Dedicated youth from across central Austin on the TEDxYouth@Austin team saw their hard work come to life on Saturday, Feb. 11 with the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) event ‘Common Threads’ attracting more than 850 students.

The event lasted from 12 to 6 p.m. at Westlake High School’s Performing Arts Center. With 11 speakers and performers and topics ranging from the stereotypes of homelessness to the wonders of outer space, the wide variety of talks suited all sorts of attendees.

“Ricardo Palomares, the guy who biked from the top of North America to the end of South America was my favorite talk,” Emma Farkash ‘19, an attendee, said, “because it personally made me have an ideological lightbulb. Before he did that, he was never happy because he was in this cycle to try and reach certain goals to be happy. It related to my life because I set short-term and long-term goals and say I’ll be happy when I reach that point and I think it made me realize that I should be happy in the moment.”

This year’s theme, Common Threads, was reflected in everything from the stage design to speakers as they emphasized how everyone, as human beings, is more similar than different.

“I think Common Threads means that deep down, we’re all human,” Farkash said. “We all have happiness and sadness and we all need other people  and we all have these common necessities and bonds. There’s something that binds all of the human beings on this earth together even though we look very different and have lots of different goals and speak different languages.”

Both attendees and team members had different experiences that drew them to the event. Alisha Rawal ‘19, a graphic design lead on the team, liked the idea of building a community.

“What first drew me to the event was the opportunity to get involved with a unique group of people,” Rawal said. “I liked seeing the people in the community do incredible things and getting to interact with the students who were coming to the event.”

All the team members worked on separate aspects of the event, such as recruiting speakers, designing logos, gathering donations, or getting the word out.

“In the summer when I became Outreach Lead I wasn’t really sure what I was signing up for,” Devika Kumar ‘17 said. “As time went on I discovered I had more and more ways to reach out to people. It started with the posters and putting them up everywhere, working with social media to find out what language we were gonna put on posts, ambassadors, and later on when we opened registration we emailed principals, teachers, and media outlets.”

Working diligently since mid-July, the core team put in months of work to make the day run smoothly.

“To see it all come together was beautiful,” Rawal said. “To see all the work that our individuals had put in to change people’s perspectives, to give people the opportunity to be more open-minded and to connect with other people was inspiring and really motivating.”

Team members felt that their hard work had finally paid off in seeing the attendees interact with each other and enjoy the experience.

“I cried a lot,” Kumar said. “It just fills you in pride. Pride in what you’ve done and pride in what we stand for.”

Though the students involved came from different schools, backgrounds, and interests, everyone found a meaningful connection to TEDxYouth@Austin.

“I think it’s really cool because you get to see all these people that you wouldn’t meet on a daily basis,” Farkash said. “It’s so relaxed and it feels like a one-on-one conversation with these successful, incredible people. It’s so real and not formal like a presidential speech or politics, and it’s everything but the surface.”

In the bigger picture, attendees and the team hoped to spur more positive change in the world.

“TED, I think, is a revolution,” Kumar said. “I know that sounds cheesy but it really is. For anyone to be able to come up and speak about their ideas, experiences, and opinions and cause change gives it the power to inspire people. I think that if anyone hasn’t experienced a live TED talk they definitely should.”