Digital Lifestyle Days

I am back and it was great. Thanks to the entire team that organized the event and Dr. Hubert Burda for allowing us all to meet there. It was a very good, and very diverse event that made you think on several occasions. If you want to take a look at the sessions you can watch videos of them here.

We arrived at the location on Monday morning at ten to 8 and it was already getting full. The first thing you noticed was that it was a big event and that they really pushed in some money to make it happen. The food and drinks were good, wireless lan stable enough, power outlets there if you found them (actually there were enough for the kind of crowd that was there) and an amazing party. The party was at the top of the Bayerischer Hof and you could even take a seat outside covered in a mink blanket if you were so inclined. Again, lots of drinks, music and even people jumping in the pool (here is why).

There were also some very good presentations, and some stood out as presenters. Andreas Weigend was surely an interesting character, but with a slightly strange way of talking. Rainer Beaujean presented his vision of Triple Play at T-Online via T-Visions very well and I am starting to see that they have a very bright future ahead of them. Once they bring TV a real back-channel, and start bringing in free TV with ads, cool stuff will be about to happen. Ola Ahlvarsson from Result Consulting had a great presence on stage and was wonderful to listen to. I presume his presence partly comes from having a World Championchip gold medal in kickboxing. I was positively surprised by Thomas Middelhoff who seemed to be a guy you could go have a beer with, including some very insightful discussions. A good point by him was that (at least I remember it as being from him) revolution is easy, it’s evolution that is hard, which is really true for his restructuring of KarstadtQuelle.

On a more lighter note, Ted Cohen looks like a younger and small Helmut Kohl, especially when you see him sitting right next to you. He is blogging anonymously by the way, or so it seems. Paul van Dyk was great to see and he actually looked very business like and sounded very much down to earth. Good presentation of what you can do with some computer gear. Gerhard Florin went from McKinsey and BMG to EA and got some strange looks when he did that in 1996. Seems to have been a good move and that is a guy that really understands the gaming business.

Then we had the panel about “The Next Big Thing”, with Esther Dyson, Martin Versavsky and Marissa Mayer, moderated by David Kirkpatrick. You should really watch the video of that one. Anina asked a very good question about protecting your online identity in a time of search, and Martin gave a very good example of the scariness of Google Earth. All four were great and you really noticed that there was amazing brainpower present in the room. Andrew Robertson from BBDO was another highlight of the event and a great speaker. Always again.

To sum it up, I did love the event, even though it was a bit too big from time to time. It might also be good to have higher mixed panel discussions between small start-ups and the bigger guys, which might create some more discussions. Thanks again to Burda (company and person) for creating this conference and the team behind it (including all the waiters, technicians, helpers and all) that made it happen! I had a great time.

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