TEDxSeattleLive: Watching TED 2018 "The Age of Amazement"
To introduce TED2018, TED owner Chris Anderson and TED Head of Curation Helen Walters asked the audience to complete a simple task: to turn to someone whom they didn’t know and state what, over the last year, the main emotion is that they’ve felt. In Seattle, the crowd that was gathered at TEDxSeattleLive followed suit. Strangers exchanged quick greetings and with just a few minutes for the exercise began sharing their hope—and fears—from the past year. 
While there was plenty of apprehension in the crowd, there was also hope for what the next year would bring despite an increasingly divisive global culture. Seattle has long been known as a city filled with forward-thinking innovation and passion for change, so it’s no surprise a day full of learning and inspiration was met with such an openness to how an idea can shape the future.
The event screened two different sessions over the course of the day: “Doom. Gloom. Outrage. Uproar.” then “Wow. Just wow.” Between the two sessions, the audience listened to topics ranging from the #MeToo movement by Tracee Ellis Ross, to how artificial intelligence can upheave the job market as we know it today by Kai-Fu Lee.
Ideas taking flight… and landing!
The space between theory and reality in space travel just narrowed dramatically for humankind. Mere days after Erika Wagner spoke at TEDxRainier 2015 about space travel for the everyday person, we can now celebrate an historic feat in rocket science taking us one step towards commercial space travel!
In a test launch on Monday, November 24th in the Texas desert, Blue Origin (where Wagner works) sent a rocket 62 miles above earth, and then brought it back down in a perfectly safe vertical landing. A successful landing of a spent rocket leaps a huge hurdle for space travel, and Blue Origin plans to put this advancement towards one day sending civilian astronauts up into space to look down at their home planet, weightless from above.
This idea worth spreading has literally taken flight! Watch this incredible video of New Shepard’s successful landing below, and congratulations to Erika Wagner and the Blue Origin team!
Leading the conversation on education reform
Jesse Hagopian is leading the conversation on education reform both locally and nationally. A history teacher at Garfield High School, Hagopian led the 2013 boycott against common core testing, unanimously backed by Garfield faculty.
Hagopian has taken an active role in speaking out against standardized testing, appearing on NBC and in a recent feature on PBS Newshour. He and many other educators argue that excessive testing distracts from the actual goals of education – teaching critical thinking and giving students tools for success. Through his blog I Am An Educator, Hagopian works to educate parents and students about their right to opt out of testing, and just this past year over half of all Juniors in Washington state chose to opt out.
In a hopeful announcement, President Obama himself recently called for a cap on excessive testing, citing that kids need to enjoy learning, teachers must be able to teach creatively, and that the tools our students need in order to be prepared for their futures can’t be learned by filling in bubbles.
Jessie Hagopian will be sharing some of his experiences at this year’s TEDxRainier at McCaw Hall.