I have been kinda disappointed by the conferences I’ve been to lately. Wherever I go it seems I never hear something new or see people bringing ideas to the next level. Granted, I’m a sucker for new stuff and scout the web daily for it so it might be a bit tougher to tell me something new. But even the last barcamp here in Berlin was a little low on the content side.
So I’m really surprised that of all the conferences I’ve been to this year and after the mediocre experience last year, the Web 2.0 Expo Europe is the one that really gets my head spinning again.
The presentations yesterday by Alexandra about open source hardware, Leisa about about source design and Rafi about the products of Violet have been some of the most inspiring talks I have seen for ages. The coworkers at my agency will have to suffer me talking about these concepts for a long time.
Here’s an observation: Ben Hammersley did an interesting talk. It kinda felt like he was looking back at his life and telling his grandchildren to do something meaningful. It was a passionate speech but it was way to generic. On the other hand Alexandra, Leisa and Rafi did nothing but telling us what they do and that got the juices flowing.
So if you want to inspire people to do something meaningful, my suggestion would be to not tell them to be meaningful but show them people who are passionate about doing their thing. I think it has something to do with us better connecting to stories and persons then concepts and objects.
I had a similar experience with Tim O’Reilly. The blogger roundtable with him, Jennifer Pahlka and Brady Forrest was an amazing experience. 50 minutes of in-depth brain-picking with someone who is often perceived as a celebrity but who is basically just an ubergeek. I have to give him huge credit for not giving us some standard-pr-bla but raw, uncensored thoughts. It helped me to have my perception transfer from this abstract “web-2.0-daddy” person to Tim, the geek who is just passionate about the stuff he sees coming from the alpha hackers and loves to share with the world. I just like the guy. And I will follow his tweets and blogposts much closer now.
Tim passionately told the example of a guy who has a business idea and tries to get funding. But due to the tough times there’s not a chance. So he goes back to his job and starts creating some side-project in his spare time. Something he loves doing but doesn’t see as a business. And lo and behold, one day it actually becomes his business and works out much better then his first “business-idea” would ever have.
You hear a lot of stories like this at this conference and yesterday it dawned to me what big blow in the nuts this conference must be for “businesskapser”, the guys who are only in it for the money. Wherever you go you here people bitching about copycats and weak ideas. You kinda have to thank the economic downturn for that. On the other hand the word you hear the most is passion. And I love that. BerlinBlase is pure passion project. We’re doing this out of love for this scene and industry and it’s just beautiful to see so many people hopping on the same train.
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