TEDxDhakaLive 2013 was the first TEDxLive event showing a TED Conference live video streaming in Bangladesh. The organizing team of TEDxDhaka were a little skeptic about the success of a simulcast event at first. But after the event they had to change their mind. The event was not flawless, however we surely call it a success! The attendees loved watching TEDGlobal live and they enjoyed the time all the way including the breaks.

We hand picked the attendees and around 80-100 showed up, which is somewhat an extraordinary turnout. And they were an amazing group of people with curated majority of young students. We hosted a small workshop during a break with interested attendees about ‘how to host a TEDx event’. The target was to encourage the students from different universities in town to host TEDxUniversity events in their own campuses. It was quite an informative and interactive session with participation from all directions. It included a lot of behind the scene stories of organizing TEDxDhaka from the Organizing Team’s experiences.

The venue EMK Center helped us in every possibility. Their volunteers and crew were efficient, generous and welcoming. And thanks to EMK Center for giving us the facility for free of cost since we did not charge anything for tickets from the attendees. The Ted Cafe adjacent to the main hall sold good snacks and drinks at a very reasonable price to the attendees. The internet connection for the live streaming was supported by Qubee with a 4mbps connection. It worked moderately well with no major glitches during the live streaming. Thanks to Qubee for their generous support.

We set up a separate screen for the live #TED twitter feed. Many among the TEDxDhakaLive audience joined the global conversation on twitter while watching the talks.

The breaks were full of waving hellos to strangers from different disciplines and backgrounds sparked enthusiastic conversations about the talks and beyond.

We look forward to keep organizing this type of smaller, intimate events around the TED simulcasts in the future.