NEXT station – Berlin.
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News
Tonight I’m off to to Berlin as an official blogger taking part at NEXT Berlin 2012 – the leading European conference for the digital industry. Two days of exciting talks and intensive networking, meeting existing and potential clients, partners and the press – this is the kind of event we crave for, and the second major digital event in Berlin in less than a week (re:publica being the first).
NEXT’s speaker line-up is impressive: Tuesday morning’s keynote by René Obermann, the CEO of Deutsche Telekom, followed by three parallel session streams: Creative, Technology and Start-ups. This is complemented by a stream of workshops (discussing, for example, the agency-model in the post-digital world) and a so-called Arena-stream: Here, speakers proposed and voted for by the NEXT community will be featured. While the Arena and workshop stream continue on the second day of the conference, the Creative, Technology and Start-ups streams will be replaced by Fashion, Mobile and Experience.
As always, that adds up to: Too much to experience, not enough time. So here is our totally subjective recommendations of the top three sessions you should not miss at NEXT Berlin:
DNA of the Post Digital Agency – Redefining the genetic code for the creative industry
Our friend Tim Malbon, co-founder of Made by Many, the product innovation & service design company, leads a panel on the ongoing discussion of how the creative industry needs to adapt to tackle future challenges. As he was just named one of Revolution Magazine’s ‘Future 50’, we expect this session to be as controversial as focussed on productive discussion of this topic of industry-wide relevance. We might go ahead and challenge him with our thoughts on this – stay tuned on twitter via #wearenext and check back here for coverage and insights.
People Power: From Social Marketing to Social Business
Will Sansom, writer and consultant at Contagious Magazine, takes another deep look at this current topic of hot debate. We have been covering current developments in this area in our “Social Business Notes” series on this blog and look forward on what Sansom has to say about social, moving from a focus on marketing to a business-wide perspective, influencing the whole value chain.
Authenticity and Trust on the Internet
Chris Heathcote of anti-mega.com is talking about what constitutes and is the basis for any (but especially digital) business in the social age. Authenticity and Trust (in the digital world) being the most relevant soft-factors of success, but as hard to produce as to measure, have been an ongoing topic of the intellectual as well as the business debate in the last years – ranging from rather skeptic positions (e.g. Sherry Turkle) to very optimistic evaluations (e.g. the Edelman Trust Barometer). It will be exciting to see what Chris has to add.
To sum it up: Two days of conference, hundreds of sessions – and we will be there to connect, network and experience. If you’d like to follow our impressions, our twitter stream #wearenext will help you out. If – for whatever reason – you’d like to meet up for a coffee (or a beer) contact me either via twitter, send me a mail or give me a call on +49 160 96434379.
Hope to see you at NEXT Berlin!