Hey all! Welcome to the new and improved TEDxBuffalo.com. What do you think? Pretty spiffy if we say so ourselves. Feel free to click around and see what TEDxBuffalo is all about (especially if you’re just hearing about us for the first time).

We’re busy gearing up for TEDxBuffalo 2013, set to take place on Tuesday, October 15 at Canisius College’s Montante Cultural Center. Our theme this year is “Renaissance Citizens.” A lot has been going on in the last couple months — so without further ado, here’s everything you need to know!

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We’re Looking For Speakers!

We’re looking for a diverse lineup for this year’s event, so we’re inviting you, your friend, your professor, your mom, your friend-of-a-friend-of-a-brother-in-law — whoever has a great idea or is passionate about something they’d like to share — to submit a video, up to two minutes long, explaining their speech concept. We’ll evaluate pitches on both content and presentation to create our final lineup. Want us to help record you? Choose the right box on the form, and we’ll be in touch.

Two important notes: Videos will only be submitted until May 31, and you MUST be available on Tuesday, October 15, to be considered for a spot at the conference.

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We Need YOU To Help Make This Conference A Success!

We’re always looking for new committee members! Want to help determine who will be on stage at TEDxBuffalo 2013? Join our program committee. If you’re interested in social media and communications, we’d love to have you join our marketing committee. Other committees include sponsorship, production, arrangements and attendance, so no matter what you’re interested in, we’d love to have you join us.

If you’re interested in getting involved with TEDxBuffalo, contact [email protected] for more details.

(If you can’t take on another long commitment but still want to help, we’ll be looking for day-of volunteers closer to the event, so keep an eye on the website for info!)

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Hey, Local Businesses—Wanna Sponsor Us?

We’re also looking for sponsors for TEDxBuffalo 2013. Interested in getting your firm or group’s name in front of hundreds of connected viewers, or, say, 43,000 YouTube viewers? Get in touch by emailing [email protected].

In the meantime, here are our (negotiable) company sponsorship levels, our individual sponsor plans (ask us about VIP benefits!) and our letter explaining how TEDxBuffalo sponsorship works and how it helps.

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So…What Else Has Been Happening?

Well, perhaps most importantly, thanks to a little adventure our founder, Kevin Purdy, took to TEDActive 2013, we are free from our 100-person cap. That means we can invite so many more of you to join us this year at TEDxBuffalo 2013!

TEDActive also gave us quite a few ideas about how to get our audience members together, how to spread and empower ideas beyond one day in October, and what kinds of speakers we might invite for our 2013 event. It was quite a privilege to have so many people help us Grow TEDxBuffalo, and we intend to put that privilege to use. And, as noted, we’ll also be inviting double or triple the number of people to this year’s event.

If you want a peek at what went on at TEDxBuffalo 2012 and 2011, you can check out all the videos on our YouTube channel. (Pssst—You should DEFINITELY be sure to watch Alan Friedman’s “Catching Sunlight” talk. It’s got over 43,000 views—by far the most of any TEDxBuffalo talk—and it’s pretty amazing.)

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