Cleveland's third official TEDx event, TEDxCLE 2012 will take place from 9:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. on Friday, April 20, 2012 in the Cleveland Museum of Art's Gartner Auditorium. At TEDxCLE, Cleveland's innovators will speak on a variety of topics in order to highlight areas in which Cleveland is excelling and reinventing itself. This is the first time the event will be held at CMA. Tickets for last year’s event sold out in two hours and we plan for a sellout crowd of 685 this year.

Speakers have been confirmed and are listed below:

• Tom Benson (NASA) – “A New Frontier of Creativity”
• Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie (Paleontologist/The Natural History Museum) – “Searching for Our Ancestors in the Afar Desert of Ethiopia: An Incessant Affair”
• Dr. Lisa Damour (Laurel School for Girls' Research Institute) – “The Difference Between Adults & Grown Ups”
• David Rabinsky (Director of Catering, Ritz Carlton Cleveland) – “Seeing So Much More”
• Josh Taylor (Twist/formerly of Downtown Cleveland Alliance), Genna Petrolla (has worked for several CDCs including University Circle and Detroit Shoreway), and Justin Bibb (Cuyahoga County/works closely with County Commissioner Ed FitzGerald) – “Citizens & the Next Evolution of Cities” (three short talks)
• Mort Epstein (Epstein Design Partners) – “A Designer & The Community”
• Dr. Brian Grimberg (CWRU, Professor of International Health) – “Buzzkill: How Malaria Has, and Is, Changing The World We Live In”
• Phil Niles (TED Fellow 2009) – “Where New Ideas Come From: Growing Up (& Down) Euclid Avenue With the Help of Open Data”
• Dar Caldwell (Shaker Launchhouse) – Mr. Caldwell's talk will center on the state of entrepreneurship in Cleveland (*Title TBD)
• Musical performance by Lolah Brown (Ms. Brown tours the world as a back up singer for Beyonce, Sade, Nikki Minaj, John Legend, etc.)
• Musical performance by the Cloud Nothings (A local indie-rock band garnering global attention)