denkfest

denkfest, apparently means ‘think party’ in German and, through my friend Thomas Krauss from the Pazz festival, I was asked to contribute to a discussion on co-operation in Heidelberg this weekend. I’ll skip the touristy stuff – although it a delightfully pretty town on the banks of the Rhine – with a woolworths. About 250 people attended a one day event which ran  from 9.30 till 6.00. it was a mixture of key notes, panel discussions and working groups with a final plenary session. All fairly familiar, as was much of the debate. Some things did strike me though.

There was a speaker on crowd sourcing and he spoke about the idea of securing 10% of money as a way of demonstrating public support for a project. I was struck how twitter has become all pervading in the UK. You cant go to a conference without knowing the hash tag. Not in Germany – well at least not in Heidelberg…

There was a session on asymmetric partnerships – which I took to mean how do small organisations work equitably with large ones. Which I thought an emenetly sensible conversation to be having given the age we are in. As you might expect there was talk of  the need for generosity, clarity of roles, time and trust.

It was a good day, i enjoyed it. It was a relaxed, open atmosphere, i met a lot of people who were curious and engaged. There was a call at the start of the day to connect with 25 people – and most people seemed to achieve that.