We take a short break from “Introducing the Speakers” series to tell you a bit about last weekend’s workshops for the TEDxKraków Award. Of the 34 ideas we received, the jury of us (your friendly TEDxKraków team) and our sponsor – the Krakow Technology Park Seed Fund – chose 8. It was a tough decision! However, these 8 made it through to a series of workshops held over 3 days and run by a group of extraordinary mentors.
So what happened? On the first day, Friday, Kuba Krzych and Marek Przystaś shared their insights and knowledge about how to develop and refine a business idea. They’re both serial (and successful!) entrepreneurs, so their first-hand knowledge was invaluable for each of our Award ideas.
On Saturday, despite the rain, our intrepid group of eight met with Paweł Sala and Mona Szychowiak for a thorough and engrossing discussion on marketing and promotion. Paweł brought everyone down to earth with tips and lessons on using statistics and numbers to verify a business model, while Mona showed us how to build a PR campaign step-by-step to achieve the desired goal.
Sunday’s workshops were dedicated to public speaking and the wider issue of interpersonal communication. We had as many as four mentors for this workshop! Joanna Wasiluk, Łukasz Cioch, Rafał Kijonaka and Paweł Tkaczyk spoke about how to speak in public, overcome stress and what to say to attract attention (and a crowd). There was an in-depth analysis of Steve Jobs’ Stanford graduation speech as well as Paweł Tkaczyk’s unforgettable story of the Lion King.
Even we have to admit that the workshops went really well! There was a great atmosphere for creative work, exchange of ideas, thoughts and opinions. You can see what it looked like here (thanks to Bartolomeo Koczenasz for the photos!).
The most important part is still ahead of us though! On 9 September we’re going to be having the final presentations and choosing the winner of the TEDxKraków Award who will have 6 minutes to present their idea on the main stage on 21 September. We can’t wait!
The TEDxKraków Award is the first initiative of this kind in Poland. We’d like to thank all the partners in this project, our mentors as well as everyone who took part. We couldn’t have done it without you!