Editor’s Note: Volunteers make up the engine that makes TEDxPeachtree go every year. This post is from Grace Liao who attended TEDxPeachtree 2012 and decided to join the all-volunteer planning team for TEDxPeachtree 2013. 

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As a volunteer for the 2013 TEDxPeachtree event, I certainly understand the importance of speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. However, the importance of attendees didn’t quite sink in until conference day.

I met Ivette at last year’s conference and I  knew my day was off to a good start.

She asked if I was learning Python to which I nodded in amazement. “I read your profile on the TEDxPeachtree blog, ” she said. Content Editor Pek Suan Wyland wrote an article about me earlier in the year and Ivette had read it. Before I even had the opportunity to introduce myself to Ivette, she introduced me to PyLadies, an international club for helping women learn the Python programming language, and a Python course offered by Coursera, an organization that offers free online courses by university professors!

As a result of that conversation, I have attended every PyLadies monthly meeting since then. I have also found a Coursera Python course that matched my needs and have since completed a few sessions.

Each year brings enhancements at TEDxPeachtree and 2013 was no different. Each attendee’s name badge was printed with a conversation starter: “Ask me about [the attendee’s favorite topic].” Mine was “Ask me about Taiwan.” This worked perfectly for me. During lunch, I sat next to Christy, an attendee who started a conversation by asking me about Taiwan.  We chatted about Taiwan and about her topic of interest: books. Turns out Christy enjoyed books related to linguistics. We were so engaged in our conversation about her native language (English) and my native language (Chinese) that we did not notice that lunch was over and everyone had left for the afternoon sessions.

Without the conversation starter our name badge, I would probably have never known Christy’s love for books or about goodreads.com, a network of readers and book recommendations. We would probably not have exchanged business cards and she would never have known I was looking for a Toastmaster club. Another serendipitous result of the TEDxPeachtree experience was Christy was able to recommend a Toastmaster club that was located close to my workplace.

In my hometown, we like to use a Chinese term, “Yuan Fen (緣份),” on relationships we treasure. It means the fate or chance that brings people together. TEDxPeachtree is definitely creating Yuan Fen for our community.

Image credit: Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Flickr.

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About the Author

Grace Liao is an analyst in the financial services industry. When she is not researching public companies and industries, she enjoys reading and biking. Recently she is in training for biking over 300 kilometers in two days.