Different Thinking At TEDxXaçmaz

A significant portion of my service in Azerbaijan has been focused on developing different types of thinking with Azeris.  I work with teachers at school, encouraging them to take a more student-centric approach in their lessons.  In the teacher trainings Kelly and I have been doing around Azerbaijan, we work with high-level teachers develop secondary skills like presentation skills and agenda setting so that they can begin to share the activities and lessons they've perfected with other teachers in their region.  Or in this year's camp planning, from meeting one I encouraged our camp director to begin developing next year's camp director to take the reins.

Success isn't necessarily guaranteed in this approach, but when success does happen I feel that there is a much greater impact; more than an activity taking place, there is true personal growth.  Sometimes it means the project falls flat.  But other times, it means the community member makes a giant leap forward in their own confidence.  This is my favorite way to work in Peace Corps.

Supporting the idea of thinking in different ways is TED.  For those of you who are not familiar, TED is an annual conference that brings together some of the most interesting and creative people to speak on anything they find inspiring.  Talks range from building robotic birds to fixing state school systems to reforesting deserts to protecting the earth from asteroids.  There are 1000s of them at TED.com.  Furthermore, TED also will license their brand so that you can hold an independently organized TED conference, named TEDx.

A few months my back a friend of mine in Azerbaijan mentioned that he was really getting into TED talks.  In the course of our conversation I brought up how I always thought it would be a cool project to do a TEDx event in Azerbaijan.  Apparently he had the same thought and we set about to investigate what it takes to hold a TED event.  And it turns out, it doesn't take much.  There are certainly a bunch of rules to follow, but in terms of actually executing the event its pretty easy.  Five months pass and this past weekend, TEDxGǝncǝ and TEDxXaçmaz were held.

It was really cool to host a TEDx event.  Almost all of the talks we held in Xaçmaz were prerecorded videos selected from the TED website.  This had the advantage of subtitles and it allowed our event to be in both English and Azerbaijani.  Some friends of mine came and a bunch of girls from Lannea's clubs came and it was wonderful to see eyes widen and gasps of amazement as each talk went on.

TEDxXaçmaz was divided into three categories: Our World's Future, Our Community's Future, and Our Own Future and in each category we had a couple videos.  After each category there was a brief discussion break where people talked about the videos they had just seen and the ideas they had just heard.  The conversation was animated and had a lot of variety, Azerbaijani housewives talking with students,  American PCVs talking with business owners.  It was a small group but they really enjoyed it.

I told Dustin (the PCV I worked with) how appreciative I was to have another driver of this project to help me stay focused.  We're pleased it was well received and both of us have a dorky pride in being able to list 'organized a TEDx' on our resume.  I'm also extremely glad to have had one more chance to work with the Azeris who helped put this together.  My co-organizer was an entrepreneur named Rashad and he really did so much of the work.  He created the logo, managed the facebook group, selected many of the talks, and more.  He mentioned how grateful he was that I helped him through this and I told him I think he had it reversed and really it was he who had done the lion's share of the work.  And then I told him that he better email me when I'm in the states to tell me of his next TEDx event.