Damian, Jim and I had high expectations for the first ever TEDxBroadway, but we were blown away by the presentations given by our big-brained speakers.  It was an exciting and inspiring day and all of us were so thankful to each and every presenter, and especially to each and every audience member who gave up a day’s worth of work and $100 to focus on what Broadway could be in twenty years.

The talks will be online in the near (or so) future, so if you’re not a New Yorker, then you’ll be able to catch them all in their entirety.

But in the meantime, I thought I’d give you one quote from each of the 16 speakers’ presentations that I found memorable/insightful/funny.  And let me tell you, distilling it down to just one was haaaaaaard.

Here goes.

1.  Jordan Roth – “No one sets out to create something unremarkable.”

2.  Randy Weiner – “Different is my favorite word.”

3.  Neil Patrick Harris – “I find that the more I drink the more I enjoy the show.”

4.  Patricia Martin – “We are poised for another renaissance.”

5.  Joe Iconis – “I’ve never actually seen a Powerpoint presentation.”

6.  Matt Sax – “I hate to say this, but Broadway is looking a lot like Vegas.”

7.  Frank Eliason – “Customer service is about a simple human connection. We’ve lost that connection in business.”

8.  Kara Larson – “Create the future and let other people adapt to you.”

9.  Steve Gullans – “The opinion of 1000 people is better than the opinion of 1.”

10.  Damian Bazadona – “Think of Broadway as an idea factory.”

11.  Barry Kahn – “What if all Broadway theatres worked out of the same box office?”

12.  Vincent Gassetto – “Schools + Broadway = Infinite Possibilities”

13.  Juan Enriquez – “You would be doing a disservice to the theatre to ignore today’s medical questions.”

14.  Joseph Craig – “Do not ignore the male audience for Broadway.”

15.  Greg Mosher – “You can’t Google a broken heart. That’s what we need Shakespeare for.”

. . . and finally, in my “prologue”, I ended by saying . . .

16.  Ken Davenport – “People create ideas, and ideas create the future.”

And I am so thankful for all of the people and their ideas that are what made the first ever TEDxBroadway a success.

I am going to make a prediction now about our future.  You ready?

There will be a TEDxBroadway next year.

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