Over the last several days, I've read tons of blog posts and articles from around the Web about this tiny conference we had the pleasure to host on May 5 and 6 in beautiful but then rainy Hamburg. Now I'm ready to share this stuff with you, in no particular order.
Tim Leberecht from frog design, who himself gave a talk about "The Seven Rules of the Chief Meaning Officer", wrote a post in which he calls next09
one of Europe's leading digital/creative/marketing forums that stands out in the conference circuit because of its unique German-international focus (bilingual program, 80% international attendees, many international speakers). This year's theme was "Share Economy," and the 1,300 attendees comprised of European VCs and angel investors, web 2.0 entrepreneurs, media, creative agencies, and execs from German corporations (from BMW to Deutsche Bank to Deutsche Telekom).
He then continues:
In talking to many German attendees, my impression was that the German creative community shows no signs of a downturn. The German start-up scene in particular, if that is any indicator, is alive and kicking. There are many new promising web 2.0 firms run by smart entrepreneurs (many of them funded by entrepreneurs who made a fortune during the dot com heyday), and there is a lot of money to go around.
A few days later, Tim wrote another post well worth reading, in which he states:
What everyone agreed on at next09 is that the next big frontier on the web (and in the Twitter economy) is how businesses talk to their customers. We are witnessing an irrevocable convergence of players. Conversational services such as Twitter and Yammer are moving into the social networking space and are acquiring the credentials of social networks and collaboration tools, while traditional social networking sites such as XING, LinkedIn or Facebook are embedding conversational features to catch up with the irresistible pull of real-time communication.
For both groups, and in fact for all other companies, Umair Haque's advice is golden: Take one of the big ideals (democracy, peace, transparency, equality, etc.) and apply it to an ailing industry that is in need of transformation or at least some serious disruption: healthcare, finance, news, energy, government - you name it. Combine that with the principles of the Twitter economy - transparency, instantification, collaboration, and free sharing - and you have a winner.
Axel Bruns, who also happens to be a speaker, did a lot of liveblogging from the conference. Kudos to him!
Maria Sipka from Linqia gave a talk (do I smell a pattern here?) about Collaborative Communities. She writes:
Our team attended the Next09 conference in Hamburg this week and rate this event as amongst the best in Europe. With over 1,300 participants, 100+ speakers and moderators and a host of innovative sponsors and partners, the event exceeded our expectations.
Brian Solis opened the Main Conference Day with his well-rated keynote on the Social Economy. He has a lengthy piece up on his blog, titled "Significant" and dealing with the stuff he presented on stage. See also this post with some beautiful pictures (more on flickr).
Ian Forrester from BBC who had covered for David Brain from Edelman (thanks again for that, Ian!) explains what happened to him on stage at next09.
Andrea Vascellari, one of the official conference bloggers, posted interviews with Brian Solis, Steve Rubel and Stowe Boyd, videotaped some sessions and also reported on episode #447 of FIR (For Immediate Release - twice weekly podcast of Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz on public relations and technology).
Another must-read is the series of posts Dennis Howlett wrote on ZDNet. Dennis states:
NEXT09 is one of Europe's most important conferences. It brings together some of the edgiest thinkers from around the world, people who challenge accepted norms and put some of the big issues into sharp relief.
And:
Attending NEXT09 was a breath of fresh air for me. As seems to be the way, there's always a good showing by controversial polemicists. You won't for example get two more strident and different speakers than Jeff Jarvis and Andrew Keen.
Elmine Wijnia did a really moving video, embedded below, but doesn't seem to be happy with her conference experience.
Ton Zylstra covered the sessions by Jan Schmidt, Lee Bryant and, of course, Jeff Jarvis.
Robin Wauters of TechCrunch interviewed Jeff Jarvis, Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström. Obviously he also had fun with the twittering coffee machine at next09.
Viktoria Trosien from Tiburon-TV did tons of video interviews at next09. So far, she has posted three of them: with Laurent Burdin of SinnerSchrader, Darius Miranda from Wells Fargo and Jeff Jarvis.
I'm sure I've missed a lot of stuff, but that's all for now. I'll prepare another post in German on the Fischmarkt blog. What striked me while sifting through all this was that some of the Germans seemed to have visited another conference than the english-speaking crowd. Will have to think about what this means.
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