Prepared for Takiya Eastmond
TEDxMSU: the crown jewel.
The platform absorbs the promotion. The person gets the lift.
The whole thesis in one line: when TEDxMSU convenes the stage, curates the lineup, and publishes under its own brand, the person on stage is read as sharing an idea, not selling themselves. That's what makes it work for rising stars who need a launchpad and senior figures who'd rather not self-promote. This deck is the case for growing what you already built into Morgan's premier convening platform.
Open the Vision Deck →The evidence behind the crown jewel.
Before proposing where TEDxMSU should go, we studied where the best already are: 11 R1 university programs (Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Howard, Morehouse), 8+ corporate platforms (TED@Company, Talks at Google), and the reputation mechanics behind why being chosen beats self-promoting. Everything cited to primary sources.
Open the Dossier Deck →A computer that computes on atoms.
Fields without a shape yet are fields anyone can still get into the room for.
Right now, quantum computing doesn't have an established pipeline the way software engineering does, no standard bootcamp, no obvious on-ramp, no gatekept credential that decides who's "allowed" in. That's rare, and it's an access opportunity: the people who get in early and build real fluency now won't need permission later, they'll already be in the room. Worth keeping in mind as you go through this, not just as two people curious about the science, but as two people who care about who gets a seat at tables like this.
Michio Kaku: The Rise of Quantum Computers
Kaku walks through the three eras of computing (analog → digital → quantum), why a qubit can represent superposition instead of just 0/1, why decoherence is the central engineering problem, and the biggest possible payoffs: fertilizer from nitrogen, fusion stabilization, modeling disease at the molecular level.
▶ Play here →Tiny magnetic waves could unlock penny-sized quantum computers
Magnons, tiny magnetic waves once thought too short-lived to be useful, may offer a path to dramatically smaller quantum hardware.
Read →
Why this 98-qubit quantum computer is a big deal
Quantinuum's new "Helios" machine, built with trapped-ion qubits. A look at why qubit count alone doesn't tell the whole story, and what does. (Diagram: the Bloch sphere, how a single qubit's state is actually represented, every point on the surface is a valid state, not just "0" or "1" at the poles.)
Read →Fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2028: DOE sets a hard deadline
The Department of Energy's "Quantum Genesis" program aims to build the first fault-tolerant quantum computer for real scientific work by 2028. Includes a genuinely useful stat: the world has only 600–700 quantum error-correction specialists today, and the field will need up to 16,000 by decade's end. That gap is the access opportunity, spelled out in numbers.
Read →Chicago Public Schools ready students for a quantum future
K–12 students in Chicago designed their own versions of a real 128-acre quantum computing research campus being built in their neighborhood, as part of a Minecraft Education competition. A concrete example of what "getting into the room early" can look like at the community level, not just the university level.
Read →Where AI meets who leads.
Building an AI Center of Excellence for Higher Education
AI is already embedded across universities, unevenly, and often without coordination. What it looks like to actually organize around it instead of letting it happen ad hoc.
Read →College leaders gather to collaborate on AI adoption
Nearly 200 participants from 30 institutions at Complete College America's AI and Student Success Summit. A snapshot of how fast institutional AI strategy is moving right now.
Read →From AI Policies to AI Literacy in Education
Three years post-ChatGPT: how the conversation has shifted from "should we ban this" to "how do we actually build literacy." Useful frame for thinking about what TEDxMSU could platform on this topic.
Read →- The Kaku video: what's one claim in there that you either don't fully buy, or that surprised you? I want your actual reaction, not a summary.
- Quantum + your lane: nothing here has to become "your thing." But if one article snagged your attention more than the others, tell me which and why, that's data for both of us on where this could go.
- TEDxMSU: is there a quantum computing or AI angle worth a future TEDxMSU talk, given what Morgan's building? You know the room better than I do.
- The access angle: you've spent your time here opening doors, STEM outreach, Fearless Tech, the Adult Learner's Alliance. Does quantum computing feel like a field where MSU students could get in early, or does it feel closed off right now? What would it take to change that?
- Open question: what do you actually want to be able to do with quantum computing knowledge a year from now, build something, speak about it credibly, evaluate it as a leader, convene other people around it, something else? We don't need the answer yet, just start circling it.