Holy Cross Employee Shares his Passion at Local Tedx Event

On April 11, Jerry Maday, transportation manager at the College of the Holy Cross was a presenter at TEDx, an event held at Clark University. TEDx is local form of the popular TED Talks series, which was created by the nonprofit organization TED and is devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading,” usually in the form of short, powerful talks that are under 18 minutes in length delivered by today’s thinkers and doers. The theme of Clark’s event “inspired by you” was chosen to create an experience where speakers, audience and organizers alike inspire each other to dream, share, learn and take action. The presenters were comprised of students, faculty and staff, alumni, and members of the internal and external community. The live audience for the talk was very selective as only 100 seats were available, however, the event could be attended via live stream on the web.

Maday’s topic titled “Discovering Our Hidden Similarities” which was featured in the “Live Your Passion” segment of the program discussed finding common denominators with each other and leading with creative intent. Maday chose to use his passion for music theory as the channel to illustrate the depth of connections we can make if we look closely. His talk featured the overtone series that is used in music and how instruments create sounds that include this harmonic series. Maday demonstrated this technique using a corrugated tube from the local hardware store and compared it to the musical notes of the cello. These items are completely different in their physical make-up but Maday proved during his talk that they can ultimately create the same result by spinning the tube and using air to create notes and by playing the cello and using strings to achieve the same notes. Maday urged the audience to look past the physical exterior of objects and people and focus on the fundamental intrinsic components of what makes us similar to one another.

Maday says: “The idea that I presented, I hope will help people open their minds up to seeing similarities in others that are often overlooked because we tend, as people, to only see the differences between us. Hopefully my talk shifted the audiences perspective from simply embracing the differences in each other to appreciating the intrinsic and transcendent similarities we share.” He further explains “These common denominators help us gravitate to each other and work together – amid our stark differences.”

">Watch Jerry Maday’s Tedx presentation here.