By midday the room starts to look like a workshop and everyone is hard at work: speakers fine-tune their messages with the essential feedback from the TEDxGeneva team. The speakers have worked all summer with their coaches to make their TEDx talk as precise as possible, but very few things get past the attentive ears of our volunteer team.
Part of it is the Audience Committee: a group of people who represent the diversity of our audience. They coach speakers through the clarity of their message and the feelings it inspires. Some speakers stay to hear other speakers. It’s beneficial to hear both the good points and the bad points, and the feedback is always constructive.
TEDxGeneva team and speakers hard at work, curating our next set of awesome talks. (Image: Thomas Cerato)
“Most of our speakers, regardless of their background, are eager to learn,” says Thanasis, member of the Audience Committee. “They show remarkable commitment and are not afraid to put themselves ‘on the spot’. It is really inspiring. It shows how the talk construction process is a unique experience for both speakers and everyone else in the room”.
On the sidelines, the rest of the TEDxGeneva team is also at work. There are few opportunities to meet amidst day-to-day professional and personal responsibilities, so the speaker rehearsals are also a chance to discuss the scenario, update each other on volunteer registration, work on stage design and decide on priorities for the coming weeks, as we enter the final countdown for November 3rd, the “Rethinking Power” D-Day.
Between French and English, from empowering yourself to feel your best version to questioning how power systems separate and unite people, speakers give us a glimpse of their perspectives on power, both the power you take for yourself and the power that is taken or given to you. Throughout the day, they make us question what we know and, hopefully, this “Rethinking Power” edition of TEDxGeneva will make you do the same!
Tickets are available at universe.com
We will look forward to welcoming you for TEDxGeneva “Rethinking Power”.
