We look forward to seeing you on March 22.

In the meantime, do click the link in the header and let us know if you know someone who should be a speaker next year.

And in case you haven’t visited yet, join the conversation on our Facebook page or on Twitter.

Congratulations to Stanisław Skórski on getting TEDxStareMiasto off the ground in beautiful Wroclaw. The event is provisionally set for December and we will bring you more news as they come to hand.

Meanwhile, in Krakow, Ewa and the team have been working overtime to bring the second edition of TEDxKrakow into the World. Their event is coming up on October 20 and there will be a live stream! Check out tedxkrakow.com for details.

Run through the superlatives below and you will quickly see that everyone came back, more than anything else, inspired into action. We look forward to seeing you in Warsaw in March – the next TEDxWarsaw is now getting organised.

From Ralph:
Apart from the very strange feeling of being INSIDE a TED Talk – which no doubt comes from having watched too many of these things, but no matter – this was by far the best organised, most mind-bogglingly diverse, riveting public event I have ever had the pleasure to attend. Seventy+ speakers on subjects ranging from dying with dignity to computer security and pretty much everything in between… (Talks are starting to get on line.) Eight hundred intelligent people with open minds and generous attitude, all of them happy to talk to a visitor from Hawkes Bay (that’s a New Zealand in-joke)… What can beat beers with Clay Shirky and sandwiches with Alain de Botton? The most positively charged crowd I have ever sat in… Flying machines, electric cars, Yemeni journalists… Chris Anderson’s indomitable spirit… Open-minded, energetic TEDx-ers from Sudan, Slovakia and Singapore (and pretty much everywhere else…) And coffee, wow, the coffee – prepared with the most loving care ever. Not a bad way to spend a week.

From Ewa:
I thought it was one of the slickest conferences I’ve been to and was hugely impressed with the amount of thought that had gone into the surrounding experiences – from the Steelcase furniture (I never realised what a difference it would make) to the coffee bars, bookshop, badges, scrapbooking, interactive Autodesk exhibits etc etc. Personally the lack of time to absorb and process information didn’t work for me, but I loved meeting the other TEDx’ers and getting a better grip of what the idea behind it is (which was the whole point of going, for me). I also had the best bircher museli I’ve every had in my life on the first day of TED-U and that alone was worth travelling to Edinburgh for.

From Krystian:
I made a lot of new friends at TEDGlobal, mostly from people working on the Open Translation Project. I liked how international and multicultural the event was, and I liked the attitude of openness towards new ideas and innovation. A lot of the talks were awesome, and I gained a lot of weight from all the food. It’s hard for me to summarize the experience. What I liked the most was certainly all those amazing people I got to meet.

TEDxYouth@Warsaw it is.

Since this conference is organised for slightly different audience than our main event, there’s no usual registration. However, if you’d like to join us on Sept. 9th, don’t hesitate to contact us!

So, how did we do?

The overall quality of the event: 91.5% of you said it was good, with 41% judging it as brilliant. The venue: 94.3% of you judged the venue as good, including 66.7% who said it was brilliant. The hosts were scored good by 87.3% (with 44.8% brilliant) and the speakers got at least “good” from 78.3%, including 28.6% who said they were brilliant. The catering scored lowest (we’re aware of the issue) with 41.6% saying it was good and 34.1% saying it was average.

So who gave the most popular talk? In a very close contest the audience prize – of a congratulatory email and a firm handshake :) – goes to Mark Krawczynski (speaking about architecture and national identity) who was consistently scored as having a great message and an energetic, inspiring style of delivery.

Sharing the podium are Ewa Wojkowska and Toshi Nakamura (technologies for the developing world), Grzegorz Piątek (on altering Warsaw’s landscape), Tomasz Grzywaczewski (The Long Walk) and Krzysztof Rybinski (on the urgent need to do something drastic to change Poland’s woeful ranking in the innovation stakes.) Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki (on dinosaur ancestors) also scored highly and other speakers were not far behind.

Where to from here? As ever, we are open to your input, comments and continuing conversations with you. For example, please let us have suggestions for brilliant speakers (especially women!) who are doing great things and have interesting things to say.

Given the huge, and evidently growing demand, and the fact that we need to keep the conferences to a manageable size, may we suggest that probably the best way to secure a seat at next year’s TEDxWarsaw would be to help us make it a success. Please use the speakers suggestion form, give us some good information about the speaker you’re proposing and don’t forget to leave your name and contact details!

As you may have noticed, we are somewhat topic-agnostic :)

Speaking of Oscars – you wouldn’t have an Academy Awards ceremony without any thank yous so, again, we would like to say thank you to:
our main sponsor, Play, for “all inclusive” help, second year in a row;
our sponsor Nokia, for helping to “connect people” during TEDxWarsaw;
our partners: the wonderful production team from EMLab, the creative heads at the Walk Group and the magicians at StreamOnline with whose help the ideas presented at TEDxWarsaw could be spread also through the internet.

Thank you to our media partners: Gazeta Wyborcza, The Next Web PL, Coaching Magazine and Focus Magazine.

Thank you to Copernicus Science Centre for being our host for the day.

And last but not least big thank you to our amazing speakers who decided to join us on stage and to our wonderful, engaged, intelligent and passionate audience – it was a pleasure to have you at TEDxWarsaw.

See you again. Soon!

PS. We’ll inform everyone about this year’s videos via website, Twitter and Facebook as soon as they will be online (which may take a couple of days).

If you were lucky enough to get an admission, you also should have received this e-mail. We’re posting it just to remind once again about the rules (and some minor stuff). Please read it carefully as it contains the answers to – most of – your questions. We are not going to have the time or manpower available on the day to handle all individual enquiries. It’s your key to enjoying the day to the fullest.

ARRIVAL AND REGISTRATION
Please don’t be late. We are opening the registration at 09:00 and starting the programme at 09:30 sharp. We all know what Warsaw traffic is like in the morning.

There are NO parking spaces available at the Science Centre (here’s a map). There is usually plenty of parking around the neighbouring streets but you will need to walk for a few minutes.

A cloak room will be available downstairs – please use it so as not to clutter up the conference spaces. Of course the cloak room will be manned by Science Centre staff but, equally, it is on an “all care and no responsibility” basis, ie. take your wallet and keys with you.

Please pick up your badge on arrival. No badge = no access to the conference and afterparty. Door staff are under instructions not to let in anyone without a badge. After 11:00 there even may not be any badge waiting for you.

DRESS CODE
Casual – ties will be surgically removed at the door!

FOOD
The event is free of charge, but thanks to our sponsors snacks will be available during the breaks. If you need something more substantial you will have to buy it on your own. May we recommend the Center’s canteen? It’s serving pretty good food at very reasonable prices.

PROGRAMME
Is available here. (Please, note that there are two languages and there will be no simultaneous translation.)

AFTERPARTY
It will start around 19:30 at Obiekt Znaleziony. If you’d like to join us there for further chats and networking simply reply to this mail (text is not required). This way we’ll have an estimate of the number of welcome drinks that should be prepared.

IF YOU KNOW YOU WON’T COME
We’ve planned to introduce a simple form for passing your seat to another person (friend of yours) in such case, but it turned out that we’re slightly over overbooked. For safety reasons, the form will wait for the next event. And it will be even bigger bang! For now, there’s no need even to send us an e-mail.

MYSTERY APP
Our friends from nethut.pl and Staszic High School prepared a web application especially for our event! It will let you vote on the talks and, importantly, notify other participants if you would like to talk to them. To activate your account, please click here and use the same address you used during registration for TEDxWarsaw – your data will easily migrate from one system to the other then.

TWO SPACES
We have two separate spaces in which to enjoy TEDxWarsaw this year. One is what you would expect at a conference – seats, dimmed lights, people quietly paying attention. The other is an experiment – a smaller space where you can relax, blog, maybe even chat (quietly!) while still watching the conference on large, gorgeous plasma screens. Space in both halls is on a FIRST COME FIRST SERVED basis, that is if you have a preference for one or the other, make sure you’re, for example, not one of the last to come back from a break. Apart from Speakers and a handful of VIPs, there are NO RESERVED SEATS. Please do not leave bags / sweaters etc. to “mark” your seat. These will be removed and the owners will be able to collect them from the cloak room. No responsibility will be taken if anything goes missing.

We will be keen to hear your comments about this idea of two spaces. It comes straight from TED and we think it might provide cool opportunitites. We’re always open to comments and suggestions so do let us know what you think.

Cellphone conversations are of course disallowed in both spaces while a session is in progress.

Live blogging is encouraged but PLEASE sit in one of the last three rows in the main conference room. You can sit anywhere if you are using a laptop or smartphone in the relaxed space.

Photos – definitely welcome but NO FLASH. If you’re sharing the photographs please send us a link to info@tedxwarsaw.com

Video – absolutely verboten during sessions but entirely encouraged during breaks. Buttonhole a speaker and do an interview for your blog! We are shooting all of the talks and they will be available shortly after the conference on the official TEDx YouTube channel.

Couple more small points. No, actually rather large points. If you’re tweeting from the event, please use the hashtag #tedxwarsaw. We became a trending topic last year. Wouldn’t want to break such a nicely begun tradition, now would we? If you write a blog post, please send us the URL to info@tedxwarsaw.com. If you upload photos, please tag them tedxwarsaw (not tedx warsaw, and certainly not tedx warszawa) so they can be easily located.

That should be it. We’ll see you there! Enjoy the day.

Please let us introduce:

Marianna Bednarska – started her adventure with percussion when she was eight. In 2008 she was a finalist at the Young Musician of the Year contest. Today she is one of Poland’s most promising percussionists and an exciting marimba player. Marianna will take as on a journey through the inspiring sounds of marimba.

Grzegorz Piechota – journalist and editor. Head of public awareness and social campaigns at Gazeta Wyborcza, responsible for initiating, planning and executing cultural undertakings and social campaigns, such as “School 2.0″ “Human health-care” and “Poland runs”. Grzegorz will tell us an intimate story about the birth of his son.

Wojtek Sówka – artist and musician who has been building and playing percussion instruments for twenty-five years. Recently Wojtek and an international team of friends constructed a set of twelve giant drums (largest in the World.) Wojtek, a practitioner of the Caribbean art of making and playing steelpans, will tell his story and play for us.

To find the most recent line-up of TEDxWarsaw check speakers page.

It is not for lack of trying. We pushed particularly hard this year to have more women than we did last year. Not because of some trite ideas about parity or to right the wrongs of centuries past, but simply because we believe that a natural balance is something to strive for as a matter of course. We are acutely aware of the need to have a variety of voices represented at a conference which aims for broad-spectrum excellence.

Given the lay of the land, we are starting to look for speakers for next year’s TEDxWarsaw NOW. (In fact two are already confirmed, but that’s another story for another post.) So here’s your challenge – we want women speakers. You can use this form. Hell, call us and invite us out for coffee, we’re easy enough to find. (No, we’re not going to publish the team’s cellphone numbers here.) But we want women speakers. We want links to videos of great presentations. We want stories of excellence and achievement. We want inspiring, breathtaking women speakers.

Send them to us!