AFTER TWO years of being held online, TEDxAteneo—formerly known as TEDxADMU—returned onsite to transform attendee perspectives on social change amidst established norms and tradition last June 10 at the Areté Hyundai Hall.
With this year’s theme Breaking Paradigms, the Ateneo Junior Marketing Association (AJMA)—alongside co-presenters Sunnies Studios and Metromart—organized TEDxAteneo for speakers from different fields to share their viewpoints on various topics. These discussions ranged from improvisation and self-expression to neuroscience and “time traveling.”
While the event highlights the various talks, an array of performances from Silly People’s Improvisational Theater (SPIT) Manila, award-winning violinist Elaiza Tangalin, and singer Timmy Albert (BS CTM ‘21) also serenaded the audience during intermissions.
Being true to oneself
Starting the lineup of talks, improvisation actor Aryn Cristobal and SPIT Manila both demonstrated the relevance of improvisation in everyday life. She elaborated that improv, as an art form, welcomed making mistakes which is crucial to self-improvement.
“People forget that every single day of our lives, we’re improvising,” Cristobal said. She further stressed how improv helps people discover “certain truths” about themselves which will resonate with everyone they meet.
Meanwhile, the reigning Drag Supreme and the first-ever winner of Drag Den Philippines, Naia Black, discussed the value of self-expression in today’s heteronormative society.
She detailed her journey into drag and how it helped her be her most authentic self. Black drew inspiration from her own childhood to encourage the audience “to look at one’s younger self and agree with them.”
“It shouldn’t be revolutionary to exist in a manner that is authentic to yourself,” Black asserted.
After these talks, the audience was given a chance to socialize and share their ideas among themselves while they purchased food from the event’s partner concessionaires.
Thinking differently
Seasoned technology and innovation expert Ibba Bernardo redefined “time traveling” by recounting his experience of developing an app to aid sari-sari stores. To him, “time traveling” means being mindful of technological innovations throughout the years.
Thus, he emphasized the importance of practicing “digital empathy” for those still struggling with modern technology, calling back on his interactions with “nanaypreneurs”—the women who ran the sari-sari stores.
“All of us can be time travelers; we just need to appreciate it,” Bernardo added. He believed empathy would be attainable if everyone would take a moment to go back in time and see what they could do to change existing paradigms.
Furthering the conversation, neuroscience expert Ben Ampil started his talk on the brain’s potential for self-control. He added that “the way you’ve been taught to think is wrong.”
Ampil clarified the roles of the brain’s amygdala, which acts as the emotional center, and the prefrontal cortex, which serves as the mental faculty for rationality in a person’s daily emotional processes. He called upon the audience to recognize these centers and the brain’s default response as more emotional than rational, since this realization may open opportunities for personal growth.
“Emotions have a ten-second lead on rational thinking, so we must practice emotional regulation. It is key to our emotional intelligence,” Ampil stressed.
Behind the curtain
In an interview with The GUIDON, Project Head AD Santos shared his hopes for future TEDxAteneo events to return to the scale of its previous iterations.
Santos revealed that TEDxAteneo has the reputation of being “the biggest TEDx event in Southeast Asia” because of its participant size, where past iterations were able to achieve up to 1000 participants compared to the usual 100 participants of other TEDx events.
Furthermore, Santos stated that three new batches have missed out on the onsite TEDxAteneo experience. Hence, with this year’s successful run, he added that he expects the event to “get bigger” in the future.
