Archives for March 2017

The TEDxMileHigh VIP Experience

March 23, 2017 by TEDxMileHigh Admin

Our mission at TEDxMileHigh is to deliver world-class events that elevate the Mile High community’s biggest, brightest ideas in a truly dynamic setting. As a nonprofit, that mission starts with you.

We’re fortunate to have a small, dedicated team that works closely with volunteers and interns to turn ambitious plans—like our upcoming summer event, Point of Departure—into reality. We’re also fortunate to have a growing and engaged community of supporters who share our passion for big ideas.

As a supplement to our main events, the TEDxMileHigh VIP Reception creates an opportunity for our most dedicated supporters to come together with speakers, team members, interns, and volunteers to share ideas and inspiration. Held a few days before each of our main events, these engaging events give VIP and All-Access ticket holders the chance to enjoy innovative food, drinks, and conversation in our inner circle.

“The way our team members and speakers get to interact with guests at the VIP Reception is incredible,” says Event Manager Eric Kean. “I think last fall I learned more talking with our attendees and hearing their stories than they might have learned from us!”

“I love the opportunity to get a little taste of our speakers’ big ideas off the stage, in person,” Design Director Cate Croft concurs. “I love hearing big ideas from our attendees as well.”

“The VIP events help to heighten the overall experience,” says Angela Bruns, Programs Team leader. “It’s not just another cocktail party. The food becomes an interactive part of the evening, encouraging connection and conversation. The standouts for me have been the smoking popcorn from Inventing Room and the wine and chocolate pairings from the Chocolate Therapist.”

With support from our fine sponsors, we’ve been able to create an unparalleled atmosphere for connection. Live music and impromptu performances from local slam poets help make the night one to remember.

We have sponsors of all shapes and sizes, helping us cover production costs and organize year-round Adventures. Join forces with TEDxMileHigh to get get access to exclusive behind-the-scenes content and experiences!

BECOME A SPONSOR

“Our VIP events are a magical mix of speakers, partners, and our most engaged attendees,” says Chief Operations Officer Nicole Dill. “The amount of creativity, inspiration and potential in that room is intense! It’s a great space to introduce people who can collaborate toward building Denver best future—all over a few great drinks!”

As the VIP Reception continues to grow in attendance each year, we work hard to foster an intimate and invigorating atmosphere, creating more opportunities for people to connect and share.

“I enjoyed the intimacy of the last VIP reception,” says Intern Fil Merid. “Watching the speakers in a video is one thing, but meeting them in person long after their talk is wonderful. Whether we were chatting about our lives or the paintings on the walls in the art gallery, it was an absolutely terrific way to build a personal connection with some inspiring speakers.”

“The best part is definitely the feeling of relationship building,” says Intern Eric Milburn. “Over a few drinks and some delectable finger food, it’s easy to strike up a conversation with a stranger. The VIP parties are informal and allow us to embrace memorable dialogue with people who share our love of ideas.”

“My favorite part of the event is when Eric gets us a photo booth for the next VIP party,” says Content Producer Helena Bowen. We’ll do our best to provide a photo booth and other wonders for the next VIP Reception. Will you join us?

Meet Eric Kean, Event Manager for TEDxMileHigh

March 23, 2017 by TEDxMileHigh Admin

Spend a few moments chatting with Eric Kean, and you’ll catch his infectious enthusiasm. A native of Lyons, Colorado, he’s got an ingrained love of event management and a passion for making complex systems purr.

As ranch manager for Planet Bluegrass Eric has spent the last 12 years doing everything from operating backhoes* to coordinating budgets. As one of our newest team members he’s quickly made operations feel airtight. Here we talk about dealing with biblical floods, the essence of sustainability, and rethinking what it means to be a nonprofit.

What came first? Your love of event management or your love of bluegrass?

The love of event management came first. There’s a picture of me building a stage out of LEGO bricks when I was six, playing with little speakers and microphones.

Who was performing on this little stage?

I don’t remember. It was more about the setup than the actual talent. I put the people on-stage to make sure the stage was big enough to hold the people but I didn’t really care who they were.

So early on it was a love of equipment and organization?

Yeah, my parents were in the business before I was born. They had an audio and lighting company in Boulder in the late ‘80s, but they sold the business when I came along.

Did you grow up in Boulder?

I grew up in Lyons. I went to Lyons Elementary school, Lyons Middle School, and Lyons High School. Then I went all the way to Boulder for college (laughs). Now I live in Longmont.

Lyons! Isn’t there a pinball museum there?

There is a pinball arcade, yeah. It’s definitely not a museum there but you can go there and play pinball. Lyons Classic Pinball is actually a huge company. They supply all the pinball machines that are popping up in all these pinball bars and arcades and stuff all over Fort Collins, Boulder, and Denver.

And there’s a bluegrass festival in Lyons as well.

There is a bluegrass festival in Lyons called Rocky Grass. Planet Bluegrass is based in Lyons. They produce Rockygrass and the Folks Festival in Lyons, which are both three-day 3,500-person music festivals. The also produce the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Lyons was heavily affected by flooding several years ago, right?

Lyons was really, really, really heavily affected by the flooding and—in different ways now—still is. The flooding cut a big swath right across town and took out all but one of the bridges. The town is the confluence of two rivers, and no one really thought about it until the bridges were all gone. For the first day or so after the flood, there was a community of seven islands where there had once been a town. The flooding also tore out all the electric, all the sewer, all the water, all the gas, and all communications of any kind.

They made the decision a couple of days after the flood to issue a not-quite mandatory evacuation and pretty much everyone left, with an exception of a core, few people who stuck it out and camped in their own houses. It lasted about six weeks; my mom came and lived at my apartment in Westminster at the time. My dad stayed in the house for six weeks.

He was one of the core! Was he eating beans out of a can and stuff? Cooking on a Sterno?

I mean kind of, yeah. He had a water filtration system and he could get bottled water and stuff from the National Guard so he was fine on the front end. We’re Colorado people so he put the sun shower in the backyard because you don’t have to care because you don’t have any neighbors all of a sudden.

Did the bluegrass festival help bring the community together after that?

I was working for Planet Bluegrass, at the time in a dual role, performing festival operations and also helping maintain the property, which, in the course of one day, went from being a beautiful 17-acre, grass field to being a lake—or very wide moving river.

One of the offices floated away. All of our vehicles, all the infrastructure obviously got ripped out of the property. That was in early September, so the first event we had on the calendar was a wedding the following May and our owner just kind of made the call to say, “Let’s do it. Let’s fix it.” And we did. We did not cancel that wedding.

It happened on grass, brand new sod that had been laid down for three weeks. That couple deserves all the thanks in the world for trusting us to pull that off, because they came in and saw the property in November after the flood. We were still pulling pieces of cars and trash from upstream with a backhoe, and these people were walking around going, “I think our ceremony site will be right there.”

How does your path intersect with bluegrass. Were you a bluegrass fan growing up?

My parents started working for the festival when we moved to town, so when I was seven I went to my first Rocky Grass. I was running around throwing apples at people and hanging out. I just kind of grew up in it.

The wizardry of bluegrass is real. It’s like right up there with Slayer.

Some of the best musicians in the world are playing bluegrass. Chris Thile is the greatest musician alive right now. On any instrument. Period.

Aren’t Planet Bluegrass festivals known for their sustainability efforts?

Yes! There have been huge sustainability efforts since the foundation of the company, it’s always been a part of the mission. Telluride was the first carbon-neutral festival in the world ever, of any kind. We also produced the first festival to use a three-bin composting system.

This past summer, we launched a reusable plate from program to get us off single-use plates, cups, and bowls. Reduce is at the top of the recycling triangle: reduce, reuse, recycle. It’s actually an order with recycling at the bottom of the best practices.

It requires a lot of energy.

Yeah. The best thing you can do is reduce. And if you can’t do that, reuse it. And if you can’t do that, then recycle it. If you can’t do that, then compost it.

What brought you to TEDxMileHigh?

A couple of things: I’ve always loved events but I also kind of have a socially active streak in me. I wanted to do something with my energy and my skills that was a little more productive for the community around me. I just felt like, “If I don’t have a great big idea of my own, then I may as well take the skills that I have and make other people’s great ideas louder and bigger and better.” Hopefully I can do that here.

What are some of the unique challenges you noticed right away with producing TEDxMileHigh events?

The biggest startling difference is the same thing anyone will say ever if they switch from the for-profit world to the nonprofit world, which is just the difference in resources. In the private festival world, launching a new initiative, writing a big check, pulling the trigger on something, we could just go for it. This is non-profit event production. You’ve got to really make sure you’re capitalizing on the time and financing you have available and on the relationships you build.

You have to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

You do have to reduce, reuse, and recycle your money. You have to think about things from a different perspective. Doing it right is always important, but doing it in a cost-effective manner becomes a higher on the priority list. I came on board a month before the Women’s event, and my biggest takeaway was that the group of people attending these events are really motivated. They are … let’s go to festival jargon: their level of stoke is super high!

That’s official festival speak?

That’s officially festival speak, yeah! It was kind of remarkable to see people show up and really commit to active listening and active engagement for a full conference day. I loved how much they took away from it. The conversations that were happening later in the evening were astounding.

Do you have a favorite TED talk?

There’s a really marvelous TED talk by an entrepreneur named Dan Pallotta who worked in nonprofit funding. He produced fundraising events for nonprofits and approaches the work a little differently. His TED talk is about how success is judged in the nonprofit world compared to how it is for public and for-profit companies. He introduces the idea that a for-profit company can run non-stop, for years, at a loss as they built their brand and their identity and their product and their network, but if a non-profit company were to do the same thing and run without giving anything back to the community, without developing a product, without pushing out content for six months, it’d be thrown under the bus.

Having worked for a few nonprofits and a few for-profit companies over the years, I feel like nonprofits attract more of the type of people that I enjoy working with.

I agree with you. I like the people that I work with. I think everyone is pretty amazing and the relationships that we have in the community are pretty phenomenal. It’s just a wonderful spring of really enjoyable people with really great personalities.

I know you were also really inspired by Amal Kassir’s talk from our It’s About Time event, “The Muslim on the Airplane.”

Yeah, that talk really blew me away. I think her message is something that’s really worth hearing. But more than that, I think right now, our country needs to hear strong messaging of acceptance delivered by people who can do it with a smile on their face, and a twinkle in their eye and lift us all up. We need to accept all points of view, even the ones we disagree with and I think she is a shining example of that.

Her talk was very much like an invitation, not a directive.

That’s a really good way to put it. She opens up her arms and says, “Here’s what I think and I’d really love for you to join me.”

Absolutely, it’s very inspiring. What are you looking forward to in 2017 in terms of your work here at TEDxMileHigh?

Here at TEDxMileHigh, I’m really looking forward to digging deep on our two events. We have some pretty exciting growth plans for this year—a couple of things that kind of shake it up and push us to the next level. Combined with that, I think there’s just a kind of push all-around to streamline things: to really enhance the experience for our attendees. It’s really, really interesting work. It’s fantastic work!

It must be. As you’re talking about it, your eyes light up and you start smiling.

I do!

What else is going on in your life that you are excited about for this year?

I’m getting married in September and that will be a thing.

Congratulations. Have you picked the location? A flooded field, perhaps?

No! We’re going to get married at my parents’ house in Lyons. Our backyard is just awesome … friends and family and big, casual party. It’s going to be awesome.

Watercolor portrait by Filmon Merid

*For a full list of construction-grade vehicles that Eric knows how to operate, track him down at our next event!

Meet Cate Croft, Design Director for TEDxMileHigh

March 3, 2017 by TEDxMileHigh Admin

Whether she’s trailing a circus across Spain, walking her very large dog around Denver, or helping kids on probation to repurpose their street hustling skills, Cate Croft is doing it with flair and purpose.

As our Design Director, Cate makes sure everything we produce provides an engaging experience, from our printed event programs to our interactive Adventure series. Drawing from well of inspiration fed by lots of travel, she’s turned a lifelong love of art into a rich professional life. Here we talk about building model ships, graphic design notes from Cuba, and good walking cities.

What kind of dog do you have?

I have a 105-pound Great Pyrenees. We call her Junie, but her full name is June Javale McGee Anderson-Croft.

What drew you to such a big dog?

A few years ago, I took a sabbatical and traveled with the circus through Spain and Portugal. I took a few days to drive into the Pyrenees Mountains and I kept seeing these majestic dogs. Then I just did some research and figured out they were Great Pyrenees and adopted Junie through the Big Dogs Huge Paws Rescue when I came back home.

Let me stop you there a second, you were on sabbatical traveling across Spain with a circus?

Yeah. I had a friend who was working with Cirque du Soleil. They were on a tour through Morocco, Spain, and Portugal, mostly. I took three months off from work to travel with them and would split off for my own adventures in Morocco and Turkey.

I was picturing a horse-drawn caravan, like something out of La Strada.

No. It was fancier than that. It was really cool because there were about 150 people from all around the world. Since they moved every week, they didn’t have roots in the place where they were living and would create these rituals that the whole group would take part in. It was cool to see how people create community and consistency while traveling like that. I love traveling alone but it can be lonely. It was the best of both worlds to meet up with a mobile community and then strike out on my own Adventures.

You travel a lot. Where are some of your favorite places to go?

My husband and I went to Cuba a few years ago. I spend most of my time as a graphic designer and work with a lot of the organizations throughout the Latino community. I have a strong interest Cuba’s graphic design—the colors and typography have emerged (mostly) outside of digital design, so I had a strong desire to explore how that design culture manifests in the streets. I’d love to live in Mexico City some day. It’s a beautiful, amazing city. My husband and I try to get down there once or twice a year to explore.

What do you love about Mexico City?

You still see so much of the indigenous culture alive there — there are folks selling some of the same dishes that were sold on those same streets, hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived. The food culture is amazing. You can spend $2 and have an amazing lunch from a cart on the street. Then there’s also an emerging high-end culinary scene exploring traditional Mexican ingredients and traditions. Mexico City is also so comfortable city to walk around — gardens and tree-lined streets. The architecture and graphic design culture are interesting.

What makes the architecture there special?

I feel like there’s such a high value on design. The central neighborhoods developed at around the same time as modern-day Paris or Barcelona, so parts of it feel very European. Modernist Mexican architects have developed a very Mexican architectural voice and movement. Do you know Barragán?

I don’t think so.

He’s one of the most prominent Mexican architects. He was a modernist that employed geometric shapes and bright pinks, oranges, and yellows. His work plays with how light interacts with the building and space.

We’re missing some of that here in Denver. Chicago is a good example of a city where there was a boom, after the fire. You had lots of world-renowned architects flowing in to rebuild the skyline. When I lived there, I would walk from downtown all the way up to the North Side because it was just so exhilarating. I feel like Denver is coming along in that regard.

Much of urban renewal in the ‘80s just wiped out entire blocks of buildings and replaced them with pretty uninspiring fortress towers that kind of kill the streets that they live on. That’s the other thing about Mexico City that I love: the street is so active it really is a place where the public spends time and where people interact with each other. In a lot of cities like Denver, we’ve kind of cut off the ways that people once interacted on the street. Thankfully, some neighborhoods are trying to control some of these design aspects. The RINO Art District is pioneering design guidelines that focus on how people will interact with buildings. We don’t want an enormous apartment or office buildings that offer no interaction with the street. We want bodegas and coffee shops and restaurants along the street.

Do you remember when you first started paying attention to design?

I’ve always been really interested in art in general. As a little kid, I really loved art class. School projects were my favorite thing in the whole world. One time I did a book report on the explorer Bartolomeu Dias. Most of my classmates just handed in a paper, but I built this ship that was six feet tall. There were compartments that you could open to read different parts of the story, and the sail unfolded with other parts of the story. I wanted to share the information through an experience.

That’s a step beyond just the aesthetics of art, too. It’s bringing information and artistry together, which can be kind of a hard connection for creative minded people to make.

That’s why I don’t just see design as making something look nice, it’s about how you create an experience to engage, persuade, and change people. Looking beyond the aesthetics, that’s what I’ve been drawn to creating with design. I started my first business at age 15, designing these cute, little fold-out scrapbooks. I did that until I was 22 and was able to pay for a lot of my living expenses through college. Then I started an art therapy program for kids living in the shelters in Los Angeles’ Skid Row with the money I made from that business. I had about 100 kids, grades K-6, enrolled in my art therapy programs. We explored everything: painting, sculpture, drawing, poetry, photography, and dance. I also taught High School English in South Central Los Angeles for a bit and then came back here and started working at a non-profit teaching entrepreneurship classes to young people coming out of homelessness. The 18- to 20-year-old boys on probation were my favorite — they’re very entrepreneurial.

So you taught them about hustling in a slightly different way…

Yeah, just a slightly different hustle. While at that organization, I started designing their newsletter and learned the Adobe Creative Suite to put together the annual report. I was just hungry to learn and loved designing. A few years later, I made the jump and started my own design studio.

How did you connect with TEDxMileHigh?

Through Nicole Dill, [Chief Operating Officer]. I’d been to a few events before I met Nicole. I took some of the kids I worked with to one of the youth events. My husband knew her years ago. They ran into each other, we ended up getting dinner, and a position opened shortly after.

You were instrumental in launching our Adventures program. How did that come about?

The Adventures program was started at TEDxBeaconStreet. Adventures invite people to engage beyond the typical conference format. I like to say it asks people to “get their hands dirty with big ideas.”

We have an extremely engaged, willing, and enthusiastic community. It would be a waste to leave them idle between our events.

Absolutely. Our audience isn’t just looking for inspiration, they want to participate and contribute. They want to be a part of building our city and nation. Adventures are a cool way to invite people to take action throughout the year. Our talks are focused on “spreading big ideas.” I think sometimes people are left thinking, “Okay, I have all this excitement, all this energy, now what do I do? How do I get involved?” So Adventures are a way to make that bridge.

What have been some of your favorite Adventures?

We did one with Slow Food Denver and the author of A Table in Time, Amy Quinn. They hosted a big dinner at The Source that explored how Slow Food Denver makes connections between farmers, ingredients, chefs, and consumers. We married that with Amy’s book, A Table in Time, which is focused on how to create conversation and slow down around the table. We had 25 strangers who came together in a really beautiful inspiring space and explored these ideas together. Everyone had a different assignment for their role in creating conversation and serving the meal, like helping to clear plates or bringing the next course. We were able to show people that you can host a dinner like this and that there are ways to be intentional about how you create conversation around the table. Several people were hugging and crying by the end of it. That was a special one.

Do you have a favorite TEDxMileHigh talk?

Amal Kassir’s talk from our TEDxMileHighWomen event last October was amazing. In such a divisive time, it explores the names we give each other and the impact that has on how we view, interact with, and know one another. It was absolutely beautiful and cut to the heart of how we should approach other people.