What If

April 2025

About the Event

The overarching theme of the 2025 conference is “What If?” With the theme “What If,” we invite speakers to reimagine what particular systems or their lives could look like if they had made a different choice.

Topics for talks will range from personal to global, exploring themes in the past, present, or future. There will be a main focus on decisions and the butterfly effect, and we hope to leave audience members with a sense of possibility.

2025 Speakers

North Carolina Stage Company

This is the fourth year North Carolina Stage Company is hosting the event! Currently in its 20th year, North Carolina Stage Company is a 127-seat Off-Broadway-style theatre in downtown Asheville. In addition to six shows during the main stage season, the theatre hosts a series of guest artists, offers educational programming, and tours performances to audiences who often lack access to professional theatre. NC Stage has received recognition locally and nationally from the North Carolina Theatre Conference, Dramatists Guild of American, National Endowments for the Arts, and the American Theatre Wing, and continuously strives to connect people to plays that illuminate the shared human experience.

 

What is TEDx?

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxYouthFranklinSchoolOfInnovation, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxYouthFranklinSchoolOfInnovation event, TED Talks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.