After several days of decidedly non-summer-like weather here in Kraków, we were lucky to have at least a lack of rain if not all-out sunshine leading up to TEDxKrakówLive yesterday afternoon. Perhaps the lack of raging thunderstorms inspired our audience to venture out to Forum Przestrzenie en mass, though we like to think that the quality of the TED Global speakers they would see had something to do with it.
We began with only a slight delay and tackled some heavy subjects right out of the gate: income inequality, depressions and recessions, preventing the apocalypse, the inflated power of ratings agencies, and the misperception of government innovation, amongst others, in the day’s first session, called “Money Talks”. If all that sounds too serious, soon enough professional pickpocket Apollo Robbins came out on the TED Global stage and proceeded to divert our attentions (while “borrowing” some wallets). Afterwards, Toby Eccles presented a business model for real social change, from prisons to school systems.
During our break, we announced further news about our main event, October’s TEDxKraków, including three of our first confirmed speakers. They include designer Vadik Marmoladov, Steve Crawshaw of Amnesty International, and a local maker named MichaÅ‚ Zomowski, who built his own astronomical observatory. Finally, we asked for your input in designing our conference program by suggesting speakers who would fit our theme of MAKE! and you did not fail us. For those who participated in our brainstorming session, we want to thank you for your great suggestions, some of whom will undoubtedly show up on our stage this year!
The second session was called “World on Its Head”, and featured Talks about such diverse topics as NGO skaters creating their own public spaces, a community of mostly women who choose to live in Chernobyl’s dead zone, or the non-existence of Latin America. We ended with a session titled “Listening to Nature”, where the definition of nature ranged from actual wildlife and its many forms of communication to the language of bees to our very brains.
We wanted to thank all of your for joining us at TEDxKrakówLive, as well as Forum Przestrzenie for their awesome space and Ericpol and AON for supporting our event!
While TEDxKrakówLive ended last night, the TED Global conference is going on until Friday, and you can read about all of the other speakers on our TED Global preview. Afterwards, the Talks will be available on the TED Global website, while we here at TEDxKraków will be busy preparing for October’s conference. Remember: we still need your speaker suggestions! Send them to us and we’ll see you soon!