common product, but this sand is changing many industries.

Hendrickson said the sand is being used in athletic stadiums across the country to decrease water usage. The sand is also being used to aid crop production by allowing farmers to use less water on their fields since the sand will hold more irrigation. The sand is used during oil fracking to improve the efficiency of the practice.

In his TEDx talk, Hendrickson talked about how this common substance has been adapted into something great. Hendrickson said without thinking within his means, or inside of the box, he never would have ended up where he has.

Hendrickson hopes one day his product will be used to produce crops on what was once barren land.

Cagri Bakirci: What if robots could evolve?

Bakirci, one of the many student speakers of the day, presented some findings of his graduate work about robots.

Bakirci began his talk by discussing designs of objects and how we can improve those designs to make them more useful.

He talked about robots and how they can be programmed to do really anything. Bakirci said the advancement of robots is very exciting, and he hopes one day they will be more humanlike.

Christian Forgey: What if survival required innovation?

Forgey, an alumnus of Texas Tech, is the founder and president of Light Bohrd. Inspired by his sons’ interest in skateboarding, Light Bohrd is changing the sports apparel and extreme sport industries.

Forgey is the first person to create illuminated graphics for the board sports industry. During his TEDx talk, he said it took many tries to get the lights just right, but the effort was worth it in the long run. He displayed a skateboard that featured lights on the bottom and a snowboard with lights on the sides that are integrated into the board.

Forgey said he is currently working with sports apparel merchandiser Under Armour to create clothing that features illuminated graphics and will ultimately make night-time activities safer.

He said this innovation is crucial in today’s society to promote safety.

Julissa Arce: What if I defined American?

Arce has been a United States citizen since 2014. Her journey to become a legal citizen was long but rewarding.

Arce said she came to America from Mexico when she was 10 years old with a tourist visa. Her visa expired while she was still a grade school student, but she was able to attend the University of Texas at Austin thanks to a new law allowing undocumented citizens to attend college in the United States. Since she did not have a social security number, she was not eligible for financial aid and worked hard to pay for her college.

She graduated with honors and earned a job on Wall Street. However, she was still an undocumented citizen. She lived in fear of someone finding out her secret and being deported back to Mexico.

Arce’s secret was never revealed, but she quit her six-figure paying job to help other people like her become legal citizens of the United States. She is now the director of development at Define America.

During her TEDx talk, Arce showed many pictures of immigrants from the early 1900s in New York City and of immigrants working today.

“If these pictures of 1920s New York City that show European immigrants living in cramped tenement apartments, working in sweat shops, trying to live the American dream,” Arce began, “if these pictures tell the story of America, then these pictures of the most recent immigrants living in cramped labor camps, picking our crops, trying to live the American dream. If the previous pictures tell the story of America, these pictures can’t be far off telling us who we are today.”

Since 10 percent of the Texas Tech student body is from another country, Arce’s speech was very relevant for the school’s student body.

Dr. Bernard Harris: What if the sky really isn’t the limit?

Texas Tech alumnus and NASA astronaut Bernard Harris was the keynote speaker for the day.

Harris shared many stories about his time in space and some of the things he experienced while up there. He told a story of his glove accidentally falling off and floating around in the space shuttle. He said he took the other one off just to see it float around, too.

Harris stressed people should not feel limited in what they can do. He said the universe is infinite, and people should continue to push the boundaries. He referenced the future SpaceX mission to Mars and how that used to be unimaginable.

He said every person is put here for a reason, and if people do not explore their potential, the world loses what that person has to offer.

“My charge to you is to find your purpose and make a difference,” Harris said.