My own private Emocide

Yesterday I made my way to Linz, to the Mission Future event of 2008. All in all it was alright, but had I paid the 892 EUR for a regular ticket, I would have been pissed.

When I got there, first thing, I ran into Lars hinrichs; conincidentally, talking to him about Kronomy was one of the few reasons why I actually went there. It was interesting to hear “the European Mark Zuckerbergs” take on things and how he had come to his investment decision. Also, he didn’t really get the fact, that after having been in a start-up environment, I actually was thinking about going back to doing agency work again.

Then, at the actual event, everything was sort of chaotic. A little run down of the speakers:

• Philippe Souidi (CScout) & Christoph Santner (TheFutureKitchen): “10 Trends shaping the future”
  Yawn … advertising
• Horst Hörtner (Ars Electronica Futurelab) & Dr. Bernd Wiemann (Vodafone): “From open source to open industries”
  Horst’s part was rather interesting — once he had gotten past the Ars history — the Vodafone stuff might have been alright, but the speaker’s skills were too numbing to make me get the point.
• Jan Wildeboer (Red Hat/Linux): “How open source is changing the world”
  10 minute pitch for RedHat, including some interesting facts. However, I can’t believe that he still keeps wearing that red hat. I would be annoyed by it as hell.
• Sheridan Johns (Berlin School of Creative Leadership): “Creative leadership in a cultural economy”
  Yawn … advertising
• Lars Hinrichs (Xing): The future of social business communities
  A potentially interesting, but horribly boringly lead interview
• Pim Betist (SellaBand): “Moving crowd-sourcing mainstream”
  Most interesting contribution of the day. I was sitting next to Pim all morning and we got to chat a bit about his project before hand already. Check it out, it’s a really cool concept. Plus, he knows the FabChannel guys…
• Joichi Ito (Creative Commons) & Oswald Schröder (European Patent Office): “The Future of Intellectual Property”
  There also was a lady — Elizabeth Stark — on this panel. They all had to say interesting things about patents. It was good to hear the side and issues of the patent offices for once too and Joi Ito’s remarks about how patents affect start-ups and investment decisions were interesting as well.

Then, for lunch, I went to the “Gelbes Krokodil”, with Mike and Clemens of Tupalo, Milo and Brian and his friend from Canada. Was a fun time, though the food took forever to arrive.

Upon returning, we split up in 3 groups for smaller sessions. I went with the “Open Community” group. The speakers here were:

• Andrej Nabergoj (Noovo): Overcoming fragmentation and increasing relevancy on the web
  I just don’t know if this actually will work as advertised, but I did write him for a beta account
• David Sasaki (Global Voices Online): Media tools for micro-philanthropy
  Very interesting man, very interesting stuff he had to say. He didn’t talk about Global Voices Online at all. Being asked if he didn’t want to by the host, his response was: “Nah, thanks, I am getting bored hearing myself talk about it.” He did pitch Ideablob though, which I thought was a great concept as well.
• Stefan Doesinger: Virtual architecture
  Nomen est Omen … yawn.
• George Zoche (TRansnational Republics): Open nations – open politics – open art
  As crazy as the concept sounded initially, I do like the idea behind it a lot.
• Mathias Holzman & Christoph Fahle: Play & Build: How to create in the future
  Sorry, but I did not quite get the point

Lastly, we all rejoined. I listened to Isaac Mao’s talk on “Sharism”, but then skipped the “FutureSlam” and discussion as my concentration was really starting to wear thin.

Conclusion: It was great to finally meet Mike in person, as well as Clemens. Getting to know Pim was pretty awesome too and I actually got to have my little chat with Lars. So all in all: “Mission Future accomplished”.

In the evening, I went to the Cafe Strom for the Tupalo/TheGap.at after party. Mike introduced me to his wife Melanie — and there it hit me. I knew that Mike used to do “Skylab Commerce” back in the day and it was in the back of my head, that there was some girl I knew involved with it too; it just never really occurred to me to ask. Anyways, this was one of the very first people ever, that I knew in the Hardcore scene. She was there, when I went to my first Straight Edge shows at the tender age of 15, used to be friends with all the people I still know from back then and a million more people. How funny. So, it was pretty cool to be able to hang out as a vegan crowd with her and Mike. We chatted for a couple of hours but eventually, the tiredness got the better of me.