A UNIQUE gathering of businesspeople aimed at unleashing new ideas and providing inspiration is returning to Woking in May next year.

TEDxWoking is seeking charismatic people to speak at the event, under the theme of Resilience for its 2021 programme.

It will be the fifth year that the borough has hosted TEDx, which is held in conjunction with Woking Works, the borough council’s business advice and support service.

TEDxWoking will again be working with an award-winning local IT support and managed services company, ramsac, to bring together a morning of engaging speakers and TED videos.

TED talks give speakers the opportunity to expose new ideas to a broad, international audience. Originally centred on the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design, TED now embraces topics across the board.

The speakers continue to inform, engage and enlighten after the event through films of all the talks being available online.

A TEDx event is a local gathering with a TED licence, where TED-like talks are presented live, and videos previously recorded at TED conferences are shared with the business community.

As part of this sponsorship, ramsac MD Rob May – an experienced international presenter – will be leading the audition process, which takes place in February.

Anyone interested in applying to join the programme may find it helpful to see Rob’s advice for giving a TEDx Talk on the TEDxWoking website, www.tedxwoking.com.

Rob's own TEDxWoking 2017 Talk has received more than 190,000 online views to date, and he will be offering free advice to confirmed speakers.

Local people with an “idea worth spreading” who are able to speak or perform for up to 18 minutes without notes on the topic of Resilience can find full details of the selection process on the website. Entries close at 5pm on Friday 15 January.

Tickets for the event, which is on Friday 21 May, go on sale in March.