Formaldehyde Flower sashayed across the stage and teasingly hid her corseted frame behind purple feather fans in the University Auditorium this weekend.
For this year’s TEDxUF crowd of about 600 people, 10 a.m. was not too early for a Mischievous Madams Burlesque Troupe performance.
The troupe opened for the fifth independently organized TED event at UF.
TEDxUF is based off the larger-scale Technology Entertainment and Design conferences where speakers share their ideas and stories with mass audiences. The tagline is “ideas worth spreading.”
Seven speakers took the stage Saturday to share their personal stories and discuss issues ranging from 3-D mapping to helping Haiti.
“I loved seeing how the talks connected together and how they each touched on the similar bigger theme of intersection,” said Jessica Watson, a 21-year-old UF public relations senior and TEDxUF public relations director.
The event, sponsored by UF Honors Program, UF Student Government and the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Warrington College of Business Administration, also featured a TEDxUF Lab full of booths displaying various innovations.
UF Mad Scientists’ President Genevieve Comeau said the displays provided a way for people to share ideas with one another.
“We wanted to bring science to people who wouldn’t normally be exposed to it,” she said. “It’s important to showcase knowledge.”
The event also showed online videos of speakers from TED.com. Maria Carter’s conversation on embracing discomfort captured everyone’s attention, said Luca Baglioni, a 20-year-old UF management sophomore.
Carter spoke about how she has coped with a rare form of cancer for five years and said during the talk that she would rather die than have surgery.
“Her message was appealing to everybody,” Baglioni said. “You can really relate to her as a person. The whole event exceeded my expectations.”
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 2/10/2014 under the headline "TEDxUF brings talk of improv, inventions and inspiration"]
Bertrhude Albert, left, and Priscilla Zelaya speak at TEDxUF on Saturday in the University Auditorium. In 2011, the two co-founded a Gainesville-based nonprofit called Projects for Haiti, Inc., in effort to see sustainable development and growth in Haiti.
