TEDxSalem attracts wider audience at the Elsinore

Someone or something with "oomph."

That's what the curators of Salem's TEDxSalem were looking for in speakers and themes when they developed the theme of this year's event: Moxie.

"It's that passion. Drive. Courage to do things," said curator Carlee Wright. "We just like the word and idea behind the word."

Fourteen speakers, a number of interactive activities and countless ideas meant to spread throughout local and global communities were featured at Salem's second-ever TEDx event Saturday, held at the Historic Elsinore Theatre.

TED is a nonprofit organization with a purpose of highlighting "ideas worth spreading." It started at a conference in California 30 years ago and has since spread world-wide. There are two annual TED conferences, but many, many more local, independently-organized events and TEDTalks.

Wright, a Statesman Journal entertainment writer, and co-curator Brian Hart took core TED ideas to heart while planning Saturday's event, namely while deciding on the theme that the speakers and activities represented.

"Last year it was Illumination," Hart said. "We pick themes that can be interpreted in many different ways so we're not confined to a certain subject."

The theme also worked well with the duo's nonprofit, The Moxie Initiative. The organization was mainly established to bring events to the Salem community.

While wanting to stick to TED fundamentals, this year's event varied from last year in several ways. It was much bigger, for one. The 2013 event was held in Salem's Grand Theatre and was limited to 100 guests. At the Elsinore, the event had the capacity for about 300.

"It's beautiful — talk about moxie," Hart said about the historical theater.

With a little more in advertising and promotions, including newspaper articles, radio interviews and an event banner downtown, this year's event reached a wider audience.

"There are a lot of people from out of town attending the event," Hart said.

Mary Whitenack of McMinnville was one of those out-of-towners. She made the drive to TEDxSalem with her grandson after hearing about the event through her daughter-in-law.

"My husband has dementia and I think anything that sparks my imagination might help him," Whitenack said. "I really like this. All the information, all the ideas we're getting... I just think it's wonderful."

Attendees watched a handful of videos of TED speakers at other conferences, as well as local speakers. At the start of the second session, a beatbox performer named Robotic Torres impressed with a freestyle show that, with eyes closed, sounded like a scene from a Michael Bay movie and a fully-equipped dub-step DJ. But all sounds came from Torres' own mouth, and they were not rehearsed.

Jefferson Smith shared a talk about positive feedback and its potential to have an impact on democracy.

"What if instead of 'screw you, change you,' we started with 'thank you'?" Smith said. "Don't criticize less, compliment more."

Smith was followed by an audio and visual presentation by Danne Stayskal about Synaesthesia, a "genetic condition in which a stimulus of one sense causes an involuntary added perception in one or more other senses," her website says.

The variant that Stayskal has causes her to "see sound, hear light and read and do math in colors."

"Until I got to university, I never knew what this was. I thought I was weird, broken," Stayskal said.

She performed on a classical guitar that was made to display certain colors with certain sounds, to give the audience a better idea of how she experiences sights and sounds.

jdewitt@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 399-6714 or follow on Twitter.com @Joce_DeWitt