[email protected] was held online for the first time in its history this year. While it lacked the cheerful audience and vibrant atmosphere of past events, it made up for it by attracting an even bigger audience. 

“Although it had to be held online, I had an authentic experience thanks to the organizing team,” said IISJ’s Chinmay Kulkarni who spoke at this year’s event. “For a long while, I wanted to express my love and passion for music and was finally able to showcase my ideas at a perfect stage like TEDx,” he added. 

Watch Chinmay’s TedxYouth talk here.

With the theme “Spot Your Light,” the organizers sought speeches focusing on finding positivity during COVID. The event was held on Discord, an online communication platform, which enabled people from outside Tokyo and even outside Japan to take part. In fact, organizers exceeded their offline audience capacity of 200 when 360 people from around the world attended the online event. 

“The team had to take immense extra efforts in organizing and financing an event online for the first time,” said Chinmay. “The speakers were also well prepared and the studio room for recording [the speech video] was also carefully selected for the best video experience,” he added.

Gaining confidence from the online event, the organizers are planning to set up more [email protected] online events starting in May. These events will be targeted at youth to engage in discussions with inspirational guest speakers.