LEWISTON — Imagine that you were invited to a party and you have been told ahead of time that the other guests at the party are guaranteed to be the most interesting group of people you have ever met in your life. Then, imagine that the people who are throwing the party are so dedicated to the success of it that they have hired professional “coolness coaches” to help you appear to be cool, so that when you get to the party, you’ll not only be listening with jaw agape at all the interesting people, you’ll have something cool to contribute yourself. Now, imagine that when you get to the party, everyone not only wants to hear what you have to say, they clap and cheer for you when you’re done saying it. Finally, imagine that there are snacks and lunch and a gourmet-catered, 100 percent-rocking After Party at a happening restaurant called Fuel.

This is what it’s like giving a TEDx Talk for a TEDxDirigo event. TEDxDirigo is cool. Flat-out, no doubt, cool. There’s no arguing this point. The people who run it are some of the most dedicated I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

Adam Burke has the best job in the state. Not only does he find himself living and working at the epicenter of forward-thinking people, working on ways in which to tackle the immense transition that our civilization is going through, it is his job to gather stories about that and put them in front of the world to see. TEDx is about “ideas worth sharing” and Adam is the High Priest of that at TEDxDirigo. It doesn’t take long to envision the kind of people who want to be associated with that energy. Let your imagination run wild, think about the most engaged, giving, and interesting friends that you’d like to make. That’s Adam’s team.

Earlier this summer, I knew that I’d be giving what is now almost universally known as a “TED Talk”. I had entered the TEDXDirigo Try-Outs in Lewiston and won the privilege to speak on Oct. 20, at TEDxDirigo Villages, which was held at Bates College. I spoke about the Wood Chop School and how we are in the process of building the single most successful business on the eastern seaboard while saving western civilization in the process. It’s a very compelling story. It won me a spot presenting at TEDxDirigo Villages and two one-hour coaching sessions with a professional speaking coach.

A few weeks after the contest, I received an email from the organizers introducing me to my coach and letting me know how many minutes I had to speak. Now, this wasn’t just any coach. Elise DeRosa flies all over the world teaching executives how to effectively give speeches. Having worked with her, I can assure you that there is no check too large or with too many zeros to pay for what this woman can do.

After receiving tips on speechwriting, I met Elise at the performance space at Frontier in Brunswick and we started to work on my talk. I had created a great deal of anxiety. My subject is dear to me and I wanted to express that to the world in the most compelling possible way. No pressure. The coaching process was something that I had won the right to claim. It was part of my prize, but until I met with Elise, I had no idea how valuable that prize was. When I started with her, I felt very much like a sock monkey: cute, cuddly, sitting on the edge of the bed with a smile frozen on my face. By the time I left her I felt as powerful and confident as a silverback ape!

(Seth's TEDx Talk comes at the two-hour, three-minute mark. Set the video to play and then move the button along until you see Seth!)

There were 17 of us chosen to talk ... oh, and a marimba band ... and a guy on drums named Shamou. We had a dress rehearsal on Friday, Oct. 19, and were told to arrive at Bates at 9 a.m. Saturday, ready to go. The three sheets of paper that made up my talk had been tweaked so many times, I had gone through one black ink cartridge and a ream of Staples office paper getting it right. I read those three sheets at least 200 times.

At 9 a.m., I walked through the front doors of the Olin Arts building at Bates College and was greeted by the support team and directed to the table where my credentials sat. The clear sleeve held a rectangular card covered with the familiar TEDx black background, trademark red TEDxDirigo logo, above that the theme of the day, “VILLAGES”, and immediately below that my name.

Three small pieces of paper were included with the speakers credentials and were placed in the back of the pouch. One was a lunch ticket, one was a business card for the Treehouse Institute, and one was a ticket that entitled speakers to a complimentary, impossibly cool TEDxDirigo-themed Sea Bag that my wife Jessica immediately claimed as her own. When we registered, we were told to include three words that others could read on our credentials to inspire conversation. Mine were: “Sustainability, Paradigm Shift, Local.” At the bottom was a graphic of a house. The houses were color coded. Hundreds of them on hundreds of credentials were red. A red house signified that you were attending and in the audience. My house was green. There were fewer than 20 like it. Mine came with an expectation: I was going to talk. So there I stood, saying goodbye to a supportive wife with an impossibly cool shoulder bag as I went backstage at the Olin Arts Center.

Stacy Mitchell took the stage two speakers before me. She spoke about big box stores and their impact on our culture and economy. She was my pacing partner. Together, we walked the long hallway backstage and whispered our speeches over and over. Dr. Conor Quinn has really great hair. Fantastic hair, actually. He also is one of the world’s leading authorities on dead languages.

My friend, Conor, stayed in one place, on the couch in the Green Room as he went over his talk. All of his extra energy went into his arms as he practiced. He sat there and whispered to himself and gesticulated, his hands offering at once confidence and an invitation. Mike Tetreault from the Nature Conservancy went first. I have no idea how he did this. Maybe I do. What I meant to say was, I had no idea how he got the nerve to do this, but he did, and it looked like he had done it thousands of times before.

Anjali Appadurai went last in our group. Anjali calmed her nerves by sitting next to Conor and going over her note cards and then pacing the Green Room floor, sure of herself and her subject, but making sure to check her hair, which was also great. In the hair department, Mike and I were at the bottom of the pack. He and I agreed to this fact while drinking tea and munching Ricola lozenges in the green room. I’d have to give the best hair award to Conor.

My time came. The mic pack was placed on my belt right below my left kidney. Molly, the speaker wrangler who has a tattoo of a dragon emerging from a cloud on her forearm, untucked the back of my shirt and through my collar, snaked a wire that was connected to a mic that went around my ear. Behind the black curtain that separated me from the most public nine minutes of my life, and tucked in a nook that contained the radio receiver and sound equipment that got it’s signal from the flesh colored bud hovering three quarters of an inch from my cheek, sat a college student who wore a headset. I spoke into the mic softly and he gave me the thumbs up sign. There was a hand placed on the small of my back. It was Molly. From center stage, from the middle of that red circle of carpet that has heard so many astonishing things, co-\host Janice O’Rourke said, “… Seth Silverton!” and the hand that was attached to Molly gently pushed me and I was through the curtain walking to the big red circle and there was the wall of people and faces, Steve, Jessica, Phuc, Adam, and hundreds more all clapping and the bright, bright lights.