TEDxWarsaw report (a work in progress :)

TED requires that TEDx hosts file a fairly detailed report following the close of each event – and a good thing, too, since TEDx is a work in progress and everyone is learning from everyone else. Seeing as we have been asked by a lot of people for bits of practical advice here are some thoughts taken out of the longer report. Please bear with me re. the brevity of this – speed seems to be very much of the essence today…

Before I quote from the report, I must congratulate the team and crew on a job superbly done. The last six months, and especially the last few weeks, have been a period of growing intensity as the level of activity built up. We invented and designed everything from scratch since ours was the inaugural event in Poland and, of course, we wanted to learn the mechanics of running a successful TEDx “from the inside.”

The event would not have happened without the dedication of Adam Liwiński who carried the administrative load for months and performed under pressure better than most seasoned executives I have met. His friends (and now mine) Łukasz Alwast and Maciej Michalski both contributed very substantial time and energy. Julian Kozankiewicz found and sealed the deal with our major sponsor, Play Dla Firm. Julian’s team at EMLab, with Chris Szymczak and Zuza Rzeszutek at the head, worked tirelessly on the endless list of details a conference like this requires, Małgosia Minta wrangled the press almost single-handedly and our friends at Prezentio Peter Zvirinsky and Iza Wojtaszek helped out with speaker coaching. The full list of team and crew is here and includes some of the behind-the-scenes people who have also helped out. Well done, troops; thank you sponsors and supporters!

A big thank you to my good friend Janusz Kobylinski for shooting our official photographs – which are available for use under a Creative Commons license on Flickr.

A massive thank you, again, to Tom Ludvigson, Paul Wertico and Krzysztof Scieranski for their musical contribution.

Here are a few photos shot by Janusz Kobyliński on the day. You can find more on Fickr and in other places byt doing a quick search for “tedxwarsaw”
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We had a professionally set-up stage, large comfortable auditorium, speakers’ mikes were attached backstage, two hand-held radio mikes (one for me as the MC, one spare), two follow spots either side of the stage, one projector, live vision mixing for projection, separate registration area out in the foyer.
To search for pictures on Flicker go here:

Recorded talks were effective but most people responded to the live speakers since a lot of them are well known in various circles in this country.

We had two video cameras and one official stills photographer.

We ran it mostly in English. Two people questioned the wisdom of this. A quick explanation of how we are part of a global community settled that.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive:
search.twitter : tedxwarsaw
search.twitter : tedxwaw

Technology worked as expected. All the systems we devised performed well. The team worked like a well oiled machine. Speakers went on cue and performed excellently well (we had coached about half of them prior to the event). All but two stuck to their assigned time. The music was incredible.

What worked not as well as I had hoped was the virtual jam – our connection to Chicago and Auckland started out well but then deteriorated to the point of me having to fade out the US and NZ musicians. But our man in Warsaw, the bass player, Krzysztof Scieranski, took over effortlessly with a solo and brought it all to a lovely close. Full report here.

We played a lot of TED talks, starting at the end of each live session and through the breaks – in the auditorium and on plasma screens in the foyer. Next time I think we will purposely OPEN each session with a TED talk as well as closing the sessions with them, that way we can potentially set the scene for each session.

What worked incredibly well was giving each session a ‘subtitle’. We had :
Change the flight path
All is not as it seems
Surprises are good for the soul , and
One small step
This helped the audience get purchase on the disparate talks and find a ‘way in’

The live stream was rather popular. We had 712,000+ server hits from 57 countries, including Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Maldives and China. The team from StreamOnLine, who handled the transmission, assure us that the only higher scoring Polish stream has been the Prime Minister with a million hits or so. Not bad, I say :) We streamed on the web and on iPhones, which proved to be a popular mode of access.

Web and iPhone streams of TEDxWarsaw compared side by side

Vegetarians appreciated having a separate table catering to their need at lunchtime

The event itself went as well as we expected but the response, feedback and “after-shocks” have been actually an order of magnitude greater than we expected. People have been blown away by the quality of the event, the venue, the speakers and what they had to say. The quality of our performers was not an inch short of awesome.

You can find our talks in the official TEDx YouTube channel, by doing a search on YouTube here or embedded into individual speakers’ pages on our site here.

What worked particularly well was having our very own “Speaker Angel” – complete with wings, yeah! You can find her in TEDxWarsaw photos if you do a search :) – assigned to looking after our speakers, herding them backstage when required and then keeping an eye on the clock. We had given her a dedicated cellphone, with the number available to the speakers and no-one else.

I honestly can say that due to the incredibly hard work by the team and crew the event has been a runaway success and we have accomplished what we set out to do, ie. establish an embryonic community of TEDsters in Poland. We are already thinking about the next one in Warsaw and there are events starting to happen in other cities.

The team are all hugely excited and new people are coming up every day to ask how they can get involved.

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Please add your URL to the GoogleDoc-based community photo and video bank here : and send around the URL http://bit.ly/tedxwarsawvisuals . Thank you!

(I’ll be adding photos etc. to this post as they become available.)