This past weekend I was able to enjoy TEDxUlaanbaatar with hundreds of other people from Mongolia and around the world. I am completely humbled by the wonderful things I heard at the event, in the personal e-mails I've received, and the conversations that have been taking place on Facebook. What started out as a simple idea between two friends quickly grew into a talented team of people and an amazing event with hundreds of people who gathering together around ideas worth spreading.
A year ago I wrote down as one of my dreams that I wanted to speak at the global TED conference. I thought it would take years to accomplish and it probably will, but I've been surprised by how many ways there are to achieve our dreams. Creating and speaking at TEDxUlaanbaatar has been a great start and, more importantly, has encouraged others to dream. Christa, the wife of one of our awesome organizing team members Joe, mentioned that in our audience on Saturday one of the young Mongolian men next to her said that he now dreams about speaking at TEDxUlaanbaatar in the future. By creating this event together the volunteers, speakers, organizers, and attendants encouraged each other to dream about what is possible.
In October we will be leading a TEDx Organizer's Workshop which already has dozens of people signed up to hear about how we can create more TEDx events around Mongolia. Over the next few weeks I'll be writing more about how to start your own TEDx event, including organizing and executing conferences both big and small. I'm certainly no expert and I could've never done this without an incredibly talented team, but I certainly learned a lot of things over last few months that I think are worth sharing.
I hope, no matter if your dream is something like creating a TEDx event or not, that you know it's possible to create anything that you imagine. You aren't alone and the magic is that people come from all around to help you create something valuable for others. TEDxUlaanbaatar is just the beginning of many great things in Mongolia thanks to some really incredible people that I'm honored to have met. Thank you all again so much for making this possible and for sharing in this idea together with me. I think we're going to create some amazing things. As one of our youngest audience members, a teenager named Bolortuya, told us, "To believe in the heroic makes heroes. Let's all become heroes."
To see pictures of our event, please check out TEDxUlaanbaatar on Facebook and Flickr. Soon, after some professional editing and translation, you can watch the videos on our YouTube channel too!
