Texting the dragon
If you are reading this blog, the chances are that you are, in fact, a nerd, and therefore you are familiar with TED. Just in case you weren't, though, I will explain: TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a nonprofit that organizes conferences where brilliant people deliver short, condensed and extremely interesting presentations on their work, research and ideas from all domains. In order to give you a taste of what they are like, here are my favourite three TED Talks:
- Sir Ken Robinson on education system and creaticity,
- Joshua Klein on intelligence of representats of corvidae family,
- Hans Rosling on statistics and developing countries.
The gaming crowd can also find some interesting Talks on their favourite subject, delivered by Peter Molynyeux, Will Wright, Jane McGonigal or David Perry.
TEDx is TED's offspring: independent events, sharing the format (license-based), that reach more local audiences. They are organized by volunteers who are mostly TED fans, willing to invest their time into making it happen, so that ideas and knowledge can be freely shared with others. When I heard that TEDx is going to take place in my current city of Kraków, I immediately joined the team and am now proud to announce it here:
You can think of yours truly as a double agent of sort - from the very start I was thinking how I could sneak something gaming-related into the event. After all, there were some precedences in TEDx conferences, such as Seth Priebatsch talking about the game layer on top of the real world or Kellee Santiago arguing with Roger Ebert's claim that games cannot be art.
Initially, I was full of ideas of whom to invite: indie games' developers, such as Cactus, Adam Atomic or Ben304, people behind Polish AAA titles, such as Adrian Chmielarz or Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński, someone from Blender Foundation, such as Ton Roosendaal - and so on. Unfortunately, though, one does not simply walk into Mordor... I mean, one does not simply invite anyone, who gets approved is a result of quite a bit of diplomacy and barter within the Speakers Committee. I did, however, manage to succeed with one double candidature: namely the duo that brought us Witcher game and Good Old Games service - Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. I think it will be very interesting to hear what they have to say about translating literature into the language of videogames.
The theme of TEDx Kraków will be "Texting the dragon", which makes reference to the statue of the mythical dragon that for a few years was breathing fire after a tourist sent a text message to a special number (you can see the statue behind Paul Klipp, one of the organizers, in this promo video). Combining modern technology and tradition, our slogan is also a symbol of Kraków, once the ancient capital of Poland, currently an active IT center with companies like Google, Motorola, Sabre Holdings, IBM and Delphi.
Other than Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński, TEDx Kraków will also feature Charles Crawford, British diplomat, Aron Solomon, head of Think Global School, Paul Mankiewicz of Gaia Institute, Mirosław Miller, president of interdisciplinary research center EiT+, as well as other interesting speakers from different domains - you can check the full list on TEDx Kraków website.
There are still a few days to register (until 1 October), but if you can't join us in Kraków, there will be live streaming provided and the presentation videos will be available after the event on our site and on Youtube. Check TEDx Kraków webpage for more information, add us on Facebook and be sure to have a look the presentations. I will share the best of TEDx Kraków on Barts News, too, so that you don't miss anything interesting, dear reader.
If you are reading this blog, the chances are that you are, in fact, a nerd, and therefore you are familiar with TED. Just in case you weren't, though, I will explain: TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a nonprofit that organizes conferences where brilliant people deliver short, condensed and extremely interesting presentations on their work, research and ideas from all domains. In order to give you a taste of what they are like, here are my favourite three TED Talks:
- Sir Ken Robinson on education system and creaticity,
- Joshua Klein on intelligence of representats of corvidae family,
- Hans Rosling on statistics and developing countries.
The gaming crowd can also find some interesting Talks on their favourite subject, delivered by Peter Molynyeux, Will Wright, Jane McGonigal or David Perry.
TEDx is TED's offspring: independent events, sharing the format (license-based), that reach more local audiences. They are organized by volunteers who are mostly TED fans, willing to invest their time into making it happen, so that ideas and knowledge can be freely shared with others. When I heard that TEDx is going to take place in my current city of Kraków, I immediately joined the team and am now proud to announce it here:
You can think of yours truly as a double agent of sort - from the very start I was thinking how I could sneak something gaming-related into the event. After all, there were some precedences in TEDx conferences, such as Seth Priebatsch talking about the game layer on top of the real world or Kellee Santiago arguing with Roger Ebert's claim that games cannot be art.
Initially, I was full of ideas of whom to invite: indie games' developers, such as Cactus, Adam Atomic or Ben304, people behind Polish AAA titles, such as Adrian Chmielarz or Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński, someone from Blender Foundation, such as Ton Roosendaal - and so on. Unfortunately, though, one does not simply walk into Mordor... I mean, one does not simply invite anyone, who gets approved is a result of quite a bit of diplomacy and barter within the Speakers Committee. I did, however, manage to succeed with one double candidature: namely the duo that brought us Witcher game and Good Old Games service - Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. I think it will be very interesting to hear what they have to say about translating literature into the language of videogames.
The theme of TEDx Kraków will be "Texting the dragon", which makes reference to the statue of the mythical dragon that for a few years was breathing fire after a tourist sent a text message to a special number (you can see the statue behind Paul Klipp, one of the organizers, in this promo video). Combining modern technology and tradition, our slogan is also a symbol of Kraków, once the ancient capital of Poland, currently an active IT center with companies like Google, Motorola, Sabre Holdings, IBM and Delphi.
Other than Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński, TEDx Kraków will also feature Charles Crawford, British diplomat, Aron Solomon, head of Think Global School, Paul Mankiewicz of Gaia Institute, Mirosław Miller, president of interdisciplinary research center EiT+, as well as other interesting speakers from different domains - you can check the full list on TEDx Kraków website.
There are still a few days to register (until 1 October), but if you can't join us in Kraków, there will be live streaming provided and the presentation videos will be available after the event on our site and on Youtube. Check TEDx Kraków webpage for more information, add us on Facebook and be sure to have a look the presentations. I will share the best of TEDx Kraków on Barts News, too, so that you don't miss anything interesting, dear reader.
