TEDxTO Announces Speakers, Dashes Your Hopes of Attending

By David Topping

Michael Dougherty speaks at TEDxSF, in San Francisco. Photo by Adrianne Koteen.

TEDxTO, the independently organized TED conference focussed on “What’s Next,” which we previewed in July, has spent the better part of today periodically announcing their thirteen speakers and those speakers’ topics for their September 10 event via—like you couldn’t guess—Twitter. And while it’s far too early and the topics far too broad to make anything better than make an educated guess as to how good it’ll be, it’s, well, looking rather good.
Speaking at Theatre Passe Muraille, and streamed live to the web simultaneously, will be the Globe‘s Mathew Ingram, speaking on “Five Ways New Media Will Save Old Media” (you’re welcome, old media!); architect Michael McClelland on “Renewing Concrete Communities: Tower Renewal”; eclipse enthusiast David Makepeace—brother of our Tony Makepeace and actor Chris Makepeace—on “Understanding Ourselves in an Epic Universe”; Dean of McMaster’s Faculty of Social Sciences, Dr. Charlotte Yates, on “The Future of Unions”; playwright Waawaate Fobister, on “Telling Very Personal Stories”; writer Min Sook Lee, on “Raising My Toxic Baby”; consulting company MASS LBP’s Principal Peter MacLeod, on “Imagining 2017 and Why it Begins Now”; “success analyst” Richard St. John on “Success is always asking ‘What’s Next?'”; REMIX Project Co-ordinator Gavin Sheppard on “Creative Education”; author Don Tapscott on “The Future of Education”; entrepreneur Tom Rand on “Planet Traveler: The Green Hotel”; Google engineer Steven Woods on “Google’s Vision for a Mobile Web”; and performer D’bi Young on “What’s Next.”
The event also opened up applications to the public for some of the one hundred free in-person audience spots. If you’re the kind of person who can competently fill in the blanks for a request like “List some of your lifetime achievements”—no doubt part of what organizers Paul Crowe and Tyler Turnbull told us would lead to a “curat[ed]” audience, “with the theme of diversity guiding” the choices of who was picked to attend—it may well be worth a shot.