TEDx Acequia Madre: The Idea that Could Have Been

I can’t pinpoint the moment TED first appeared in my constellation of curiosities, somewhere in my late teens or early twenties, that liminal space between restlessness and the kind of hunger that has no name. The lectures existed then like artifacts from some more enlightened civilization, posted online for free in corners of the internet that felt consecrated to seekers and wanderers, people still trying to decode the mystery of their own becoming.

I consumed them with the desperation of someone discovering they’d been speaking a dialect all their life, only to find the full language waiting. It wasn’t just the ideas that magnetized me, but the sensation that somewhere in the digital ether, people were saying things that mattered, not the performative mattering of social media, but the bone-deep mattering that changes the architecture of how you see.

Meeting another TED devotee felt like recognizing a fellow traveler, regardless of which particular lectures had colonized their imagination. Relationships developed around these shared references, communities forming like tide pools around the rocks of common wonder. I’d watched dozens before stumbling into Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”—and that talk didn’t just inform me, it inhabited me. The way he wove urgency and humor into his indictment of educational systems felt like watching someone perform surgery on assumptions I didn’t know I carried. I couldn’t articulate what TED was giving me then, but whatever it was, it pulsed through my veins like revelation.

In my thirties, I began my drift through the internet’s increasingly claustrophobic embrace, and TED drifted with it, transforming from intimate discovery into institutional machinery. But I still return to those early talismans: Brené Brown excavating vulnerability, Daniel Tammet mapping the geography of his extraordinary mind, Amy Cuddy teaching us that the body could teach the soul confidence, Simon Sinek asking why, Susan Cain celebrating the quiet revolutionaries, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warning us about the danger of a single story, Jill Bolte Taylor narrating her own neurological exodus and return. I’ve watched them dozens of times, the way you revisit favorite poems, not for new information, but for the way familiar truths can surprise you when they arrive wearing different clothes.

The world has changed since those tender early days of online lecture halls. The way we share ideas has been calcified into algorithms and engagement metrics. The way we relate to ideas has been commodified into content streams and viral moments. The shift hasn’t been entirely for the better. We’ve learned to reinforce principles without reflection and to accept branded ways of thinking without recognizing we’ve been colonized by someone else’s intellectual architecture.

TED wasn’t immune to these cultural fevers. The lectures became increasingly difficult to sift through, their original categories “Interesting,” “Thought-Provoking,” “Humorous”—replaced by something more polished but less intuitive, something that prioritized algorithmic friendliness over the beautiful messiness of genuine discovery.

It was during TED’s peak cultural moment, as I was beginning my own retreat from its increasingly corporate embrace, that I was invited to help orchestrate the first independent TED event in Santa Fe: TEDx Acequia Madre. TED’s genius had been to democratize its model, hosting two official conferences annually in Monterey and Edinburgh while allowing the rest of the world to organize TEDx events that followed their guidelines but breathed with local vision. It was intellectual open source, a way for ideas to proliferate without requiring permission from the cathedral.

The invitation thrilled me; finally, a way to give back to something that had fundamentally rewired my understanding of what was possible. I was also adrift then, searching for my own direction, hungry to contribute to something larger than my personal uncertainties. Our team of five gathered regularly at a now-defunct joint in the Railyard, snacking on chips and queso while sketching out the architecture of our shared dream: venue logistics, catering possibilities, branding strategies, ticket pricing, marketing campaigns, volunteer coordination, and speaker curation. TED provided us with a strict constellation of rules, some as easy to follow as breathing, others like trying to build a cathedral with toy blocks.

We wanted to christen our event TEDx “A City Different,” Santa Fe’s enduring nickname, but discovered someone had already claimed the name and domain, hoarding them like a digital miser despite having no intention of actually creating anything. When we asked if he wanted to join our mission, he declined with the casual cruelty of someone who mistakes possession for purpose. So, we settled on TEDx Acequia Madre “Mother Ditch,” another of Santa Fe’s nicknames, less romantically marketable but more authentically rooted in the city’s irrigation history. I didn’t vote for it.

We planned to host the event at The Screen, the intimate theater at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, perfect in its understated character. I’d secretly hoped for the grander stage of the Lensic Theatre. For catering, we dreamed of Jambo Café’s African-Caribbean fusion, a local treasure that would have fed both bodies and the spirit of cultural celebration. I reached out to speakers who embodied Santa Fe’s creative ecosystem: George R. R. Martin, whose imagination had already conquered the world; Sam Shepard, our resident literary giant; Zac Condon of Beirut, our musical visionary; Noemi De Bodisco, our cultural bridge-builder; biologist David Krakauer, who understood complexity theory; and Vince Kadlubek, the founding dreamer of Meow Wolf. I imagined our event becoming the greatest TEDx in history, and I still believe it could have been.

Later in our planning, someone introduced a sixth team member, and suddenly our carefully balanced ecosystem shifted. Events like this should orbit around ideas, speakers, and place, but there’s always someone who can’t see past their own reflection in the project’s surface. Our newest addition paid the licensing fees in his name, assumed control of the planning like a hostile takeover, and declared himself the final authority on everything from our name to our menu. He chose brown bag mediocrity—plain sandwiches, chips, and a cookie—over the cultural feast we’d envisioned. His decisions systematically marginalized the rest of us until what could have been a legacy became a single, unrepeatable event.

Still, the event materialized, and that’s what ultimately matters when you’re trying to usher ideas into the world. I documented our progress through a blog, invited Vince Kadlubek to speak, and watched him succeed beyond our expectations. Later, he would speak at TEDxABQ and TEDx Portland, carrying the medicine of his vision to other communities. George R. R. Martin attended our event, connected with Vince afterward, and soon invested in Meow Wolf, enabling the collective’s rapid expansion from Santa Fe to Las Vegas, Denver, and Grapevine: concerts, community events, and permanent installations that now touch millions of lives. I planted a seed, or at least helped tend the soil where it could take root. That’s what TED was always meant to accomplish.

Organizing TEDx Acequia Madre transformed me in ways I’m still discovering. TED had never been just about information transfer. Its speakers challenged people to become better versions of themselves, to expand the boundaries of what they believed possible. That had been my experience from the beginning, and helping create space for those transformations to occur in others felt like the most natural expression of gratitude I could offer.

I’m grateful to have contributed, however modestly, to Meow Wolf’s trajectory. The collective has created sanctuaries for artists, for communities, for ideas that resist easy categorization. And perhaps that’s what TED was always meant to do, not just spread ideas like seeds on the wind but create the conditions where those seeds could take root, grow, and eventually become forests of possibility that shelter other dreamers.