What do you get when you combine 15 captivating speakers (each one a visionary innovator, educator, cultural-creative, and change-maker), add the talented Maranda Joiner as emcee, bookend the event with stirring musical performances, and host it all in the new state-of-the-art presentation space in the Two Mississippi Museums complex in downtown Jackson?

You get the fourth TEDxJackson, that’s what.

For those people who have been living in a hermit cave and don’t know what TED is, TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. With the inspirational mission of promoting Ideas Worth Spreading, TED began with what was supposed to be a one-off conference in 1984. By 1990, however, the vision took root for TED to become an annual event.  

Since then, TED has expanded to include numerous annual events with an international footprint. Speakers follow a specific TED format when presenting and topics range from the science and medicine of tomorrow to developments in business and global issues like human rights, the impact of climate change, and cross-cultural literacy.

Where TED’s focus is international, TEDx events are independently organized at the local level to help share visionary ideas that spring forth from within specific communities, or that can impact them for the better.

Enter: TEDxJackson.

This year’s TEDxJackson had an array of great speakers reflecting on the theme of #TheNext200 years in Mississippi. Speakers included editorial cartoonist Marshall Ramsey, who also talked about the two cartoons he did of Barbara and President George Herbert Walker Bush, which went viral; Holly Lange, Founder and Executive Director of the Mississippi Book Festival, Mississippi’s own #LiteraryLawnParty, who shared about the wild success the festival has seen, and which is now broadcast live nationally every year via C-SPAN; and, W. Ralph Eubanks, award-winning author, former director of publishing for the Library of Congress, and visiting professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, who took up the controversial-yet-timely topic of the prolific photographic  footage documenting the links between white supremacy and the Confederate saltire found on the state flag.

For a full list of the 2019 TEDxJackson speakers, visit: http://www.tedxjackson.com/2019-speakers/

NOTE: We’ll make an update in a month when TEDxJackson adds videos of all of the talks from the 2019 TEDxJackson to their website.