Passion Talks 101: What Makes A Great Passion Talk
Saturday, May 22, 2021 – 10am Pacific
This information session, given by Passion Talks Founder Dr. Sherol Chen, will define and explain what Passion Talks are. It’s open to all people who are interested in learning about cultivating and communicating their passions. We will summarize lessons learned from a decade of presenting our passions at Passion Talks. This workshop is open to the entire Passion Talks community, especially to those considering submitting a talk.
Sherol Chen has studied and built Artificial Intelligence for over a decade. Currently, she is part of Google Research working on building and understanding large Machine Learning models. At Google, Sherol advocated for Cloud enterprises, worked at Google Brain for Machine Learning in Music and Creativity for project Magenta, and built algorithmic search results for YouTube. She’s taught Artificial Intelligence for Stanford University Pre-Collegiate and around the world in Kazakhstan, China, India, Chile, and Peru. Her PhD work is in Computer Science, researching storytelling and Artificial Intelligence at the Expressive Intelligence Studio. Sherol is also a founding member of the Google Inter-Belief Network and served as an inaugural steering committee member for the Google Christian Fellowship.
Workshops for this year’s conference submitters and speakers
Wholeness and Activation: Inverted Church
Saturday, June 19, 2021 at 10am Pacific
This workshop will be for anyone who submits to this year’s Passion Talks and welcomes people of all faiths to attend, although the content will be entirely within Christian principles.
We tend to think of church as a place we attend. What if church is anywhere and everywhere? In today’s workshop, I’d like to look at church as a byproduct of great discipleship. Someone once said, “Plant a church and you may or may not get disciples”, “Make disciples and you’ll always get the church.”
When Jesus started his earthly ministry, he proclaimed the Kingdom of God. Repent, he said, for the Kingdom of God is near. Jesus started with the Kingdom. Then he went up on a mountain to pray. Soonafter, he chose 12 ordinary men to be his followers. He said to them, “Come follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of men (& women). Jesus started with the Kingdom, and then he went right to Discipleship (he didn’t wait for a formal gathering). As he discipled the 12, he sent them out into Society, 2 by 2, to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. This was Christianity 101 (we tend to think of this as Christianity 401).
One of his disciples, Peter, preached an incredible sermon. On that day 3,000 people came to faith. Not knowing where to do with all these people, Peter put them in homes. The church was born on this day. The Church emerged out of Kingdom, Discipleship, and Society.
In today’s workshop, we want to show you how you can do what Jesus did – K, D, S, C. Your company, neighborhood, and schools will never be the same.
Dave Chae – Executive Director
Dave is the Executive Director at Connect Silicon Valley and Chief Executive Advisor at Ai-Blockchain, a global tech company in Hoboken, NJ. A former Lead Pastor (18 years) of several churches and CEO of his own non-profit, Dave is passionate and committed to expanding God’s Kingdom in the Bay Area and beyond.
Speaker Workshop: Infinite Stories
Saturday, July 24, 2021 at 10am Pacific
This workshop is for all accepted speakers for this year. Registration will be on the Submit a Talk form.
There’s something really cool about sharing something you’re passionate about — like your new crush, or that movie you saw with the crazy twist ending, or even your vision for how the world could be better — and having it resonate with the people you’re telling it to. But too often we get in our own way, because we’ve been socialized to be quiet, to nerd out less, to play small for fear of standing out. So, if you want to tell engaging stories that keep audiences hooked and inspire them to think or act differently, without feeling like we’re selling yourself out in the process, then we have to get back in touch with the part of ourselves that knows how to unapologetically express what resonates deeply within ourselves. This workshop is the place to start.
The key to great storytelling is understanding what you want to say, how you want to say it, and who you want to say it to, so this workshop will cover:
- Connecting with your audience,
- Using your body to express your story,
- Structuring stories in ways that are familiar to your audience,
- And then following your instincts to unstructure your story enough so that it stands out from everyone elses.
By learning these principles, you’ll be able to unleash the millions of stories you already have inside of yourself.
Carter Morgan – Standup Comedian and Public Speaking Coach
Carter Morgan is an international standup comedian, a developer advocate for Google Cloud, one of his mother’s 3 favorite sons (allegedly), and a public speaking coach. His training methodology comes from his experiences creating online courses like the Udacity’s “Scalable Microservices with Kubernetes”, presenting at conferences like Google I/O, and performing comedy at festivals like Edinburgh Fringe and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Join us for Passion Talks 2021!
Passion Talks 2021: Compelled by Hope
A virtual conference experience
Passion Talks 2021 