Me.Convention — a genuine cross-industry event of the innovation scene
15-17 September Frankfurt
My head is still buzzing from the experience and I am floating high on inspiration after spending the last weekend at the Me.Convention in Frankfurt.
The first European spinoff by South by SouthWest, the Me.Convention brought together heavy players and opinion leaders of different industries to discuss the current state of art and potential futures in five subjects: #NewLeadership, #NewCreation, #NewVelocity, #NewUrbanism and #NewRealities.
Me.Convention had the promise to surpass the shallow waters of today’s conference market’s self-approval style and get real insight into diverse subjects through authentic stories. Despite of being sponsored and produced by Mercedes and held during the IAA in Frankfurt it managed to show the traits of an independent event.
Impressions
From early on a good atmosphere was brewing. A cozy space inside Mercedes’ pavilion, attendees were kept well fed and hydrated, their phones charged. This comfort allowed interactions to be initiated, all questions were welcome, everybody was approachable and nothing seemed to be off discussion. The diversity of subjects at a new event of no traditions, everyone being on the edge of their comfort zone seemed to have bridged the gap between speakers and attendees. People talked about their failures, shared their open ended questions inviting everyone to think together.
Subjects, curiosities, finds
Working in digital product and service development, I have been following trendwatching platforms and conferences dealing with the future for 15 years. This was the first event where finally the milk ordering fridge was not the star of the day. Instead, it was a fabulous mix of weirdness, hopes and goals, including but not limited to the ones I had the luck to attend.
#NewLeadership — Blending or balancing where freedom is the new wealth
How is the new generation changing corporate culture? How does the future of work look like? How is recruitment responding to the diversifying needs of the on-demand economy?
Agile, design thinking and that jazz — organisational (r)evolution?
Organisations are one of the most affected units of the transforming business scene, latching on every buzzword for a solution. Their core structures are challenged by new age services, their recruitment is lacking the right attraction for talent, their status quos shattered. Change must come and it must come soon.
There are ways to face this new era: instead of instant responding to an urgency push, creating an environment for play and discovery can be the first step. Alissia Iljaitsch, innovation consultant called this approach the playground method. A setup where employees can experiment in their own pace in finding out what they have the capacity and passion for. Just like children, they will know when they are ready to come down the slide. “Would Sheryl Sandberg learned coding would she be that influential?” — she asked. Make no mistake, agile, design thinking and culture cultivation will still lead the pack, and despite of the importance of grassroots initiatives a top down support will be key to success.
Future work scenarios
By 2021 50% of the workforce will be contractual, 65% is going to do a job that doesn’t exist today and a big percentage will work in a flexible context. — Ryan McLaughin, McL.digital
A new attitude towards work must be established: the current visibility based control of a 9 to 5 job, will move in the direction of measurability based trust of flexwork. In this new setup the output will be in focus, not where and when it is done. Companies are already experimenting, Harald Becker at Microsoft Envisioning being one of them.
Next to old business transforming, new business opportunities arise: Flexpat, a new company is ahead of the curve willing to match up companies with remote talent. While GenX and millennials are both important at the table — says Artur Nobel, their co-founder — , the people who grew up with the Rolling Stones and the snapchat generation cannot be approached and kept happy the same way.
The future of work is flexible, self-organizing and self-assembling teams based on immediate requirements — Christoph Bornschein, TLGG
Inevitably, co-working spaces are also pushing new frontiers: WeWork Head of Research and Development, Josh Emig told us they are busy accommodating Fortune 100 companies in their spaces, which is pushing them to rethink their service model trying to seize the moment to become the interface between companies and their much needed talent.
New age recruitment of new age talent
HR is also in crisis: recruitment is in serious need to reinvent itself. Companies are in desperate need for new talent, but it is a breed they don’t know how to deal with. The hybrids, “alchemists of technology and creativity” as Arthur Sadun, chairman and CEO of Publicis Group calls them are out there pursuing their passion. Therefore best practices that used work to identify persistence won’t work. One may be lacking a classic track record,”… but does it make them less suitable for the job? Maybe they just haven’t found it yet.” — says Amy Vernetti, Director of Leadership Recruiting at Moonshots at Google. The biggest challenge for them to identify are:
- Competence
- Credibility
- Character
and to get it right must work harder to create an environment where candidates can be their natural self right away. So, don’t be surprised if at your next job interview you will be asked about your first job: turns out, it is the one question that allows for the quickest understanding of your attitude towards work.
Doing good while making money?
Representing his generation, Taylor Conroy is not interested in being hired any more. Instead, he showed how creating a framework doing what one does best can allow you to live and feel good about it. His mission is to enable others to participate in change by allowing them to invest in the five pilars of sustainable community in third world countries: education, female empowerment, agriculture, medical care, clean water and sanitation. He is bringing his former real estate knowledge into action through fundraising and building houses in unprivileged communities, together with those who initially donate to the cause, transforming it into a life adventure for all participants — he calls it scaling empathy.
“The most expensive 3000 USD house was built by 3 CEOs: they kept on having strategy meetings and delegating stuff to each other.” — Taylor Conroy
Facebook vs Daimler
The most highly anticipated moment, when Sheryl Sandberg took over the main stage with Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsch was only half a success. Putting on her Lean In hat and going into the girls are bossy or have executive leadership skills argument, Sandberg made the room laugh, but what probably meant to be a casual and inspiring conversation between two top leaders came off as a staged, unnatural and marketing focused.
#NewRealities — lifehacking mentally, physically, digitally
“Screens will be a small percentage of how we interface with information in the future…” Katherine Maher, Wikimedia
Cyborgs
While some technology is moving away from human control and heading towards smart systems (like that of the self-driving car and robots replacing human force), there is a vast field moving closer to us: the new frontiers of interaction is direct to our brain. We are learning to interface, decode and translate our senses, thoughts and actions. How far are we from thought control computing? Are we a step away from becoming cyborgs?
When Glenn Zorpette suggested “Maybe it will be the future of phones. It will be difficult to lose them. It might also let us look at each other at dinners.” and everybody laughed, next door Neil Harbisson, the official first cyborg was speaking with a chip built into his skull capable of receiving calls directly in his brain.
Although our brain remains one of science’s biggest mystery, we are getting closer: Elon Musk is researching brain-computer interaction in his company Neuralink, even Facebook has put 60 engineers on the job. While the thought of a chip inside our head seems scary, the reason why majority of scientists wants to go in is because otherwise, “it is like listening to two people talking in the middle of a football stadium from the edge of the top balcons” — says Tracy Lobbs from the Wyss center for bioengineering. Harbisson is capable of sensing aspects of our reality that we, humans don’t.
To build the path, science is focusing on two aspects:
- signal detecting and translating: catching brainwaves and understanding them;
- Writing: sending signals back into the brain.
Achievements are tangible in the first area about locomotion control (moving prosthetic limbs) and senses (hearing aid) while the later remains neuroscience’s biggest challenge.
“…a port coming out of your head isnt exactly a fashion statement except for a small circle” – Arto Nurmikko, Brown University
What has lead to this sudden improvement? Three key innovations:
- AI machine learning: a key to overcome limits of signal processing and pattern recognition;
- Wifi control
- Material science improvements on interface stability of an implants
The genome
So is good or is ir evil? As Herbisson said: Your right and left hand can both do good and bad things but both are part of the same organism.
80% of products around us are made of petrol. – Rob Carlson, Bioeconomy Capital
Beyond need for human transformation we are dealing with world-wide exhaustion of natural resources and it is calling for an answer, which today is called synthetic biology. Despite of its fame, is less about changing the human genome to have is grow wings — although there are certainly attempts to do that – research is focused on improving the chances of resources being grown in the future rather than being pulled out of the ground. Beyond being a lifesaver for humanity, it is good business; significant investment portfolios have been built around these initiatives, like that of Rob Carlosn’s Bioeconomy Capital. An area seemingly independent from biology may also be benefiting in the future: the genome is bringing a new approach to identification to the digital stage. Replacing the current binary system with the four digit DNA method would allow all current knowledge of humankind fit into a shoebox.
#NewCreation
How and who will create the new tomorrow? How will current processes change? How are we influencing them in the now?
“Every city/company/organization should have an artist in residence and amazing things will happen” –Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries
Museums as incubators
The cultural industry is just in that big of a turmoil as the corporate sector. The role and reach of creative professionals and relevant institutions are in a shift. Museums employ neuroscientists to construct and design the museum viewing experience as they are arching a bridge between art and tech, the past and the future. As they are becoming incubators for brewing the new, initiatives as Sophie Lamparter’s DART 17 is popping up. Her mission is to bring interesting ideas to Silicon Valley showing them in a museum environment and eventually gain traction on the tech market. Following multiple examples — like that of the animated emoji of the new iPhone X, which originally was a small group’s fun idea for a museum project — Sophie says where else, if not in museums ideas can remain halfway experimentive and halfway realistic and can find their interface to the public to be tested, get feedback without being too close to the market.
The future of internet — Access is equality
“Good that it works in practice because it wouldn’t work in theory” — Katherine Maher, Wikimedia
Like others, the media market is in the middle of a major redefinition: a world buzzing with fake news, credibility has become scarce and regained value at the same time. Along Facebook, who has become the biggest news platform, other players, like Wikipedia are willing to join in on the game. Having been criticised as “Wikiality, a version of reality we all agree on”, Wikipedia is the biggest open knowledge hub today. The interesting paradox of having multiple authors and freely editable articles is that verifiability and the importance of accountability contributes to building trust. What is often not mentioned that beyond access to information, access to creation is the key in creating equality. How do you contribute without access? Without contribution, wow are you going to be represented? Today only a small percentage on wikipedia is about women, and only 2% is about Africa. Wikimedia, the organization behind Wikipedia is wanting to be more transparent about where these gaps are by labelling and for more equality by giving away grant for authors to be able to access articles and content.
#NewVelocity — transportation as service
Two years ago, I arrived at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a day early to oversee the installation of our booth. I was ready to be mesmerized by all the automation around so when I saw the IoT section of providers and their intelligent cars with all their cloud computing happening on two PCs hidden in the trunk, I thought it was time to admit: concepts have been beautifully articulated, now it’s time for the infrastructure to be built to make them a reality.
This innovation on hold, the future of mobility in the meantime has began to take another turn, Tesla entering the market and positioning themselves as a computer company rather than an automotive made brains ticking. The evangelisation of cross-over solutions and the shift towards services vs ownership have lead us into the on-demand economy.
Lyft’s Dena Kusari introduced solutions where passengers can round up their cost to the closest dollar to donate to a cause of their choice, doing more than just getting a ride. While today the average car is idle 94% of its lifetime, only 2% of drives are carshare, it will significantly change by 2025 influencing the numbers of vehicle ownership. A new service, SkyHi, a simplified flight ticket search engine, is simplifying people’s lives by taking decisions away: you can only buy a one way ticket, must fly within one week, max. 2400 km, max 5 flights a month and book only once completed a flight. It may be a niesche, but serves that specific segment perfectly.
#Inspiration — “I will get out of my comfort zone by….”
“Avalanches Should not be the reason not to do it. Should be the reason to do it in the right manner.” — Mark Horn
Eventually, two outstanding, inspiring speakers made us want to get out there and do it and be our best selves and they deserve special mention. Mark Horn and John Cohn.
Adventure — embrace difficulties
Mark Horn is the first human having crossed Antarctica, drived across Europe to reach the Himalayas and climb K2, and the man who took his daughters on a cross-country skii trip in Greenland instead of to Disneyland. You believe him that embracing difficulty in life is the fun and you are ready to work on your discipline when he is saying that is the key towards your goal. Fear will become an inspiration, as the risks you take, will lead you to gain a whole new world. And most importantly: you will stop worrying about what has not happened yet (like that of his boat turning around on icy waters).
Play — through it all
The experimentive space is a good idea beyond startups and new companies. Keeping play part of the daily routine can make even the unacceptable bearable. John Cohn, IBM’s chief scientist showed the way how.
“When others say in business: There is no time to play, there is a deadline. Just resist, you will outserve them and they will work for you later.” — John Cohn, IBM
The story about the reformed nerd who converted over to the creative side seemed a cliché, but boy was I wrong. Mr. Cohn blew the roof off — his fun-loving character filled up the room, we were stunned by his honesty, his contagious positivity and left without a doubt that finding our way through play is the only choice even at times of hardships and deadlines.
The event
The convention was so much more. Workshops and parties and lunches and talks and fun.
The organisation was outstanding: each presentation started and ended on time, the audience was kept in the loop by well designed media countdowns on screens and the setup of stages allowed for perfect view of both content and speakers. Presentations were followed by a Q&A session and thanks to the Slido app the audience easily could participate. This kept the event tight and in a good rhythm, and without a boring moment. The two moderators, Lea Steinacker and Amber Mac both deserve honorable mentions: they were highly professional and kept the event at check.
My Me.Convention passed its first year test and I will be there for the next edition to continue this conversation.
