To start with, we had a full house one hour prior to the appointed time, imagine, Iraqis being on time!
And truth to be told, before time, we had 300+ attendees, even more than we had in mind.
It all started very early, 7:00 am to be exact, when the team gathered at the hall in which the event was going to be held, which happens to be in Al-Sayd (the Hunting) Family Club, a famous club in Baghdad, and the team separated in small working groups, some in logistics team, some in IT team, others in media … etc.
As the doors were opened, we saw the excitement in the attendees’ eyes as they were very eager to be part of this event. People started to sit down and chat until the event began at 10:00am, by first airing some TED Talks and selected talks from TEDxBaghdad’s previous events, followed by a classical guitar edit of the Iraqi National anthem, which took the audience into a dreamful wake.

Marwan Shawki, a member of the team, went up the stage and gave a presentation about what TED is, after which the livestreaming began and gave the audience ideas and perspectives from the other part of the world. After an hour, the first session ended and a young guitarist and singer sang a traditional Iraqi song. Following the 30 minutes coffee break, the second session began with yet another song in which the audience interacted and loved, and the second session continued to share lovely ideas and enriched the attendees with new concepts and even newer horizons to explore.