BEMIDJI — Within the past year, plans were in the works for a TEDx program at BSU. But the event never materialized.

So, BSU held its first TAD Talks program on Thursday.

“During our department meeting that we have, our department is the Technology, Art and Design Department, and I said, ‘Well why don’t we do something called TAD Talks, which is kind of like TED Talks,’” said Sachel Josefson, an assistant professor in the TAD department.

TED Talks have been around since the 1980s (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design) and feature events where speakers make a short presentation on a variety of topics.

At BSU, the department leaders agreed to the plan and TAD Talks was created, a gathering where leaders from both academia and the business world could share ideas with students during 10-minute presentations.

After several months of planning, the TAD Talks took place Thursday evening, emceed by Randy Acker, president and chief operating officer at Exhibitor Media Group in Rochester and adjunct faculty at BSU.

Mark Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Star, began the series of talks discussing “The Power of a Life Plan,” sharing his own experiences.

Johnson concluded with comparing a life plan as a promise to yourself.

“When you make a promise, what usually happens? You succeed, you complete that promise, you do what you intended to do. You do what you promise. A lot of creating a life plan is making a promise to yourself,” he said.

Josefson took the lead with TAD Talks, setting up the committee and selecting speakers.

“We put up an open proposal, we got responses from faculty at Bemidji State University, we got quite a few responses from our network and then some people from outside of our network, and then we also targeted certain people that we thought would do a great job with TAD Talks,” he said.

With several submissions in hand, the committee used a ranking system to select the 10 presenters. “So, there were some people that it was hard to see that they didn’t make it, but we had to kind of create an objective system and that’s what we did,” Josefson said.

Josefson hopes that the TAD Talks become an annual event.

“There are lots of different factors that play into that, such as budgets and getting people, but the hope is that this happens every year around this time of year because this week we have a lot of different things going on, which lends itself to getting speakers here and kind of creating excitement,” he said.