Lessons of Truth and Responsibility at TEDxCambridge

I recently had the pleasure to participate in my second TEDxCambridge event, celebrating innovation within Cambridge and the impact it's having globally. The speaker lineup included a fascinating roster of folks: technology entrepreneur Dr. Christopher Ahlberg, CEO of Recorded Future; MIT physics professor Max Tegmark; business change agent and The Business of Belief author Tom Asacker; and science marketer Hamid Ghanadan.

TEDxCambridge executive producer Tamsen Webster kicked off the event, pointing out that a theme had emerged as the committee assembled this year's lineup of speakers: the search for truth. However, the theme of my favorite presentations, the ones that kept me thinking days after the event, rang more clearly as "responsibility" – the responsibility we have to ourselves and others to make the world a better place.

Here are some of the lessons I took away from my three favorite presentations of the evening:

While her college degree may be in Philosophy, today Maggie Campbell is in the business of making handcrafted artisan rum. Her talk focused on the concept of "Elevage." Elevage is a French term for the progression of wine between fermentation and bottling. But in Maggie's parlance, Elevage means that by consistently making your best choices, your best will always get better. Maggie shared her perspective that people too often become addicted to their shortcuts – at work, in their marriages, with their relationships among friends. This inhibits our ability to continually improve the outcome of whatever we do. But by staying focused on Elevage, we take responsibility for ensuring our thinking and our relationships continue to reach new levels.

To say Tobias Otting is not your average nine-year old is an understatement. Known as the "Junior Sartorialist," Tobias is an active blogger, dancer and tastemaker. Tobias' TEDxCambridge talk focused on the power of finding and using one's voice, using examples of the famous (Malala) and not so famous (one of Tobias' teachers who speaks in a "hushed whisper" but who has one of the "loudest" voices he's ever heard). I wish I had half the fashion sense and confidence this kid already has at an early age, not to mention Tobias' incredible talent and the responsibility he's taken to use voice to share his passions with the world.

Lastly, Sebastien Christian is CEO and founder of OtoSense and a teacher of linguistics and neuroscience at Paris III University. Using a table as an example, Sebastien led the audience on a participatory lesson about individual perceptions and "shared meanings." His question to the audience was: Are shared meanings an illusion? As a professional communicator, I found this premise fascinating. If each of us has our individual notion of the meaning of something as simple as say, a table, it's easy to understand how challenging communicating and finding shared meaning (and understanding) can be in our society as a whole. Yet, our ability to find shared meaning will be essential to solving a myriad of global problems like conflict and climate change. It is incumbent on us to work hard to create shared meaning.

Congratulations and thank you to all the TEDxCambridge speakers for sharing your incredible insights. I'm looking forward to the next event and encourage everyone to check out TEDx events in their own communities to take advantage of the breakthrough ideas and thinking in our own backyards.