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TEDxBoise took center stage Saturday with 11 speakers

Posted at 6:10 PM, Apr 08, 2017
and last updated 2017-04-08 20:48:23-04

The City of Trees' TEDxBoise nonprofit is part of a national campaign devoted to spreading ideas through powerful talks.

2017 TEDxBoise took center stage Saturday with 11 speakers at JUMP in downtown Boise.

You may have heard of the national nonprofit TED, which stands for technology, entertainment and design. The goal is to create and post short talks that are 18 minutes or less onto YouTube.

TEDxBoise volunteers have been working practically all year long for this day. This year's theme for the third annual event was "Expose, Explore and Expand."

The founder of the Rescue Film Project, of course, fell into the expose category. Levi Bettwieser recovers rolls of film from all across the globe that were never developed.

"That's the question that always runs through my head when we get these rolls of film is what happened to the photographer, where are they, why was this never processed," he said.

The overall hope is that attendees leave with an open mind, ideas and an opportunity to network and exchange those new ideas.

"A lot of these issues people are unaware of and bringing it to the attention of the masses, whether we start with a crowd of 450 people, and then it's published and hopefully it goes viral. There's always a way you can learn and expand your own mindset," said Dahlton Grover, project manager for TEDxBoise. "And, we hope this plays a small part not only in our community but a larger area."

Bettwieser's message for the public was about reconnecting with photography that's so accessible these days and placing more value in the meaning behind the images we so readily share.

"They [photos] tell a story of who we are, and we need to start thinking about the pictures we take so we know we can kind of curate exactly how we want to be represented for future generations," Bettwieser said.

If you missed out on the live presentation and are interested in hearing what all of the speakers had to say, all you have to do is follow TEDxBoise on any one of their social media platforms. Within the next couple of months, they will be posting videos from Saturday's talks onto YouTube.