TEDxUTSC | Mix and Mingle 2017
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Mix and Mingle 2017

24 Dec Mix and Mingle 2017

A tradition of TEDx is to merge in a theme with each year and TEDxUTSC, that’s currently celebrating 5 years, has been themed ellipses. I’ve been decently anointed within TEDxUTSC as an associate through the minuscule events and meetings that have taken place in the past but it wasn’t until this mix and mingle that I managed to truly experience the beauty of TEDxUTSC. Being an introvert, I’ve struggled with social interactions all my life and have generally found small talk to be completely unnecessary. I’m a simple man, give me intellectual banter beyond my capacity to understand and a coffee with 3 splendas and a cream and I’ll absolutely enamour you. Give me a basic conversation about the weather or school and I’ll just stand still attempting to smile but drone off, hoping for this event to end already. This, wonderfully, was not the case as I entered the mix and mingle (nervous that I may have under or overdressed) as I found everyone looking absolutely gorgeous, all in formal clothing, a photo shoot taking place at the far end, a presentation being readied by Talha (looking rather spiffy himself), and not a single bit of anonymity or attempts to reel people into the realm of small talk.

Instead, I came across all sorts of complex and inspirational ideas being bounced off by everyone. I almost felt like I was witnessing bubbles being generated on top of everyones heads filled with shapes, people, locations, cosmological entities, etc. It was beautiful. Positivity was all I saw and though I came across a few bits of small talk, it was more oriented towards uplifting each other within this ideological immortality humans have been attempting to achieve for centuries. By ideological immortality, I am referring to the fact that…humans can die…but their creations…their ideas…live on forever…

Mobeen Lalani asked the question “What do we mean when we say ‘I want to save the world’?” Now this may sound like an obvious question but it isn’t…what do we mean by ‘world’? Is it not referring to what we see as ‘the world’? I plan on going into community development within Ontario and potentially parts of Asia but what about Brazil? What about the U.S? Which world am I referring to? Just my notion of what the world is? This is just one example of the various unique questions and ideas and what not that I came across bouncing everywhere. (I also loved the Christmas decorations!) As the wonderful speakers came on to give us a good tease of their upcoming talks (along with announcing the titles of their favourite films), it almost seemed like everyone was in sync with each other. Emotions everywhere. Ideas brimming to the roof. I’d love to bring up the topics that were discussed (rather passionately by our speakers) but I think it’s best to let you all hear the full talks on your own this upcoming February 4th!

– Alexson Philipiah, Associate

1Comment
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