TEDxMidAtlantic: First 12 speakers announced, includes Colin Powell and Jack Andraka and Erica Saben from MD

Colin Powell is just one of the first round of a dozen speakers announced yesterday for October’s TEDxMidAtlantic, the first two-day TEDx event in the region.
Dave Troy, the primary licensee for the TEDxMidAtlantic event and the TEDxBaltimore event in January 2013, says next month’s event—taking place Oct. 26 and 27—is an event that will bring together the innovation communities in Maryland and Washington, D.C. Troy is a co-founder of Canton-based 410 Labs, the makers of Mailstrom.

“It’s designed to be a regional event that spans both communities … but then more broadly, the entire mid-Atlantic region, and also covering tech, arts, design, activism and the like,” Troy says.
Watch this video from the November 2010 TEDx MidAtlantic
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xv9kqxVMH0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0&w=550&h=309]
Troy says the organizing team for TEDxMidAtlantic, which is “roughly 50/50 Baltimore and D.C.,” is announcing speakers in batches, and more Baltimore-area speakers are to come. Right now, Jack Andraka and Erica Saben are representing Maryland. Andraka is the 15-year-old high schooler from Crownsville whose new method of detecting pancreatic cancer earned him the $75,000 first-place prize at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair in May. Saben is the founder and director of Charm City Movement Arts in Baltimore.
The theme of this year’s TEDxMidAtlantic is Be Fearless. It was Troy, actually, who first introduced a TEDx event to the mid-Atlantic.
“I had the idea to create TEDxMidAtlantic after attending TEDxShanghai back in 2009,” says Troy. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to create an event that celebrates all the great things going on in our region, and connects our changemakers together with a shared experience?’ And that’s really what TEDxMidAtlantic is all about.”