Given that I’m the co-curator of a TEDx event (TEDxBerkeley), I try to support as many other TEDx Events as I can….by attending, tweeting, and when I have the time, writing about the experience. TEDxFillmore just had their event at Yoshi’s along San Francisco’s Fillmore Street this past week. Director, Producer & Writer Thomas Simpson (left), was the emcee and the theme was “Passing the Baton.” While this may mean different things to different people, typically, batons are passed in relay races. The intention is to hand off the batons from one person to another while attempting to cross the line. The baton in the case of this TEDx theme is meant figuratively and can mean past to the future, old to young, young to old, teacher to student, student to teacher and so on… The event, curated by Chris and Moki Evans brought together six speakers to a stage set up on the main floor of Yoshi’s Jazz Club, a renowned music venue designed by award winning architect Mori Moto that features the best of local, national and international performance artists. The line-up included founder of The Jazz & Democracy Project Dr. Wes Watkins, Catholic Roman Catholic Priest Dr. Victoria Rue, travel writer & adventure seeker Francis Tapon, poet and arts educator Dyanna Loeb, entrepreneur Harley Sitner and poet Zienab Abdelgany. All of them interesting, all of them engaging, all of them inspirational. Dr. Wes Watkins teaches music in an integrated curriculum that uses jazz as a metaphor to bring American democracy to life and enrich the study of U.S. History in elementary, middle and high school. “Jazz is a shared democracy, a shared experience, a shared leadership,” he says. Jazz musicians improvise and from that perspective, they live on the edge nearly all the time. They trust that…