TOA founder Niko Woischnik: “TOA is becoming a kind of infrastructure for Berlin’s tech ecosystem”
- Everything at Europe’s coolest technology conference pulses from its collaborative, community-focussed mission statement.
- “We want to bring all the stakeholders of the wider technology ecosystem together for a dialogue”
- Every festival claims to be one of a kind. But how does TOA’s unique ethos make an attendee’s experience different?
TOA’s tickets are selling fast — and the price increases on the 30th June — don’t miss out!
~ by Edmund Heaphy
Mission statements are strange beasts.
A lot of the time, they’re just a thing that’s only trotted out when a company wants to impress the outside world — a trumped-up, noble-sounding grouping of inoffensive words that seek to warm everyone’s cockles. But there are movements wherein mission statements actually get to the core of what they do and want to achieve.
For Nikolas Woischnik, Tech Open Air (TOA), the technology festival he founded, is very much the latter. Any enquiry about TOA’s ethos or aims — and many of the day-to-day questions that crop up internally as the event nears — are met with an unflappable “well, our mission statement is to build a platform for interdisciplinary knowledge exchange and collaboration”.
And Niko is just as eager to explain what this means, and how it makes TOA different from any other kind of technology festival.
“There are two words within the statement that help define what TOA is: the first is ‘platform’. A platform is open, and a platform allows participants to build upon it — and this is what we want to be,” he says.
“I think it manifests itself with all these different formats that we have on site where startups, but also creatives, scientists and investors, can take an active role in TOA and participate.”
But TOA isn’t just two days of talks at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus — it’s a four-day festival that includes what TOA calls Satellite Events all around the city.
“These events really show how TOA is a platform. We become almost like infrastructure for the tech and creative ecosystem here in Berlin,” Niko says.
The second word in the mission statement that’s key to understanding TOA is “interdisciplinary.”
“We want to bring all the stakeholders of the wider technology ecosystem together to enter a dialogue and to ultimately instigate collaboration surrounding the theme of technology.”
That involves building bridges between the dominant players in the industry — who Niko refers to as ‘the incumbents’ — and the new entrants, like the 150 startups set to exhibit at TOA.
But TOA also wants to create a space where policy experts, artists, musicians and scientists can contribute to the broader debates about how technology is changing the world we live in.
But how is the festival different for an average attendee?
“Well TOA is also open air,” Niko says. “People call it TOA, but it stands for Tech Open Air, and I think this is one aspect of how this event really differs from other tech conferences.”
“We have a large open air part and a general festival feel to it. So you will also find music and art installations at TOA that really give it this festival character. That’s the best way to describe it.”
And this changes what attendees can get out of TOA. “It allows for serendipitous encounters and meetings,” Niko says. So one of the 500 investors attending this year’s TOA is just as likely to be enjoying the sunshine as the founder of a fledgling startup.
“We want to create a space that allows for meaningful interactions and relationship building,” he says.
TOA, Niko says, also has a very Berlin-style flavour to it.
“We’ve chosen locations for TOA that other tech conferences generally wouldn’t: so TOA doesn’t happen in a big conference centre or some big fairground. We started out in old Fabriks — the German word for factories — and now we’re at the Funkhaus, the old recording studies of the former DDR, the East German government.”
“That also adds an edgy type of vibe to it, which makes it distinct I guess, in the tech space.”
Yet, while TOA remains unique, its newfound focus on the business of the scene, which has seen it attract hundreds of investors and nearly 100 VC firms to this year’s festival, brings it more in line with other conferences in this sphere.
“This year, we’ve definitely put more focus on B2B interactions and transactions than we’ve had in the past. But we’ve also introduced a lot of unique matchmaking formats for startups and investors.”
What TOA wants to do, Niko says, is to get to a scale where it “can connect even very specific niche audiences with the kinds of people that they’re looking for”.
This also makes Niko a very busy man. “I still have time for a daily shower”, he says. “But the rest of my day typically focuses on a lot of things TOA that are outwardly facing: so sales, marketing and communications.”
“When I’m not sending emails or helping individual teams come to decisions, I’m looking at how we can leverage the data that we have at TOA. How can we use what we know about our attendees to make the festival better for everyone?”
But there’s no denying that the 29 days before a festival of TOA’s size can get kind of overwhelming.
“In the weeks before TOA, it all just becomes one kind of big blur.”
TOA Tickets are selling fast — and the price increases on June 30th, so get your ticket now! Come to TOA and connect with top-tier entrepreneurs, artists, and scientists — all in a beautiful, historic location. Join us this July in Berlin!
Expect the unexpected: who should you look out for at TOA 2017? — TOA’s Content Team book all the speakers — so who better to ask for tips?
The future is being re-written: How neural networks will change the way we work — SearchInk are holding one of the key TOA Satellite events — sign up now for free!
Originally published at blog.toa.berlin on June 13, 2017.
