A TED Talk needs drama. It needs reinvention, a lesson, some levity, and enthralling visuals. It needs to be deeply personal and to provide a universal takeaway—and it needs to be no longer than 18 minutes.

The technology, entertainment, and design conferences started in the ’80s and brought together a globally recognized cast of speakers—who showed up pro bono, and still do—to share “ideas worth spreading,” per the tagline. The biannual-ish conference, “Big TED,” is still going strong, churning out viral videos of Bill Gates, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Brené Brown. But the concept has since spread to some 3,000-plus regional TEDx events across the globe.

The 12th annual installment of our own, TEDxPortland, returns to the Keller Auditorium Saturday, April 27. This year’s bill of a dozen speakers features a handful of CEOs, as you might expect. But there’s also a chef and a coffee luminary, a late-in-life fashion influencer, a rapper, and a modern dance company.

The daylong affair starts at 9am, with three performances (maybe four; more on that in a moment) spliced between the signature monologues. The sets, often from musicians, have historically varied from the artists’ regular programming. Like the talks, it’s difficult to deduce exactly what they’ll entail ahead of time, which is part of the draw.

Y La Bamba, longtime Portlander Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos’s pioneering Mexican American band, released its seventh album, Lucha, last May. It catalogs Mendoza’s move from Portland to Mexico City, their parents’ home country, which they made in part to study their ancestral roots. Mendoza’s innovative bridging of cultures and musical genres carved a new, multicultural place in the aughts’ indie rock scene, especially in Portland, where outfits descending from Eurocentric rock-‘n’-roll were king—like Modest Mouse, who’s also playing at this year’s event. After decades of lineup shifts, radio hits, and a Johnny Marr interlude, Isaac Brock’s band veers in yet another new direction on its latest album, The Golden Casket. Though not devoid of the band’s squealing guitar-led sound, the record employs something closer to a Foley artist’s repertoire: a “spacephone,” a “Fun Machine,” and “soft drink percussion” (read: Isaac Brock playing a Diet Coke) are all referenced in the liner notes.

The lone nonmusical performer is Open Space, a dance studio known equally for its approachable classes and its formidable modern dance company, the latter of which will take the stage—though it will be interesting to see if the show incorporates both aspects of the business. It’s common for performers here to advance a mission statement of sorts that they wouldn’t necessarily push at a standard gig, but some acts bridge the gap between performance and PowerPoint presentations more directly. One on this year’s bill is ripe for this fusion: the Brooklyn, New York–based rapper Kota the Friend, who’s released several songs about Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, is listed alongside Dr. Scott Bolton, a NASA physicist since the ’80s; however, there are no intimations of what exactly the pair have planned.

It’s easier to guess at what other presenters will cover. Lou Featherstone, a British woman known for her big glasses and personality, stumbled into a career as a fashion influencer, as one does, in her 50s. She’s a sex positive advocate for seniors, or in her words, a “menopausal mindset shifter.” The James Beard Award–winning chef of Le Pigeon and Canard Gabriel Rucker has for years been an outspoken advocate for sobriety in the restaurant industry and helped to found the Portland chapter of the national support group, Ben’s Friends. Another James Beard Award–winning presenter, Ian Williams, is equally community-minded. Despite his sneaker-themed coffee shop’s relatively small physical, ahem, footprint, Deadstock Coffee may well be the most recognized sneaker-obsessed café out there, and Williams is constantly using his pull to spotlight new food carts and BIPOC Portlanders looking to get their projects off the ground.

Williams won’t be the only socially conscious sneaker head in attendance. Larry Miller, chairman of Jordan Brand Advisory Board and former Trail Blazers president, famously helped turn Michael Jordan’s successful run of Nike shoes into its own $4 billion brand. Meanwhile, he’s been a regular education and civil rights advocate, and a public role model: his 2022 tell-all memoir, Jump: My Secret Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom, recounts his path from teenage Philadelphia gang member, including a murder charge, to high-profile executive. Sounds like a TED Talk, no?

See TEDxPortland’s website for tickets and a complete event listing.