Unique to TEDxPennQuarter is the Innovation Lounge. Building on the theme of REINVENTION, this creative workspace outside the main room where the TEDTalks are being held will host innovators in music, entertainment, business and technology perfecting their craft in unique ways. Each group is tasked with creating a unique, TEDxPennQuarter specific work product by the end of the show that can then be shared with the attendees and all interested in TED.

These innovators include:

TEDxPennQuarter sponsors Cynergy will take their unique ThinkFirst motivational design process and apply it to a unique scenario with an unusual group of participants. Instead of using their process to design software for global brands, they will attempt to use the process to push a group of young students to brainstorm and solve the Gulf Oil Spill Crisis. Kes Sampanthar, Executive Coordinator of TEDxPennQuarter and expert in motivational design, will lead this exercise with a group of local Washington, DC students.  

Local music producer DJ Eurok and Grammy-nominated musician Kokayi will produce a song for the event, creating the TEDxPennQuarter soundtrack in one day from start to finish. Attendees will be encouraged to participate in the creative process with instruments, noisemakers, sampled sounds and ideas. The finished track will be shared with all attendees after the event. 

Austin Kleon is a writer, visual thinker, and one of the TEDxPennQuarter speakers. He will be showcasing his unique talent by mind-mapping each of the other speakers as they present.  

Dave Wolf, Vice-President of Strategy for Cynergy and moderator of “Disruptathon: Innovation Discovered”, will conduct a series of videotaped interviews with each speaker and other invited guests as they participate in the event. This video will be produced and distributed after the show for all attendees.  

Interface Media Group, the production wizards behind the webcast, will provide an inside, behind-the-scenes look at how the event is being produced while it is happening.  

And finally, the group we are most excited for….

Students from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts will be in the middle of the room watching and interpreting the event. They will be painting, sketching, writing and filming the events of the day. It’s one thing to professionally produce the show with months of prep time. It’s quite another to do it in real time. We have challenged these future innovators from one of DC’s finest educational institutions to apply their skills to an on-the-fly artistic production. At the end of the day, we will get to unveil their work with a short session with Rory Pullens, CEO of Duke Ellington.