Attend
TEDxPiscataquaRiver will be held Friday, September 7, 2018. This will be a full day event, and will be streaming online.
TEDxPortsmouth 2018 will take place at The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801.
How can I attend?
#1 — Live & In Person
Tickets for TEDxPortsmouth 2018 will go sale on TheMusicHall.org on Friday, July 27th (online at 10am/Box Office opens at noon for walk-ups/phone orders). Tickets will be $100 (limited student and senior tickets for $65) and are all-inclusive (full day conference, lunch, morning and afternoon refreshments, after party admission, etc.).
Tickets for TEDxPiscataquaRiver 2017 sold out in just over 2 hours. We recommend that you mark your calendar and set an alarm for 10am on Friday, July 27th to buy your tickets online! We have triple the capacity this year, but we still expect tickets to sell very quickly.
We are also bringing back the TEDx ticket lottery, giving away 20 tickets (in 10 pairs) for free. If cost is a prohibitive factor preventing you from purchasing a ticket, or if you miss buying a ticket before we sell out, our TEDxPortsmouth ticket lottery will start accepting entries on 10am, July 27th and will run for one week. 10 winners will be randomly selected to receive a pair of tickets and will be notified on August 3rd (5 weeks before the event).
If you want to get alerts when tickets go on sale, you can sign up for ticketing email alerts.
#2 — Watch Live Online or at a Watch Party
We have live-streamed our event for free every year, so that everyone who is unable to get a ticket to attend in person can watch the event live. We will do so again this year. You can organize your own watch party and tune in on our website from your home, office, classroom or other internet-connected location.
The livestream (featured prominently on our homepage during the event) is only up during the event — after that, the livestream is taken down and official videos of each talk and performance are produced and submitted to TED for approval and publishing on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel.
We are happy to list any public watch parties here as they are added. Organizing a watch party that you’d like us to share? Let us know.
#3 — Watch Anytime at TEDxPortsmouth.com
If you cannot attend or stream the live event, you can retroactively attend the talks and performances online on your own time. Talks typically take 1–2 weeks after the event to go live on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel. Links to all talks and performances from our previous years can be found on playlists curated by our TEDxPortsmouth YouTube channel.
2018 Ticketing Information
How do I get my ticket?
Tickets sold out in less than two hours for our 2017 event. While we have more than tripled our capacity this year, we still expect tickets to go quickly.
Here’s a cheat sheet of all the ways you can attend our TEDxPortsmouth event:
- Buy a ticket! — Tickets go on sale Friday, July 27th, online at 10am; The Music Hall Box Office opens at noon. Regular tickets are $100; student and senior tickets (limited quantity) are $65.
- Enter the lottery — To ensure that everyone has a chance to attend, regardless of their ability to pay, we’re giving 10 pairs of tickets away for free via public lottery (lottery also opens today at 10am; runs for one week, winners notified 8/3). We expect tickets to sell out before the lottery ends, so if you are able to purchase a ticket and don’t want to risk it, you should buy one.
- Volunteer — as of publication of this article, applications are still open for volunteering with us — priority given to those who can also help us set up the day before.
What if I can’t get a ticket?
Our decision to move to The Music Hall was based on our mission to spread great ideas as wide as possible within our community. That’s why we’ve included so many ways to get tickets to attend. If tickets sell out before you get yours, or if you aren’t able to purchase a ticket and didn’t win the lottery, we’ve provided several other ways to participate:
- Watch live online — we’ve made a free online livestream available every year so far, and we’re doing it again this year! We’ll have the link prominently featured on our homepage.
- Watch later — Catch the talks and performances on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel once final produced videos are uploaded. They typically take 2-3 weeks to be approved by the folks at TED.
I bought a ticket! Where is it?
Your ticket will be your name badge at the event. We’ll have it waiting for you at registration, which opens at 8am on Friday, September 7th. No need to print anything — please save the paper! Instead, please bring your reusable water bottle with you. We’re trying to plan as close to a zero-waste event as possible!
Tell me more about the ticket distribution model.
2018 Ticket Distribution Model
In 2018, we are thrilled to say that we will be able to make more tickets available to the public than we ever have before. Tickets will be distributed to the following groups of community members in the following ways:
- By Invitation — tickets will be reserved for speakers and their guests, sponsors and partners and their delegates, TEDx organizing team members, and event production partners
- By Invitation — tickets will be reserved for student delegates who have worked on TEDx-related projects over the summer, and community representatives from nonprofit, business and government sectors who are decision makers in fields related to this year’s talks;
- For Purchase — tickets will be available for purchase by anyone in the community (many TEDx events require an application process before allowing purchase by the general public; we make our tickets available for anyone to purchase)
- For Purchase — tickets available for purchase will include discounted rates for students and senior
- For Free — tickets will be given to community members for free via public lottery
- For Free — volunteer tickets will be available for free for event volunteers (those interested are encouraged to apply early in the year; priority given for volunteers involved in the weeks and months leading up to the event)
- For Free — online livestream available for free to all
Our free online livestream, which we have offered every year, is in line with our mission to spread the great ideas presented on our stage to as many people in our community as possible.
A Brief History of Our Ticket Distribution Strategy
Over the years, our ticket distribution strategy has evolved along with the growth of our community. TEDxPortsmouth is granted a license by TED to organize a volunteer-run event. TED determines our eligibility for license renewal based on our adherence to TEDx global rules and guidelines. Meeting these rules while also delivering a world-class event that reflects the unique community of Portsmouth — all run completely by volunteers (TEDx organizers are not allowed to make money from their event), has informed many aspect of how we organize our TEDx event, including how we have been able to make tickets available each year.
While TED encourages a curated attendee list, TEDx organizers may determine how they distribute tickets for their event — and it’s our goal to continue to make the event available to more people in our community each year.
The first three years of our event were capped by TED rules at 100 attendees. Since demand far exceeded our allowed audience size, we split our tickets with 75% curated invitations to ensure a diverse mix of community representatives across sectors, and 25% awarded by random public lottery to ensure accessibility. In 2015, our licensee travelled to an official TED training in Geneva (yes, the one in Switzerland!) in order to qualify to organize a TEDx event with more than 100 people. With this upgraded license, our audience size limitation was lifted only the capacity of our venue. This allowed us to double our audience size to 200 — the capacity of our longtime venue parter, 3S Artspace. Even with this increased capacity, we continued to sell out quickly every year, and in 2017 we sold out in under two hours. The most common piece of feedback we received over our first five years was that it was too hard to get a ticket to attend. While we loved our experience partnering with 3S Artspace, we did not want our event to remain exclusive to those who either had the funds to be sponsors or happened to jump on tickets in time when they went on sale to the public. Our mission is to spread the ideas presented on our stage — and the conversations that happen during our engaging networking breaks — to as many people in our community as possible.
In 2018, informed by this mission and after listening to community and partner feedback, and after several discussions with both venue partners, we decided to move our flagship event to The Music Hall. This allowed us to more than triple our capacity, offering more people in the community the chance of getting a ticket to the main event, while opening up other possibilities for continued partnership with 3S Artspace for additional community gatherings throughout the year. Some of these seats will be reserved for speakers and their guests, sponsors and partners, TEDx team members and event production partners, student delegates and leaders in local and regional government. Most tickets will simply be available to the general public for purchase, including a discounted rate for students and seniors. We are also bringing back the free public lottery to offer the opportunity to attend to those who may not otherwise be able to.
We remain committed to providing many ways to participate in TEDxPortsmouth, including entering a free public lottery, volunteering at the event and streaming the event for free online — creating opportunities for everyone to be able to participate. Please help us spread the word about all of the ways to participate in TEDxPortsmouth!
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