On an uncharacteristically warm Saturday morning (for February in Poland, anyway), about 40 TEDx organizers from all around Poland met in Google’s Entrepreneur Space in central Kraków to share ideas, experiences, best practices, inspiration – and snacks – for the first ever all-Poland TEDx organizers meeting.
When we say from all around Poland, we mean that literally! Besides our own TEDxKraków team and our generous hosts at Google (and one TEDxWrocławGoogle organizer), participants included the organizers of TEDxRawaRiver (Katowice), TEDxWarsaw, TEDxOrange (a corporate TEDx based in Warsaw, for Orange employees in Poland), TEDxSzczecin (braving a ten-hour train ride across the country!), TEDxPoznań (also organizers of TEDxPoznańWomen), TEDxWrocław, TEDxCzwartekHill (Lublin), TEDxYouth@Kraków and TEDxKids@Kraków. We also had our own representative from the Open Translation Project, enabling all Polish TEDxes to help spread our speakers’ messages in many other languages.
The main issues we covered centered around sponsors (how to work with them) and speakers (how to choose, coach and promote them), as well as integration of the various events surrounding individual TEDxes and how we can work together, from sharing information to (potentially) sharing sponsors. We also got some very valuable advice from June Cohen and Emily McManus about preparing speakers:
We also discussed our TEDx talks appearing on TED.com (like our own Tal Golesworthy, whose talk has now been viewed over 500,000 times) and getting the best possible performance out of our speakers – including overcoming technical difficulties (sorry, Kristin!). It’s quite reassuring to hear that everyone has technical problems on stage sometimes, but there are often very creative solutions to these, many of which depend on the host’s reaction. Most importantly, we discussed explaining the very idea of TED and TEDx to our speakers, sponsors and audience members.
A topic particularly relevant for Polish organizers that frequently came up was language barriers. Like others, at TEDxKraków we have faced this problem before when deciding not only which language our speakers should use, but also how to be as inclusive as possible in choosing the language for our events.
Another common theme that came up from all of the organizers was the problem of sponsors – who to talk to at a company, how to get them, how to explain what TEDx is, and getting them to think creatively about working together to create experiences for our audience rather than simply slapping a logo in various places. Rhonda Carnegie gave us some inspiration:
A variation on that theme also came from Krzysztof Tomasik, the organizer of TEDxOrange for Polish Orange employees that took place just a week ago in Warsaw. As a corporate TEDx event, he had the sponsorship problem solved, but faced the same issues the rest of us face: choosing speakers both from the company and from outside, training them, selecting the audience and spreading the idea of TEDx throughout a community, albeit one based on a common employer rather than location.
We also learned about TEDxWarsawSalon and TEDxWrocławSalon, both of which are working to create a community through year-long events (kind of like our own TEDxKrakówCinema that’s coming up this Tuesday, hint, hint!).
Next, Łukasz Majewski and students from Kraków’s Tischner European University presented an analysis of Polish TEDx events from a PR perspective. Over the past four months, the students have been using TEDxKraków as a case study for analyzing the effectiveness of our events in terms of PR, social media, and promotion in general.
Our TEDx organizers conference concluded with the less formal “unconference”, where all of the organizers broke up into groups to brainstorm and discuss certain themes, such as promoting the TEDx brand, fundraising, and the technical aspects of recording our events.
All in all, we learned a lot, made some new friends, and had a blast doing it! If this looks like a fun day for you, why don’t you consider joining us? We’re always looking for a few more good TEDxers!