It’s easy to forget about the good things in Kosovo. Kosovo can feel suffocating, even oppressive, especially toward those who have good will and good ideas. But for the past few years, there’s been one event in Kosovo whose sole purpose is to tell our stories of hope and success: TEDxPrishtina, our own TED affiliated event. TEDxPrishtina is an independently organized, day-long conference that allows Kosovo’s innovators, pioneers, and storytellers to share their stories with us and the world.

Since 2010, Kosovo has hosted two editions of TEDxPrishtina, one edition of TEDxAUK (American University in Kosovo), and one edition of TEDxPrishtina Women. I’ve attended all of them but one, was lucky enough to have been invited to speak at one, and for the past several months I’ve been a member of the organizing team for the third edition of TEDxPrishtina, taking place all day tomorrow at the Faculty of Philology.

A group of us, all volunteers, have been meeting up once a week since May to put the event together. Our team comes from very different backgrounds – we are a small group of students, techies, marketing professionals, teachers, designers, researchers, and activists. Some of us are old hands at organizing previous TED events, and others like myself are completely new to the behind the scenes work of putting together an elaborate, bilingual, highly produced day-long event.

As I’m writing this, the team is running all over the city, either setting up the stage, answering ticket queries, handling the catering, putting last minute final touches on speeches, or heading over a TV interview. We’re all a bit on edge, and on a bit of an adrenaline high. This isn’t the hardest part though.

The hardest and most conflict-ridden part were the debates that we had amongst ourselves during those early months, at our weekend meetings at Dit e Nat. The theme of this edition is Newborn, a word which we believes captures where our country is at right now: a country that is rebuilding and redefining itself. What are the visions for the future that we hold for ourselves? What does it mean to start from scratch in a place like this? How does this newborn country heal from its painful past? What are the stories that we tell about ourselves, and how do they define us? These are just some of the many questions we grappled with while figuring out who to invite and which stories to showcase.

Since then, our list of speakers has become defined, and we believe that they reflect the richness and diversity of opinion present in Kosovo’s society today. A small sample of our speakers include forward-thinking leaders like Prishtina mayor Shpend Ahmeti, innovators like the Innovation Centre Kosovo’s Kosovare Krasniqi, culture activists like Dokufest’s Nita Deda, fighters like Kosovo Liberation Army veteran Mimoza Shala, and tradition and taboo-breaking storytellers like photographer Jetmir Idrizi and filmmaker Kaltrina Krasniqi.

The response has been incredible. With little to no marketing and with a lot of reliance on our Facebook page, TEDxPrishtina received 200 applications for tickets within three days. Most of the applicants are high school and university students, something that tells us that there is a thirst among younger generations for optimism, inspiration, and a can-do attitude, rather than the fatalism that seems to define Kosovo’s headlines.