5 Standouts from the TEDxPortland 2025 Lineup
Portland Timbers hype man Timber Jim at a previous TEDxPortland.
TEDXPortland organized its 13th annual conference around the word continuum. Time, that is, generally speaking—how we work with and against it, spend it, mark it, and try desperately to make the most of the hours we get. The regional event is an offshoot of the larger, international conference “Big TED,” and both revolve around a certain air of surprise and mystery. You don’t know much about what the show will entail until you’re in it. In Portland, that means you’ll be one of 3,000 people packed into the Schnitz for a day of talks and performances, Saturday, April 26 this year.
You can make some guesses based on the theme and lineup, though. The 2025 cohort features 16 speakers and performers, most but not all of whom have ties to Portland. Talks often carry a regional focus—the group is partial to the slogan “Portland is what we make it”—though not always. In contrast to a regular symposium or festival setting, there aren’t various stages or times to pop in and out. You simply sit and take in the signature “ideas worth spreading,” all of which are packaged into 18-minute presentations like an amazingly involved PowerPoint party.
Performances from the electronic artist LAERZ (coming off his first Coachella performance), the rapper Logic, and the illusionist and escape artist Jackson Rayne, among others, alternate with the lectures. It’s safe to assume a relatively standard set from the performers. Far less predictable is what the speakers will be up to. Most of them aren’t exactly touring on the lecture circuit, which makes this a unique chance to see notable figures from a huge variety of fields flex different muscles. Five speakers from this year’s bill caught our eye, so we poke around to guess at what they might have planned.
Mike Bennett
Bennett is a prolific local artist and world-builder, in the broadest sense of the term. He’s filled several public spaces with his cartoonish characters, including the Wonderwood mini golf café, in St. Johns, and a forthcoming cartoon aquarium downtown. “It’s a space for kids to be kids and adults to be kids, and to learn things,” he told Willamette Week of the latter, which seems to sum up his oeuvre, and likely a good indicator of what he’ll speak on.
Christine Sinclair
Sinclair has scored the most goals in international soccer of any player, ever. She also won an Olympic gold medal with Team Canada in the 2021 Olympics. But the former Thorns captain, who retired in 2023 after a decade with the team, isn’t one to boast. In 2022, she published a memoir that is as much about uplifting women’s sports as it is recording her own life and career. “For me it’s about getting female athletes’ stories out there,” she told Portland Monthly at the time. Quickly after hanging up her boots, Sinclair became part owner of the Vancouver Rise, one of the Canadian Northern Super League’s six founding teams.
Ivan McClellan
A journalist, photographer, and—here’s the kicker—rodeo producer, McClellan is the mind behind 8 Seconds Rodeo, the annual Juneteenth celebration of Black cowboy culture at the Memorial Coliseum. The project stemmed from McClellan’s photo book, Eight Seconds, which subverted predominant, very white conceptions of cowboy culture and replaced clichés with images of Black cowboys. Promoting equity in the very expensive sport, the annual rodeo is spreading to a second event in Philadelphia this fall.
Brian McLean
Ironically, to combat the threats computer-generated imagery (CGI) imposed on the old-school, tactile animation world, Laika’s Brian McLean turned to 3D printing. A self-described luddite, McLean devised 3D printing methods while working on Coraline to help the studio keep pace with the industry and maintain its preference for tactile stop-motion models. Today, he’s the studio’s director of “rapid prototyping.” Perhaps, a decade on, he has more ideas about employing one modern technology to fend off the erasing effects of another.
Tal Sharabi
For decades, psychedelic therapy was mentioned with a wink in Western cultures—a sort of groovy home remedy, however profound its effects. Not so much these days. Portlander Tal Sharabi is a practicing psychotherapist and leader in the field of psychedelic medicine. Ketamine and MDMA treatments are her trip, and she teaches at the local psychedelic psychotherapy training program InnerTrek.
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