The first TEDxKraków took place at the Jagiellonian University's Auditorium Maximum on 15 October 2010 with a theme of "Texting The Dragon". This may be an enigmatic riddle to anyone who isn’t from the Małopolska region but it refers to the way in which the Kraków city authorities overcame a lack of funds to pay the bills for Wawel Castle’s dragon to breathe real fire. With this metaphor we wanted to encourage our speakers to explore the links between innovation and tradition. After all, one can’t exist without the other and Poland, a country whose identity was described by Wally Olins as “creative tension”, is an exceptional crucible of these two phenomena.

So on 15 October 2011, over 500 people gathered at the Auditorium Maximum to hear our speakers, who included a former British Ambassador, the co-founder of one of Poland's largest IT companies, a social entrepreneur, an ecologist and urban designer and a nuclear scientist, explain how they approached the tricky question of balancing progress with tradition. Watch the videos and let us know what you think!