Smart entrepreneurs know that it will take innovation and creativity to navigate through a tougher economic climate. Now more than ever, the world needs creative solutions.

A promising start to a creative conference. The quality of the speakers was phenomenal, entrepreneurs who where willing to share their stories, experiences and insights. A short summary: World 3.0!

In a world 3.0 (or society or web or however you’d like to call the new world) the necessary skills are changing. In this blog I’d like to share my thoughts with you. And I would like to invite you to reply.

• The opening started with “Nothing”, a 15-minute “sell” speech about a measurement instrument. Explaining how it works with a 10-point scale and how all sorts of companies can benefit from measuring their performances. After 30 seconds I honestly felt I was at the wrong conference. What did Michael Jansen want? Selling me an instrument? For me to doubt the validity (which I do)? Instead of giving us a (bad) marketing 1.0 sell speech, I’d advise him to create a feeling. A bit of storytelling would be in place. Eg: The most happy people are the ones who get immediate feedback in their work. Imagine we can make this possible for you. Today’s speakers are going to find out. How is the audience feeling about their performance? With this tool we can immediately measure the performance of all speakers today. We challenge you to assess all speakers during or just after their performance. Their results will be up here. At the end of the day, I’d be happy to compare all results. Visitor Marcel Kampman shows how it works in a 30 sec film
• A lot of gratitude to the second speaker, Amnon Levav. He woke all of us up. Quote: “Brainstorms are bullshit, at the best they are fun”. He believes in innovate within the box. Use what you already have, but look at it differently. Thinking outside the box is often an escape. Amnon Levav, practices what he preaches. So he challenged us to think outside and inside the box, to collaborate and interact with people you didn’t know before. YouTube for a short impression.
• After Amnon Levav, we had the pleasure of becoming inspired by Ji Lee, creative Director at Google. Even though he did inform us about his work at Google, I was more thrilled with his personal project: The Bubble project. He was unsatisfied with the work of traditional advertising companies. Challenging them to listen to their customers, he spent a few 1000 box of his own money printing stickers. The blank speech-bubble stickers were posted on bus stands and billboards. Inviting passengers to speak their mind. An inspiring story of an inspiring person who is inviting individuals to interact and thereby forcing companies to become 2.0. I just wish he wasn’t only sharing, but also triggering us. A few bubble stickers might have done the trick. Check out The Bubble Project for some great examples.
• Maxim Schram from Redesign me was supposed to give us a creative interruption. I’ve got no idea what that’s supposed to mean according to those who organise the event. A break from creativity perhaps? Redesign me is offering business consultancy for 2.0. The 10 minutes were used to sell Redesign me. It was a business presentation 1.0 style, and not even an interesting one. Uninspiring, sales oriented and no interaction with the audience at all.
• Timothy Childs is making a huge difference in chocolates with Tcho. Explaining his business case, he showed us that it is possible to work with crowd sourcing and crowd funding, to build a factory with only a small percentage of the usual budget, to get the best quality beans and maintain this (easy solutions: they are the first company who make farmers taste their own product), to create engagement from farmers, and to produce chocolate without slavery. Last but not least, he let us experience chocolate, the way you are supposed to eat chocolate. Wonderful chocolate, if I may say. Website for more info.
• Erik Speakermann was after Timothy Childs. I’ve got no idea what Erik Speakermann is doing, what he wanted or what he was trying to do. The story was related to Tcho, but I don’t have any idea what his relationship with Tcho is. His story didn’t have an added value to Timothy Child and it wasn’t inspiring.
• The Creative Amsterdam Award was the Breakout session I choose to participate in. 5 start-ups were pitching their idea.

1. Froll, an interactive museum. Using the opinion of the audience to decide what artists deserve a spot.
2. Winner Monobanda created an interactive digital game, using no keyboard or mouse. The presentation skills of Sjoerd were the best. It was funny to hear him start with the words: We are 5 brilliant designers and we are going to win this award…
3. Runner up Tribe for noise was a deserved winner. Tribe for noise is offering a platform for artists where they can offer their music for free to companies. Legally complicated, very well prepared and already a successful beta version. Initiator Hessel thought of everything, an excellent business case. He was best prepared for difficult questions.
4. Windmill 2.0. An innovative windmill which will create a different perspective of Holland in foreign countries. In my opinion they deserved to win. It is a great design, looking good, being sustainable, creating energy and offering space (to live, work, for stores, a plant or parking garage with electric tank opportunities)
5. Burney: a greeting card with a CD, you can burn yourself. Even though the designs were great. It is not an innovative idea, nor very creative. Too many people don’t ever listen to CD’s anymore. The only one I’d buy this for, is my grandmother. She is the only family member who still listens to music, using a CD device.

These were all 2 minutes pitches, in which the companies presented their ideas.

• After lunch break designer, businessman, photographer and creative director Douglas Young showed us his designs. Even though it was a 1.0 presentation, it was well done and interesting to watch. GOD is his retail company for furniture, Delay NoMore (in Chinese it means something like Fuck your mother) is his clothing brand to create awareness. Integrating the west and the east, Douglas Young is an excellent designer who deserves to be recognised internationally. Great webdesign as well: www.god.com.hk
• Another creative interruption. I was a bit scared. But Onno Lixemberg was actually having an inspiring story about Gookie. Integrating sustainability in their daily business, they took the challenge to spread the love, using cookies. As a modern hippie Onno inspired the audience to spread love after CCC by sharing their own box of cookies with strangers. Go to www.gookie.nl to order them.
• Inspirator Sir Ken Robinson created awareness for the problems we are having in our educational system. Sir Ken Robinson, Ken, is creating awareness an educational system in which every child can excel. He wishes every child is in his element in school (instead of feeling out of place). Education where every child could find his own passion and talent. Even though it was a 1.0 presentation, Ken is blessed with amazing presentation skills. He has got humour, an interesting story, is showing natural leadership and knows how to make everyone understands what he means. I can quote him endlessly, but this one really made me laugh: You can’t define creativity… You can’t, but I can! In response to the “old” world. Marcel Kampman actually taped part of it
• John Moravec was trying to convince us of the same idea Sir Ken Robinson created awareness for. Using a lot of graphs and tables he was telling us the difference between, Society 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.0. His story seemed to be correct. But he was only using 1.0 skills to tell us. And to be honest he wasn’t very competent using these skills. Please John, practice what you preach. If you believe we live in society 2.0 now, use matching skills. The content of his idea was very good, I especially loved the term Knowmads.
• Dropout Nalden was the last creative interruption. The only speaker who was capable of speaking while playing music. Freewheeling through his website, he told us how he became one of the bigger entrepreneurs of the Netherlands, even thoudgh he is not working with dutch companies at all. Turned from being sued by one of the biggest music labels into their personal distributer, creating two way traffic between consumers and organisations. Nalden is a true entrepreneur 3.0. Tape by Marcel Kampman again.
• Last but not least, our minister of foreign affairs, Frank Heemskerk was the host of the award ceremony. Not truly creative, but a fine 1.0 speaker. I am still wondering why he was invited. We didn’t discuss internationalisation at all today, his department isn’t into innovation and there was no added value. I did like that he was questioning Sir Ken Robinsin and John Moravec from the perspective of the old world. This was a nice contribution, personal. Like he said, I’m dealing with the educational system like a father, not professionally. Plasterk would have been in place here. Even or especially if he doesn’t agree with the upcoming changes.

The speakers are one part of the celebration of creativity in companies. The organisation picked the Amsterdam “Music Building Aan ‘t IJ” to organise it. Perfectly situated near Amsterdam Central Station it was easy to get there. It is a light and beautiful building. But what was absolutely amazing me, was the digital logistics. The internet accessibility was awful, professional bloggers were frustrated, experiences couldn’t be shared. Internet is no objective in world 3.0, but it is a necessary tool and condition to practice world 3.0 successfully. The representative from the location seemed to be offended when I said something about it.

Furthermore, some feedback for the hospitality. I usually wouldn’t notice the awful Dutch hospitality, but complaining foreign guests opened my eyes again. Hosts who refused to talk to guests, because they were talking to each other. People who were working at the conference took 3 goodie bags in the middle of the conference to ensure their personal greediness. Result, not enough goodie bags for guests.

De Baak is one of the companies organising the Creative Company Conference. I’d strongly advise them to rethink the meaning of a “conference”. What is a conference? What does it need to be creative? De Baak has got some very good facilitators. I wonder if the facilitators can go to customers without training, just performing a topic they like and think is necessary. It surprises me that at most conferences, speakers are invited because of a topic they can speak about. The briefing should be much better. It is simply not ok to have a sales pitch from one of your speakers. And to be honest, there was more than one. The speakers should know what is expected from them.
But most of all, you should be certain about the presentation skills of the speakers. Master of ceremony Harry Starren promised us more interaction than last year. So select speakers on their capability to facilitate interactive presentations. Have an “assessment”. With the experience of De Baak, they should be capable of giving speakers feedback on this or train them a bit more.

On my way home, my Danish friend Nicholas Blok was surprised by my Dutch nagging qualities. He believes Dutch hospitality is the worst in the world. Discussing this and the day, he was surprised by nagging skills. You are nagging about everything? And yes he is right. And I’m proud of it. Together with my unknown Dutch partner we excelled in Amnon Levav’s challenge to come up with idea’s inside and outside the box. We were both frustrated with a few things and we came up with innovative solutions. Frustration can lead to two things, nagging and coming up with solutions. I’d love to do both.
Please look at the results of my nagging at YouTube (it is in Dutch).