Santa Barbara, CALIF. – This Saturday, April 17, Santa Barbara will play host to a gathering of artists, scientists, land use experts, and cause leaders, brought together by a new event called TEDxSB, that will discuss their views on the theme of “Space in a Shrinking World”.

This choice of theme reflects not only the challenges of globalization, but how the environment, adjusting forms of living/work/entertainment space, our interaction with each other, and the exciting new interactions of technology, entertainment and design happening in third dimensional environments are presenting challenges and solutions to people’s lives.

The event, which is invitation-only (the public may attend by submitting an invitation request at http://www.tedxsb.com/attend/), will run from 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM at the Theater and Dance Auditorium on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara (map available here).

A live video stream of all the day’s proceedings will be available for free at http://www.livestream.com/tedx. The public can also follow the event through the official Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/TEDxSB/233634566666?ref=ts, and via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/tedxsb.

The event has been assembled by a group of local Santa Barbara businesspeople, nonprofit leaders, and students interested in the free expression of new ideas and thinking.

“TEDx is such a great worldwide program that we’re really happy to be a part of bringing it to Santa Barbara. We’ve had tremendous positive feedback on the event from the community,” said Chad Catacchio, the head of the TEDxSB organizing committee.

In the spirit of “ideas worth spreading,” TED has created TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxSB, where x = independently organized TED event. At TEDxSB, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

Speakers scheduled for this Saturday’s conference:

• Kurt Daradics, co-founder and Social Catalyst at FreedomSpeaks and CitiSourced.
• Deborah Estrin, Professor of Computer Science at UCLA and Founding Director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).
• Kip Fulbeck, American artist, slam poet, and filmmaker.
• Alec Loorz, a high school sophomore at El Camino High School in Ventura, California, founder of the non-profit organization Kids-vs-Global-Warming, and the youngest trained presenter of former Vice President Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” slideshow.
• Seetha Raghupathy, designer-in-residence at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) focused on addressing the multiple community planning challenges facing the Isla Vista community adjacent to the University.
• Wayne Rosing, founder of Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT) and former Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google.
• Jeannie A. Stamberger, a visiting scientist at the Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley CyMobility Lab Disaster Management Initiative at NASA Ames Research Park and Senior Biologist at the civil engineering firm URS Corporation.
• David Starkey, the Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College.
• Natasha Wescoat, pioneering visual artist, blogger, and art education advocate.
• Rich Wolski, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Eucalyptus Systems Inc., and a Professor of Computer Science at UCSB.
• Kim Yasuda, professor of art at UCSB and co-director of the system wide University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA).

Full bios and photos of each speaker are available at http://www.tedxsb.com/speakers.

About TED 
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Their talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani,Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The annual TED Conference takes place in Long Beach, California, with simulcast in Palm Springs; TEDGlobal is held each year in Oxford, UK. TED’s media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily, and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action; TEDx, which offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world, and the TEDFellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Follow TED on Twitter at twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at facebook.com/TED.

TEDGlobal 2010, “And Now the Good News,” will be held July 13-16, 2010, in Oxford, UK. TED2011, “The Rediscovery of Wonder,” will be held February 28-March 4, 2011, in Long Beach, California, with the TEDActive simulcast in Palm Springs, California.

ESRI is the world leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and has gone to great lengths to provide solutions to non-profits and government, and has corporate initiatives that include conservation and sustainability programs. Additionally, ESRI has many connections with Santa Barbara, especially in education.

Java Jones Coffee is a local Santa Barbara coffee chain that promotes and sells fair trade organic coffee. As they say on their website:

Our motto Passion, Possiblity and Promise is not just a flashy marketing strategy it is our way of life. We are committed to roasting, brewing and serving great coffee that has been sourced at all levels in a social and environmentallly friendly manner. To complete the circle of our commitment to our customers and our comunity we have developed a line of coffees for a cause.

As we said, we could not be happier to have these two sponsors working with us on April 17th.

So who are they? Visit our Speakers page to read all about them!

If you haven’t requested an invite to attend TEDxSB on April 17 at UCSB, we strongly recommend that you do so as soon as possible, as we only have a limited number of invitations still available. To request an invite, please fill out the form on our Attend page or send us an email at tedxsb@gmail.com

Again, we are thrilled to have each and every one of our speakers, and we hope to be updating this list with a few more exceptional talents in the near future!

Thank you for your continued support and please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more updates!

Please remember to follow us on Twitter @TEDxSB to kept on top of updates!

True to the core concepts of TED, we plan to make this officially licensed and independently organized conference cover a wide range of disciplines presented by experts that are helping to make the world a better place to live. We hope that all attendees to TEDxSB will be able to significantly contribute to what we plan on being a very interactive program, with many video highlights from previous TED events thrown in. To keep up to date on the planning, speakers, and topics, please subscribe to this blog, follow us on Twitter, and become a fan of our Facebook Page. We look forward to bringing you a great event in 2010!