TEDxKC tickets go on sale today

One of Kansas City’s hottest tickets — it can sell out within minutes — will go on sale today. The headliners aren’t your usual rock stars, but they do include a stargazer and a star rock climber, along with experts in race relations, cancer treatment and holographic technology.

They are among the speakers for the seventh annual TEDxKC, an evening of presentations and entertainment Aug. 29 whose theme of “re:imagine” encourages new perspectives and “seeing the world as it isn’t.”

“This year’s theme gives our speakers permission to be even more expansive in their thinking,” said Mike Lundgren, founder and curator of TEDxKC, who also is director of innovation strategy at VML.

This is the fourth year the Kansas City event will be at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, and ticket sales will start at 10 a.m. Tuesday online at kauffmancenter.org and at 816-994-7222. The tickets — limit two per order — are $46 for admission to Helzberg Hall, where the presenters will be, and $26 for the Muriel Kauffman Theatre, where presenters will be simulcast.

TED — for Technology, Entertainment and Design — and its spinoff events aim to spark conversation and connection. A half dozen speakers for this year’s event have been confirmed:

▪ Zoltan Levay, the lead imager for the Hubble Space Telescope. He’s in charge of turning digital images from the telescope into scientific materials and presentations for teachers, publishers, the press and the public.

▪ Tommy Caldwell, a mountain climber, adventurer and author. He once was held hostage by militants in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, and his climb this year of the vertical Dawn Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park has been called the hardest rock climb in history.

▪ Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times Magazine columnist and author whose coverage of civil rights and segregation in housing and schools has won several awards.

▪ Anand Giridharadas, a New York Times columnist and author of the books “India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking” and “The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas.”

▪ Scott Hamilton, figure skater, television announcer and cancer activist.

▪ Barmak Heshmat, an MIT Media Lab researcher who works on holograms and other innovative uses of cameras and imaging.

This year, tickets include a TEDxKC 2015 T-shirt and gift bag and a 9-11 p.m. after-party extension on the front lawn of the Kauffman Center. TEDxKC partners, besides the Kauffman Center, include Harvest Productions, the Kauffman Foundation, the KU Edwards Campus, KCPT and VML.

And, as forward-looking as the event may be, TEDxKC notes that online purchasers should go to the kauffmancenter.org website. Tickets can’t be bought through the center’s mobile app or the mobile version of the website.

TED started three decades years ago as a conference in California, and many of its talks can be watched at TED.com. Many cities hold TEDx events, planned and coordinated independently under a free license granted by TED.

This story was originally published June 4, 2015 at 1:00 AM with the headline "TEDxKC tickets go on sale today."