Photo: (CC) TEDx UniversityofNevada/Flickr.com Harvey Turner speaks at the 2014 TEDx University of Nevada event inside the Joe Crowley Student Union on Friday, Jan. 24, 2014. The 2015 TEDx event will take place on Friday, Jan. 23.

Photo: (CC) TEDx UniversityofNevada/Flickr.com
Harvey Turner speaks at the 2014 TEDx University of Nevada event inside the Joe Crowley Student Union on Friday, Jan. 24, 2014. The 2015 TEDx event will take place on Friday, Jan. 23.

By Jacob Solis

For 30 years, the TED organization has spread ideas through TED talks. These talks have become ubiquitous across classrooms and living rooms alike. Now, for the third year in a row, its independent offshoot TEDx is coming to the University of Nevada, Reno on Jan. 23.

The TEDx program is an initiative started in 2009 that allows local communities to create their own unique TED-style conferences to share and spread ideas in the same manner as the flagship TED conferences.

UNR held its first TEDx event in 2013. During the event, 18 business leaders, community members, students and educators came and shared their ideas with students and the community.

The annual event hosted 23 speakers last January. Friday’s event will involve 20 speakers ranging from lawyers to entrepreneurs and musicians.

“We hope that this will be our best event ever,” said TEDx UNR organizer Bret Simmons. “We have eight local speakers from Reno, including an MBA student, several administrators and a faculty member, and 12 speakers from across the nation.”

The speakers, excluding Juan Lopez, who won the Nevada Student Speaker Competition, were chosen based on their own video proposals submitted to the TEDx UNR organizers, who selected the final 20 based on “big ideas” and speaking prowess.

This year’s speakers include:

Juan López: University of Nevada, Reno MBA candidate and winner of the Nevada Student Speaking Competition

Michelle Killebrew: Go-to-market strategist for IBM

Jo Harvey: Program Specialist for UNR

Misha Raffiee: Research fellow at Caltech

Sharyl Attkisson: Investigative journalist

Lucy Flores: Attorney and Nevada State assemblywoman

Nicole Hockley: Spokeswoman for Sandy Hook Promise

Hugh Hempel: COO and co-founder of Hopelink

Heidi Parker: Executive director of Immunize Nevada

Erica Greve: Founder and CEO of Unlikely Heroes

Shila Morris: President and co-owner of Squeeze In restaurants

Tim Snider: World-folk-rock hybrid musician

Owen Roberts: General manager for Microsoft’s Americas Operations Center

Mignon “Grammar Girl” Fogarty: Author and Chair in Media Entrepreneurship at UNR’s Reynolds School of Journalism

Vincent Cianni: Documentary photographer

Reginald Chhen Stewart: Chief Diversity Officer for UNR

Barry Posner: Businessman, author, and professor at Santa Clara University

Michael J. Russer: Author and public speaker

Liz Wiseman: Author and president of the Wiseman Group

Jennifer Knapp: Folk rock musician, LGBT activist

Tickets are sold out, but the event will be livestreamed for free at tedxuniversityofnevada.org.

Jacob Solis can be reached at jsolis@sagebrush.unr.edu and on Twitter @TheSagebrush.