Picking a Theme for Our Event: A Unifying Idea

TEDx is all about Ideas Worth Spreading and choosing a theme for each event brings everything together and distinguishes one event from another.  A good theme has the potential to capture the attention and interest of those who interact with your event. Not only will it be the first thing that they know about your TEDx event, it will also be the one thing they keep referring back to when discussing, sharing and thinking about your event.

In other words, the theme of your event has some serious power.

When starting the planning for our event, we were discussing themes before we really even had a team set up. We were discussing themes before we even had the official word back that our license was approved. In case you didn’t pick up on that, we were really excited about picking out a theme.

So it should also be no surprise that at our first group meeting, we started off by brainstorming for a theme. Brainstorming is, by the way, the perfect word for what was happening, as by the end of our meeting, it really did look like a storm had passed through the room.

We found that the best way to start was by focusing on who our target audience would be and what they would benefit the most from hearing at our event. By focusing on college age students from Western, we were able to come up with theme ideas that would not only interest them, but also have an impact on them.

After passing out multi-colored sticky notes to the team, everyone started jotting down ideas, key words or phrases that they thought would pertain to our audience. Once everyone had a sufficient number of ideas written down, the fun really started. By placing sticky notes in groups together on a wall, we as a team were able to see how our ideas matched, fit into and complimented the ideas of other group members. It was here that we started to vocalize and actively discuss our thoughts.

This part of the process is the most important, as it gives everyone a chance to fully think out their idea, and see other views. It was here that our theme was born - through dialogue and discussion - it happened almost suddenly - completely by accident - someone misread a word and said aloud - RENOVATIONS. And that was it!  We talked about it, around it, what it meant to us and it felt perfect.  We determined that this theme was not only accessible to Western’s students, but one that we felt speakers could really grasp the essence of.   

The theme we have chosen for this year’s event is Renovations: Building Our Future.  

Stay tuned to learn what our theme means to us!

Lead Curator Marli Williams leading the group discussion in front of the brainstorming wall.