How to Land a TEDx Talk
This event is part of Badassery Academy, a members-only workshop series that provides tools and inspiration to take your thought leadership to the next level. Learn more about our community’s membership benefits here.
Top Tips from TEDx Speaker Irina Soriano
Avoid personal stories as the theme of your TEDx talk, but instead incorporate your personal experiences into the talk as a part of a larger message.
Focus on topics you're deeply passionate about and believe can drive change in the world.
Start your talk theme ideation with "What if..." scenarios, or challenge existing paradigms from a fresh perspective.
Emphasize impact and provide a clear call to action (CTA) for the audience at the end of your talk.
If you are able, and this is by no means a necessity, consider investing in a supplemental TEDx coach that can support with talk theme ideation, public speaking techniques, etc.
About Irina Soriano
Irina Soriano is a TEDx Speaker, author of "Generation Brand," Badassery member, and has mentored young men and women across EMEA, Asia-Pacific, and the US thanks to her international career.
With decades of experience, and an active participant in both the Forbes and Fast Company circles, Irina brings her experience to women and young professionals as a public speaker, helping individuals to shape their extraordinary life brands.
Irina has also built a strong life-brand for herself. With her passion to make a contribution to closing the gender gap in the workplace, she’s enabling the next generation of girls and young women to drive a cultural paradigm shift toward gender equality.
Irina’s “night job” as she jokingly calls it–spent working on her TEDx journey–was sparked by a chance declaration, and now she's paving the way for the next generation of women through her public speaking platform, including one of the world’s most recognizable stages: TED. Her talks often infuse career growth, self-confidence, and brand identity management, “injecting motivation into offices [and individuals’ personal brands] like a hot air balloon.”
Irina’s first TEDx talk, “Gender parity in the workplace starts with controlling our life-brand,” was delivered at the annual TEDx Water Street conference based in New York City, an independently organized TEDx event. Her talk takes a bold stand on gender equality for those born 2012 – 2030, who are growing up in a world dominated by rapid technology innovation and social media. She shines a light on the pitfalls accompanying this progress and provides a roadmap for using the concept of ‘life-brand’ as a new tool for social good and personal welfare. ‘Life-brand’ is presented as an early confidence-builder empowering Generation Brand to become whoever they aspire to be despite their differences in upbringing, education, or background.
While Irina couldn’t share the topic of her next TEDx talk yet, she shared with the Badassery community that she has been accepted for a second TEDx talk–an incredible achievement–in the nearby state of New Jersey, which will take place later next year.
What is TEDx?
Let’s take a step back and ask ourselves: how much do we really know about TEDx, or even the original TED?
TED, the acronym we adore, represents Technology, Entertainment, and Design. For aspiring speakers and audiences, it's the superstar stage of global ideas. But there's a duet on the TED stage: a classic TED talk and a TEDx talk. The TED talk graces the annual TED conferences, while the TEDx talk is delivered at independently organized shows.
According to TED's maestro, Chris Anderson, TED talks focus on global issues, while TEDx talks tend to be more local. He sees TEDx as “TED multiplied” because the events allow people to connect with other innovative thinkers in their local communities.
For newcomers, TEDx is the gateway. There are more than 3,000 TEDx events held worldwide each year, which makes them that much more accessible.
And they can be just as good for publicity. From a visibility perspective, audience size does not always matter. Yes, the main difference is the physical size of the platform IRL (a TED audience is usually much bigger than that of a TEDx audience). However, the digital reach can be the same. Many TEDx performances have gone viral online.
Landing The Big Idea
We crowdsourced a number of questions from the Badassery community to Irina, and many were along the lines of “how to get on the TEDx stage?”
But having gone through this TEDx ideation process twice, Irina correctly identifies the topic of the talk itself as being most important to landing a spot on a stage. For our listeners, she very thoughtfully sums up the necessary evolution of a TEDx idea as follows:
“Who are the most engaging speakers? Those are the ones that are super passionate about that topic.”
“I had a couple of attempts as well at just finding something I was able to even write an 18-minute talk about. When I reread [the ideas] I'm like: that's not my talk. So I think the key is really that you find a topic where you go: this really gets me going… I'm all in it. I think it's important for other people to hear because it's gonna come through in your delivery as well.”
“You can spend time brainstorming.”
“I originally pulled out a good old mind map and started to just go like: what are the things I have top of mind? What, generally speaking, am I passionate about? Is there anything I know that I don't think somebody else might know?
Also, if you’re thinking about the different categories that a TED could be, you could go more into an area of where you do entertainment. My first talk was pretty serious and now my next talk I'm gonna do something more satirical and light, so that could be an area. Or, you know if it's leans into your professional field, you could do something around science, or something medical. You could link this to your professional experiences that you've had in the past, so there's many different areas you can take it down.”
“One thing that I see [the application] says a lot: they don't want personal stories anymore.”
“If your whole talk is just something you have gone through, or your story, I’m reading now a lot that they say no personal stories. This should be an idea that could really drive a change.”
“There should be a CTA (a call-to-action) at the end.”
“You can feed the story into the talk–most of the talks start with a story–but if your story IS the talk I would say: go back to the drawing board. If I draw a line under it, it has to be something that you feel super passionate about and something that you feel when other people hear it it could either impact their life or it could drive a change in the world. Start with: what if this [idea] happened? That's usually how I started to think about mine. That could also lead to you just changing an existing paradigm, e.g., something that already exists but you look at it through a completely different lens. That's also an idea in itself that doesn't necessarily mean that you came up with something new and groundbreaking, but you're looking at something that already exists just through a different lens, and you enable the audience to also look at it from that different lens…so you’re changing their mindset, or the way they think about something.”
Ready to Apply?
Irina also shed some light on the process for aspiring TED speakers within the Badassery community, with an emphasis on how lengthy it can be and the lack of linearity throughout. According to the TEDx speaker, accepted twice for her identity branding and management talks, it can take as many 30-50 applications on average, equating this process to that of college admissions, before an applicant is successful in gracing a TEDx stage.
While emphasizing how lengthy and exclusive this process can be, Irina also shared her genuine enthusiasm for the TED application process. For Irina, distilling her idea down to one sentence allowed her to better understand what she was wanting to speak about as well as to wholly consider the impact her idea might have:
“I decided to bring somebody in for part of it because once you go through [something] one time there's a lot of things you already know and you can then replicate the second time. I think what I needed a little bit of help [was that] my topic is a bit of a taboo topic, and I needed a second voice to make sure I can package it in a way so it belongs on a TEDx stage.
Before you are even ready to apply, there's a few things to think through: things that get asked in any application. Across the board, the applications are very similar…slightly customized depending on which event you are applying for… but they will be asking you for the standard things: your bio, headshot, and all of those things. Having [those things] ready and prepared is important, but then [the application] also gets into: What is your idea? Give us one or two sentences…”
“You need to be able to capture what you want to do in that talk in one sentence. That's it, and that's pretty much in every single application…”
“Also something that's important to think about: some of the applications ask for full drafts of your whole talk. That's a lot because usually when you apply you're not there yet (you’re still in the ideation stage), but I would have–at least–an outline ready that is less than 250 words, and on that is more than 250 words. If you have something in 250 words, you can adapt it for each application, but you want at least some kind of overview.
Some other questions: (1) why do you want to talk on our stage? *This depends [on your stage’s location]. Your answer will obviously differ. Alos, (2) why are you the right person to talk about this? *If you have any credentials, you can bring them in, or if this is based on your personal experience you have gone through. And then it could be any variation of questions around (3) why does this matter to our audience? (4) How should they feel when they listen to your talk? (5) What do you want to accomplish? (6) What are your top three favorite TEDx talks?
This is the baseline you should have ready when you say: okay, now I can apply.
My first recommendation would be: if you have any preferred stages that you know about that's a good starting point. Otherwise, usually the applications start around six to seven months out [from the event date]. [For] some of them, it’s a little bit longer. You can also go on the TED website, and then just browse by date and all the open stages will show up.
Also, I always signed up for all of the newsletters for all of the talks that are coming up. Once they open up the application, you're actually going to get a notification right into your inbox. But, I would advise: if you have a look through their site, and you see [TEDx] did a talk in June this year, you likely know they're going to have another talk in June of next year. If you keep some kind of tracker around it, it's advice to then go [check the website] six months out.
Obviously, if you want to engage a coach, you would be able to get access to open TEDx applications, but obviously that comes with a cost as well. [Instead] if you want to drive this organically, then that would be my recommendation.“
“On average, I think it's between 40 to 50 applications to get your talk. That's real. Last time, I sent at least 25 [applications], but I hear on average it's around 40 to 50 to actually score the talk.”
Having delved into the world of TEDx with the wisdom of Irina Soriano, one cannot help but be inspired by the transformative potential of a well-crafted idea. Irina's journey, from tackling gender parity in her first TEDx talk to her upcoming talk in New Jersey, sparks a curiosity about the diverse narratives waiting to be uncovered on the TEDx stage.
The power of TEDx lies not just in its stages but in the untapped reservoir of ideas waiting to be explored. So, the question lingers: what's your TEDx-worthy idea, and how might it shape the conversations of tomorrow?
For more from Irina Soriano, visit her website where you can learn how to take ownership of your career, influence others, and drive change. Badassery members can learn about the TEDx ecosystem and hear the rest of Irina’s workshop in the Badassery Academy. Not a member yet? Join us on the waitlist!
