Stop clinging to the past, it's not cute anymore
23 May 2011
(Disclaimer: My company was hired by Next11 to curate the social track.
As for choosing English as the language: I think, it’s important to have this conversation on an international level. The Next Conference isn’t a German conference for Germans, it’s a conference that places Germany on an international landscape.)
There is a difference between criticizing and bitching. In my experience, people who leave a conference unsatisfied are more likely to bitch about it than to actually formulate a productive criticism. Or maybe that’s not a conference only problem. Either way, there is only little value in people bitching on their blogs about their experience. Especially, if those people are actually capable of contributing something more substantial. Instead, they actually do not care enough and bitch.
But: I especially relate to conference organizers at the moment. Having organized a barcamp a couple of years a go and a big, international conference just recently, I just know how much hard, sometimes excruciating pain it is. Yes, we do it gladly and by our own choice, but events are highly complex adventures. There are many pain points during a long organizational phase and in your last week you usually are either so busy or pumped (or both) that you don’t get much sleep. Everyone who did that once will probably never bluntly bitch about another conference organizers, just because they know the pain.
I usually stay away from picking fights with the German digital sphere. To be perfectly blunt, I just don’t care enough anymore to get involved. Most of the times, I don’t even read German blogs. That might be arrogant, but I’m just inclined to say that my interests are somewhere else.
So, why do I get involved when it comes to Next11? Mainly, because I was surprised by the sheer amount of young, ambitious people who came to Berlin to talk about their vision of the future. I expected a more business oriented conference and instead I saw an event that tried to give every of its 1500 attendees something to think about. And, to be perfectly honest, because Nico’s blog post kinda pissed me of. It’s just this arrogant, not carrying attitude towards the work that has been accomplished by the team around Martin Recke that I find offensive.
Those two days where so good that I regretted having to leave the conference venue for two hours on the second day and by that missing out on Russell Davies talk (which I heard was as good as one would expect from him). But just take a look at the lineup of speakers who came to Next11: Kevin Slavin, Christopher Osborne, Jeremy Abbett, Andrew Zolty, Usman Haque, Werner Vogels, Matt Stinchcomb, and many, many more. We are also very happy that we could contribute to this list people like Mike Arauz, Matt Gierhart and Cornelius Puschmann. Those are all people of a certain standing and renome. Before Next, one had to travel to London, Copenhagen, Geneva or Paris to see them talk and now they are all gladly accepting the invitation to talk in Berlin. If that’s not an accomplishment, I don’t know what is.
That said, of course there wasn’t total harmony at Next11. There was this strange mix of the business driven past of the conference combined with a potentially more topic driven future. It’s people in a suit clashing with the young, forward thinking makers who will shape the next few years. To a certain regard, it’s a generational disconnect.
What we in German have is an agency world that expects from the Next Conference to give them clear guidance of what to do. They want to listen to something that is easily adoptable for the German market. Something that reduces complexity instead of adding another layer. Many are not coming there to learn, but to look at potential slides they can copy for their next client presentation. With that attitude, I can fully see how one won’t regard Andrew Zoltky’s presentation about the projects Breakfast is doing as that useful. It’s to agile, to unadpotable for the clinging-to-the-past business model of most agencies in Germany.
For the conference organizers it always comes down to managing expectation before people arrive at the conference. If somebody buys a ticket, it’s important that they understand what it is they will get out of it. Some conferences are very good at that (most of them are made for a smaller audience). But that’s the only major point of critic I would aim towards the Next11 team.
But that’s not an invitation to paddle back for Next12. I think, that Next11 took a very good step in the right direction to be in a couple of years on the same level with conferences like Lift or Picnic. It will not get there by clinging to the same past all those people who bitched about the conference do. They might not come in a couple of years, but that’s okay, because there will be a completely different clientel for the conference. One, that usually is more appreciative of the work that is being presented for them.
Oh, and on another side note: Sarah Lacey and Paul Carr spent their week in Berlin and look what they come up with.
Hey Igor,
Let me chime in here as well….
Although this was my only second time at a next conference, compared to the one I attended in Hamburg two years ago, this one felt like there was more happening in general and on an international level.
I think there’s two factors at play: 1) Berlin without a doubt is the most international city in Germany and 2) it felt like there were more international folks in attendance. For a lot of people, this is just too much change to a conference that is known for being an “old boys club” kind of experience. If Germany wants to play ball on an international level people are going to have to embrace change.
In the end, haters are going to hate. The trick is not to let them get you down, and like Bucky said, make ‘em obsolete.
— Jeremy Abbett · May 23, 09:51 AM · #
Sorry, Igor, I completely disagree with you.
I’m one of those who left Next11 disappointed. I didn’t blog about it because everything I wrote last year is still in place.
First I have to say that I didn’t went to the your social track. So everything I write counts for the other tracks.
The Next doesn’t know what it stands for. It’s construction is fatally flawed. Is it an international conference? Even though that beside the speakers and some Official bloggers I didn’t meet any foreigner? If so then don’t group English speakers with non-English speakers. Especially: Don’t mix them up. A German speaker between two English speakers is an insult to international visitors.
Furthermore this is not the TED. You don’t have speakers like TED. So why go for a TED like format? 15 minute speaches with no questions is a conference format that doesn’t fit into the networked world. In most cases the audience didn’t have the chance to ask questions.
German speakers are unpolite in another way. Most of the time they do sales pitches. Boring sales pichtes. I mean, REALLY, REALLY BORING sales pitches. That’s something you have to avoid as a conference organizer. I would say, once again the Next didn’t do any speaker briefing.
So the only reason to go to Next is networking. That’s what I wrote last year and it still stands.
Until the Next finds out if it wants to be more than a giant Sinner Schrader sales pitch where the audience is a scenic backdrop I’m out of this.
I don’t think anyone wants to find definite answers on such a conference. Most people just want to be inspired. And Next11 was uninspiring as hell.
— Thomas Knuewer · May 23, 09:56 AM · #
Jeremy, thank for the comment.
I totally agree. It’s always about change and the pace of it. But Johannes already wrote something about that on our company blog: http://thirdwaveberlin.com/2011/04/how-to-cope-with-change/
— Igor · May 23, 09:56 AM · #
“They don’t understand, that they don’t understand what they don’t understand.”
Ben Hammersley
at Lift11
— Johannes Kleske · May 23, 10:04 AM · #
Why am I not surprised, Thomas?
In my perception, you are one of those people who walk into talks that will give you short term insight on how to make a better sales pitch to all your clients.
I don’t look for that in conferences and that’s why I ended up in all the interesting talks that are inspiring and visionary while you listened to all those German sales pitch guys. A conference as big as the Next will never be about individual choice, it’s about giving a broad spectrum of possibilities. You choice wrong, it would seem.
That said, I don’t regard Next11 as perfect, nor do I think they actually tried to replicate a TED experience. Yes, sometimes asking questions would be good and that’s a valide point. But the format is good. There are very, very few people out there who can deliver a talk that is longer than 20 minutes.
Also: I didn’t really see all that much branding by SinnerSchrader there. That might be my build in adblocker, but beside seeing a big booth, they didn’t really do much, did they?
— Igor · May 23, 10:06 AM · #
Thanks for a great post, Igor. I guess I understand your emotions and your professional attitude. I was proud with the TechCrunch article, too ;-) I do not agree completely with you, though.
First, I admit, that @nico – intentionally – often has an polarizing, impolite way of phrasing things – with which he is quite successful, often. That’s the way the attention economy works …
It is not true – or at least not my interpretation of his text – that he asked for “paddling back” or presenting more easy to use marketable suggestions. He criticized the choice of venue and exactly the old-style business-oriented presentations that you seem to dislike, too. And he criticized, that many of the presentations he witnessed were not about “next” but about ideas, which many of us are already quite familiar with.
And, actually, that would be my points, too. There were some great presentations by international speakers. I can’t say, that they offered too much new in the “food for thought” category. If you listened to the (great) Werner Vogels or Kevin Slavin once, then .. well .. you won’t be much more enlightened by their next gig :) And in the “smaller tracks” I saw some interesting presentations (where I nearly always had problems seeing any relation of the topic to this years motto “data love) and some rather blunt company presentations or “we did this great project, isn’t it gorgeous?” presentations.
The most disappointing experience was, that most speakers only paid lip service to “data love” and just presented their “usual agenda” without much adaptation of their script to this specific conference. That’s not too uncommon but I consider it a little impolite.
The venue is certainly not the the most important aspect of a conference like that. But, while the Station certainly carries the “creative Berlin” atmosphere, it was as hot and humid this year (on a spring day) as it was cold last year ;-)
I still enjoyed meeting people there and I am sure, some of the presentations, I could not attend, were great, too. I am still not sure, what the intended audience is or how it could be satisfied best. I, for one, would love to see more diversity – aside from the well-known speakers, whose ideas I already know, smaller rooms for the “smaller” presentations, more flexibility in the organisation of the “tracks”. A number of 20 minute gigs in rapid succession with no room for discussion is not the best possible way to organize those.
I don’t give up, though and will still attend next years Next! :)
— Markus Breuer · May 23, 10:08 AM · #
@thomas While I agree with some of your criticism, I really can’t understand your impression, that SinnerSchrader did this as a kind of marketing backdrop. Quite the contrary: I did see a lot LESS of SinnerSchrader than I expected. When you go to an O’Reilly Conference, you see much more of the O’Reilly brand for example …
Actually, I doubt if many of the attendees, who weren’t there in past years, would recall any direct connection with SinnerSchrader if you asked them after the event without mentioning the company initially.
— Markus Breuer · May 23, 10:27 AM · #
Markus: First of, I don’t agree that attention economy works that way or at least, not in a sustainable way. At least I would never advice my clients to be the loudest kid on the block.
As for the “if you listened to them once, you don’t need to listen them again”-argument: no conference out there can surprise the professionell conference visitors. The only conference that is aimed towards the people that are travelling around and visiting conferences is reboot, the other ones are aiming for the 1400 other people who are actually very happy that those kind of speakers are coming to Berlin.
In general, we probably seek inspiration in a different way. While I love Kevin Slavin’s work, I also can easily watch Andrew Zlotky present BreakfastNY projects for hours. Why? Because it’s just interesting and so far away from the client work we see in Germany, that I can’t help myself being a bit envious and at the same time, it only encourages me to stay on the international course we chose for Third Wave.
But I get it, if one comes to a conference as an employee of a big, German agency … it can be a problematic to use those insights in the everyday work.
— Igor · May 23, 11:04 AM · #
Thanks for the great article, Igor.
I liked NEXT, it was for me the first proper international conference in this industry/ area on German grounds that I attended.
I was positively surprised that they actually managed to secure great speakers one usually has to travel far for, like you say. Plus they managed to get Mike Butcher involved into the elevator pitch jury and of Sinner Schrader I did not see much during the conference at all. The organisation as a whole of that event worked just greatly. I’d like to see them continue that way next year!
I think it is really more about managing the expectations of visitors – but after all every conference is also what you make of it!
Regarding “But I get it, if one comes to a conference as an employee of a big, German agency … it can be a problematic to use those insights in the everyday work.”:
OK, it can be problematic to use those insights (so there are any of course) – but is NEXT and similar conferences not rather there for inspiring people? For taking new ideas back, giving them time to reflect and discuss their own ideas with the people they meet? Which in the end helps their companies making money? Seriously, a conference like this should be a bit of a (positive) challenge for its visitors, and since there were so many knowledge levels among the visitors, it was right to offer something for everybody. Of course there were also boring sales pitches with no real value whatsoever, but one isn’t obliged to listen to them.
To my mind, the really good talks and contributions outnumbered the ones that were truly uninspiring. Especially the international panel had a lot to offer. And being German, having lived/worked in London for 5 years and now living in Sweden since 3 years, I know what international means, what it feels like and I have seen enough of conferences/ events in the past in order to be able to judge this.
So a conference will never really satisfy every visitor, and there is always room to improve – for everyone, even for the very critical voices, who probably should look at things less strong from their own more ego-dominated perspective, but rather try to see things as a whole. See the community of visitors as a whole. Then they might realise, that there is a huge variety of different backgrounds that NEXT (like other conferences) tries to cater for. And again, I think NEXT did a great job. In fact I hope that they continue this way and establish the event right up there together with the leading European conferences for digital.
— Anja Rauch · May 23, 12:36 PM · #
Igor, I really have to wonder… I think your comment on mine exposes you as arrogant and unpolite.
It is remarkable how Next organizers react to critics. If you would have talked to people on the floor you would have gotten the same reaction.
And now you can explain how your attacking on me (looking for sales pitches) goes togehter with my critizism of the shortness of speaches. I’m looking for in depth speaches. Which is the opposite of 15 minute talks.
— Thomas Knuewer · May 25, 08:53 AM · #
Thomas, I did speak to the people on the floor. To a lot of them. Both from Germany and international guests and most of them liked what they came for.
Me being involved in the curation of the conference doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to rush to defend Next11, if there is a valid reason to criticize it.
And yes, you’re especially right with your critic that it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to mix German and English talks. If it would be up to me, Next12 would be completely held in English. It was the best decision we made for our conference and I’m very certain that it would totally work for Next as well.
But I still completely disagree with your assertion that the talks didn’t have depth. On the contrary. And that doesn’t have anything to do with the length of the talks. TED is the best example to that and from attending many conferences I can only encourage every conference not to give any speaker more than 20 minutes of talk time. Which, btw., could be accompanied – in the the right context – with a Q&A.
As for my arrogance … I do fully acknowledge the fact that I’m not holding back here, but I just feel as if it’s time to lay down the cards and just get it of our chests. Too many discussions in the German blogosphere are a bit to sugar-coated.
— Igor · May 25, 03:03 PM · #
Geez – you really want MORE mudslinging in the German blogosphere?
I still don’t get how you want to judge my work and my relationship with clients. You have never seen me taliking to one.
And this is what differs us: I would never say anything bad about a company I’m competing with. But if this is Third Wave style… just go ahead with it.
— Thomas Knuewer · May 25, 04:39 PM · #
You’re right Thomas, I didn’t see you work and you’re right to point my mistake out on this one. I’m sorry for generalizing in this case.
But: I did not endorse mudslinging in my comment, nor would I ever do such a thing. Your accusation in this regard is just plain out wrong.
My motivation for this blog post was, as you probably already read, the very unkind, bitchy way to point out things that people didn’t like about the conference. That’s not a healthy discussion and it doesn’t help anybody to do something better. At the same time, I don’t believe in sugar-coating things. It’s important to have a very clear, articulate opinion.
And what I miss most is people who instead of talking just go out and do more things. We don’t have much excellence in Germany. There is a reason why all of the speakers who (at least for me) made Next11 a great conference did come from abroad.
— Igor · May 25, 05:01 PM · #