My experience at TEDxYouth@Tehran 2013

I’m not going to do a live blog of TEDxYouth@Tehran here. In this post, I want to say what TEDxYouth@Tehran did and what it meant to me, as an individual person.

First, I want to say I believe TEDxYouth@Tehran 2013 was a huge success. Why? Because everything went great, everyone were pleased, everyone had fun and most importantly, the received feedback was way better than expected.

Let’s share what happened there into 2 sections: The talks and the activities.

1. The talks:

We had 6 talks at TEDxYouth@Tehran 2013. All directly targeted the youth. You could learn from each and every talk no matter what field you are in or what expertise you have. In a summary I share what I learned from each talk:

• You can think outside the box no matter what. The world is unlimited. If you don’t find an opportunity, make one!
• There is no excuse for failure but yourself. If you fail, stop blaming everything and everyone. Get up and win!
• Don’t just make a wish or live in a fantasy world. Work hard and make your wish come true! It’s all about you
• Learn from the ones who have done it already. In every field there are successful people, Learn from them and don’t repeat anybody’s mistakes.
• No matter what age you are, you can start your work and you can be successful. In the new world, “I am just a teenager” is no longer acceptable.
• Funny things will happen to you. You may find yourself doing something that you hated for so long but not anymore, and even be the best at it. Life will show you paths that you couldn’t even imagine, be ready and make best of it.

2. The Activities:

Best thing about TEDxYouth@Tehran was that nobody got bored. There was always something to do there like fun activities. I will list some of them below:

• Photo Booth: With “Spark” as the theme of TEDxYouth 2013, at photo booth, everyone could made their own spark photo right there at the event. It was very popular activity and was always crowded. Here is a collage of some the photos:
• Before I Die Boards: Do you want to do one thing, one special thing before you die? You had the chance to write down your wish down on a “Before I Die” boards at TEDxYouth@Tehran. This was inspired by Cindy Chang’s TED Talk Before I Die. All the board were filled so quickly with various wishes from seeing Paris to changing the world. Seeing all these wishes all together was beautiful. Maybe even writing it down help you to pursue your dreams too.
• The “Out of the Box” Challenge: At the end of the event, there was another surprise (First surprise was Miss. Anoushe Ansari, the Iranian astronaut, as a speaker at TEDxYouth@Tehran and her wonderful talk). Every participant had a letter in their badge. The letter was either T or E or D as TED. All participants were divided to 3 teams: The Technology team, The Entertainment team and The Design team.

Each team must came up with a solution for a common problem in Iran with use of Technology or Entertainment or Design. And yes there was a winner and a prize.

All the teams started to work together to come up with the best idea. It was very great to see the unity between them and the excitement in their eyes and voices. After the brainstorming, they each picked their best ideas and presented them to the judges (TEDxYouth@Tehran speakers). They rated each idea and The Design team won. It was both fun and an awesome lesson. It showed me the importance of the teamwork

That’s it. This was the TEDxYouth@Tehran 2013. It was one of my best experiences and I truly enjoyed it and learned from it.

I was happy when I returned home that night, I just had a great day.

Farokh Shahabi Nezhad