#TEDxCOS Salons
Community Conversation, All Online!
A Salon event is more of an intimate conversation than our flagship TEDx events. Salons are the bridge for an ongoing conversation between larger TEDx events.
By hosting more frequent and smaller events we can keep the conversations and ideas flowing between our presenters, our community, and better our output and our impact on the world.
As a virtual attendee, you’ll have the pleasure of engaging with each of our speakers in our intimate community conversation. We’ll have moderated questions taken after each talk, and we’ll host conversation breaks between every few talks.
Join now if you’d like to get tickets, attend, volunteer, or apply to speak:
About
Sometimes life doesn’t turn out exactly as you expect. 2020 has reminded us all of that.
Luckily, this year isn’t all bad surprises. TEDxColoradoSprings is adding another event, one like we’ve never held before.
We’re hosting our first-ever Salon event. As you may know, a staple of live TEDx events is the conversation and culture that surrounds the stage.
A Salon gives you more exclusive access to that stage.
After all, do you want to merely witness history or be a part of it?
This is our first Salon event, and the sad news is that because of social distancing, we might never hold an event in this strange, unique, and creative way EVER again!
Think of it as a global dinner party in your living room!
Join us for our first-ever COVID-regulated Interactive Online Salon event this Friday from 4:30 pm to 8 pm MST to hear and see more from perspectives that will shift the way you see the world!
Join our mailing list to get tickets and a chance to win free access for yourself and your family!
Speakers
Rosie Suerdieck
Rosie Suerdieck is a military spouse and a mother of four children who are deeply interested in studying the dynamics behind civic participation and engagement. A self-professed policy nerd, in her early professional years, Rosie worked on Capitol Hill for both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, where she was able to see democracy in action on a daily basis.
Rosie was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV. During her high school years she was introduced to the world of political science. After her children were born, Rosie began to appreciate the importance of teaching them about their government and decided to go back to school to earn her Master of Arts in Government from Johns Hopkins University. There, she studied the effects of military parentage on the civic behavior of military-connected children for her thesis. In recent years, Rosie has served as a military historian and is now back to working with policy and doctrine here in Colorado Springs.
Rosie believes civic engagement & participation from a young age allows us to make an impact with our lives that can be felt for generations.
Alexis Williams
Alexis is speaking up as one of the voices of Generation Z. When she was 11, she won the Jackie Robinson Breaking Barriers essay contest and has been working to bridge cultural gaps ever since. She will be exploring her role as a computer scientist in the context of the present cultural moment. As a developer, she creates tools for educating & equipping others to improve their communities. Her talk will challenge us to use our tools and talents for the greater good.
Alexis is driven, bright, enthusiastic, accomplished and inspiring. She is a 19-year-old Computer Science student at NYU from Northern New Jersey. Her technical shops, writing talent, and flair for design have brought her from a viral TikTok a month ago to our TEDx stage this Friday. She believes strongly that the work that she is doing to make changes in our society is important, and she wants others to know they can do the same. Her passion has driven thousands of people to the resources she has built, and she’s just getting started.
Cesar Cervantes
A movie star, comedian, and professional speaker, Cesar Cervantes is someone you may recognize from his debut appearance on our stage last year. He’s back with a pithy addition to his talk as an exploration of our Salon format.
He loves playing tennis, but only when he doesn’t have a pre-existing tennis injury. He wants to help others successfully apply humor in their public speaking. As you can tell, we need some help with this ourselves.
It’s awkward when you’re speaking in front of an audience and they don’t respond how you expected to your humor, right? Have you noticed how strange all these late-night hosts are lately without audiences? Well, we can assure you that Cesar can help, after all, he is a professional.
Cesar has taught in the theatre department at Colorado College, was on Comedy Central’s Open Mic Fight, and can be seen in movies such as The Bookie and Line Of Duty. He lives in Santa Fe with his wife, daughter, and their aussie-mix, Mia.
Laurianne Fiontorino
Laurianne Fiorentino is a musician/singer/songwriter from Santa Fe NM. Her work has won awards and been included in theater and film soundtracks. You’ve seen her on our stage before with a deeply personal story, but she isn’t quite done.
Over Laurianne’s musical career of 35 years, she’s had some strange moments. Like being asked to sing the national anthem to a room of lawyers at 8:30 AM.
When she’s not getting into her new paddleboarding hobby, she’s reflecting on ways to make old songs bring new life. On our stage Friday she’ll be challenging us to reimagine our anthems and giving us new reasons to sing.
Jacob Anderson
If you’re looking for more information on how to get involved in your community, look no farther than our next speaker for our 2020 Salon this Friday, Jacob Anderson. Like the rest of us, Jay has had some successes and failures in his work and wants to share with you what he’s learned so far.
Jay has spent the last ten years designing and implementing community engagement and open data programs, driving citizen-facing projects for local government, and involving the public in decisions that affect them. On stage, he’ll explore how we can engage in community decision making productively, use community tools and resources to become citizens who shape a country we love to live in.
For links to our social media, as well as speaker announcements, theme announcements, ticket sales, and more, join our mailing list by filling out any of the forms on this page.
Our Mission
TEDxColorado Springs is a cultural organization whose mission is to amplify unheard voices in our community and voices from outside our community altogether to give our city a better perspective on ourselves and the world around us. We are a platform for people with worthwhile stories. We encourage our speakers to paint visions that challenge us to dream differently. We have hosted an entire day of these talks to challenge, inspire, and inform our community annually since 2014. Our events are attended by thousands of the most passionate, driven, thoughtful, and curious people in Colorado Springs.
As of 2019, we accomplish this mission through two flagship events each year. @TEDxCOS is celebrated its 5th year in 2019. Since then, we’ve begun celebrating our rich history of amazing TEDxTalks from community members of all kinds on our social platforms. Our talks have garnered millions of views through our social platforms and we feature them regularly with the hashtag #CelebrateTEDxCOS.
We center our event on the overlaps between innovation, marketing, and sustainable community growth – and like all TEDx events, we feature talks that explore Technology, Entertainment, and Design.
We are proud, through the Lander Foundation, to be able to support & promote other organizations that are investing in the Colorado Springs cultural community, too. We care deeply about designing our stage and the impact of our organization as a whole to be a platform for worthwhile talks that otherwise might not find an audience.
Thanks for reading a bit about us! If you’re still curious for more, you’ll find it in our email welcome when you join our mailing list.
Join now if you’d like to attend, volunteer, or speak: