TEDxKrakówCinema - a new initiative from TEDxKraków

We’ll be getting together to watch TEDTalks and TEDx talks and sharing the TED experience with Kraków

Each time we will focus on a different topic.

Why TEDTalks?

We’d like to create a comfortable space in Kraków for creative debates about the role of technology, education, human behaviour in creating a more harmonious future, where ideas are the source of intelligent and constructive collaboration rather than conflict.

This month

The guest of the May edition of TEDxKrakówCinema was Bartosz Pilat, a journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza in Kraków, who spoke about the craft of journalism and the situation of mass media in today’s world. Bartosz presented the circulation figures of Poland’s most important newspapers, both domestic and international, from recent years, and tried to answer the question of why the sales of print edition of newspapers have decreased so drastically? He also discussed topics such as the reliability and credibility of information and how sometimes the news gets distorted. This was illustrated beautfuly in the first TED Talk of the evening delivered by Alisa Miller, Director of Public Radio International, who talked about why the American media show less information about the real world, even though people would like to hear more about it. The second talk of the evening was King Citron and the "Long News" project, which aimed to collect information about the news that will matter in the long run instead of news that matters today (and is forgotten tomorrow). King Citron wondered which of the vastly publicized news stories will be meaningful in 100 or 1000 years? Which really impact the fate of humanity?

After the two talks, Bartosz Piłat together with the audience talked about why the current quality of Polish news is so low and that means. He talked about the pace at which news is delivered, the impact of the Internet, the fact that information can be shared (almost) for free, and the situation of the Polish press. He also revealed a few secrets from the job of a journalist - about the role of informants and embargoed news (when the news copy is prepared in advance of certain events for example, information about the death of a famous person ready to be published before their death) - and what happened when that information gets accidentally published. The meeting ended with a third TED Talk from Markham Nolan, who in his speech pondered the topic of truth versus fiction. During a TEDSalon in London, Markham described the methods that he and his team use on a regular basis to verify information, for example, to determine whether a photo is actually real or whether a movie that was leaked to the network is not a hoax.

At about 20.30, all the eager TEDxCinema participants descended downstairs to the Pauza bar to continue the discussion.