As children we love to “make things up”, be it stories or songs or friends… our imaginations are limitless. Why do we stop that? When are we told that is unacceptable? Why do we need to RE-learn this gift? Chris’s talk gave me such insights into our education system and the way we teach children; and even the way we, as a culture, repress so many of our natural instincts. What would education in America look like if we fostered...

I met Ashley for the first time at the RIT graduate research symposium in in the in the Summer of 2011. The event is a day of 15-minutes research presentations, with several adjudicators invited from the community. Although there were many technical innovations at the symposium, my fellow Jury members and I found ourselves discussing Ashley’s topic over the entire lunch break. The question of sexual identity touches on so many...

As a visual artist, I am very excited about the resurgence of visual storytelling. Graphic novels and comics have made their way back toward the forefront of our media, and are now influencing films, television, and application design. Designers are now using the same tools in information design, and many of those same techniques are used to create TED videos. So, it was a pleasure to meet Andrew Perry after hearing students at RIT rave...

An accomplished musician, composer and author, Ramon Ricker is Senior Associate Dean for Professional Studies, Director of the Institute for Music Leadership and Professor of Saxophone at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York; where he has been a faculty member since 1972. Throughout his long and varied career, Dr. Ricker has straddled the chasm between the “Ivory Tower” of academia and the “Real World”; building a...

I found out about the Museum of Kids Art thanks to a bumper sticker I saw in a parking lot one day(turns out it was Michelle Cardulla’s car.) I followed up on it and thought the concept looked really cool just from browsing their website. Then, I met Michelle. MOKA (not to be confused with our other Moka, Lantum) is a fantastic program that I would love to see expanded not just across the city, but the entire country. Michelle has...

Let me warn you first: if you have children, this talk is going to touch you deeply. After the first meeting we had with Ralph, I went home and hugged my two year old daughter hard. What Ralph has to teach us about lead poisoning is terrifying primarily because it’s new information to a lot of people. I always had this vision of what lead poisoning is and what the cause is. I would have never guessed how wrong I truly was. Ralph...

When I first filled out the application to be the TEDxRochester licensee (seems like a lifetime ago!), I needed to tell them a little bit about our community. I gave them the standard stories about our Fortune 100 company population, our innovative citizens and their contributions, our world class colleges and universities, etc, etc. But, I ended it with “Even our local supermarket chain, Wegmans, is a world-leader! Chains from...

Karlie’s passion is open source technologies and what they mean to our future. In this talk, she brings up some very overlooked and important ideas. Too often, the talk around technology education is centered around white collar work and its accessibility to those from the lower socio-economic brackets. But, as Karlie shrewdly points out, technology has become so ubiquitous that technological illiteracy will present a significant...

As mentioned, Rochester has some unique iconic landmarks.  Not least of these is the Strong Museum of Play.    As the father of a young daughter, I’m familiar with Strong Museum and a huge fan.   Growing up in Philadelphia, I have fond memories of such places as the Franklin Institute and the Please Touch Museum, and am glad we have equally inspirational and memorable spaces for my daughter to run about in and enjoy*. The second...

Marla is the Chair of 3D Digital Graphics department at RIT. In this heartfelt speech, Marla takes us on a journey through her life where she started with the lofty goal of being a housewife. She discusses the various influences on her who taught her not only how to be as a person, but how to be worldly. She discusses how even though you think you might know what you can learn from a topic, there is always so much you can take from it. ...