By Greg Halbleib

NORMAL – Speakers from the area, the nation and even from England are preparing to give short talks on a wide variety of subjects next month in Normal.

The TEDxNormal event is scheduled for October 22nd at the Normal Theater with 18 speakers taking the stage for eight to 10 minutes each. TEDx events are local and independently organized, stemming from TED conferences that began as technology, education and design presentations more than 30 years ago but now cover a wide variety of topics.

Dana Vogelsong is one of the locally-based speakers and plans to give her short talk on workplace engagement. She said the topics run the gamut of interest.

“We have speakers talking about things like bullying, mental health issues, motherhood in the workplace, workplace culture and influence of the millenials,” Vogelsong told WJBC’s Scott Laughlin. “It’s a broad range of topics and you can learn about all kinds of things.”

Event organizer Doan Winkel, a professor at Illinois State University, said the speakers are from an equally wide variety of locations and backgrounds.

“Some of them are people I know that I reach out to and ask if they’re interested,” Winkel said, “and other people keep an eye out for where these TEDx events happen and they reach out and apply. People that are interested in getting their ideas into the world know this is an avenue to do it.”

The TEDx series is an offshoot of the TED conferences, short for technology, education and design, that began in 1984 and have expanded to a large variety of topics and locations throughout the country and abroad.

More information on the presenters, topics and tickets is at tedxnormal.com.

Greg Halbleib can be reached at [email protected].