On the 30th of November 2009 I was one of the lucky ones to attend the first-ever TED-related event in Germany. TEDx Berlin was organized by German communication agency red onion around Stephan Balzer and took place at the Grand Hyatt in Berlin. Stephan Balzer was also the moderator of the event and did a great job guiding through the day. The location was also a great choice as it (apparently) offered all its services for free to the event and the layout of the hotel and its facilities supported the collaborative character of the event. The event was organized meticulously and it was just a great pleasure to be guided through the day. The choice of speakers and their stories was phenomenal as the list was quite diverse, some talks were in a sense complementing, and the whole atmosphere was very stimulating. The balance between talks and opportunities to talk to the speakers and other participants was excellent. Frequent coffee breaks and a very nice lunch gave everyone the opportunity to network. My Favourite Talks Till Behnke - The Web of Trust Till Behnke's presentation about the web or trust was another great example of how web technologies (being very intangible) can solve a very pressing and devastating issue like poverty or lack of access to resources (being very tangible). His website is achieving this through matching supply and demand. Mr. Behnke told the audience about his younger years when he made the transformation from an up and coming rugby player to corporate player to internet entrepreneur. Having visited South Africa and having seen its beauty and foremost its devastating problems he decided to attempt to change something about it. He started off with organizing some volunteers for a housing project but was never quite satisfied since he could not find access to a larger lever that would really move things. When researching opportunities to raise money he was shocked by the amount on in-transparency in most charitable organizations. His project betterplace.org is giving people with lack of resources access to people with resources. They are "merely" matching people with projects to people with money and the desire to invest it in charitable projects. I enjoyed his presentation a lot since the level of energy was very high. Till Behnke was not really talking just about a problem but more a problem that he made his own. The level of pure passion to talk about this topic was very inspiring. Ralf Schmerberg - Who is Independent in the 21st Century? What I liked especially about Mr. Schmerberg's talk was that he showed some vulnerability and shared some very personal thoughts. He talked extensively about his "past" life in which he was part of a corporate machine that he started to hate more and more. Finally, he broke out of it and changed the direction of his life. Instead of using his energy to promote and sell products in large amounts he dedicated more and more of his time to "independent" (film) projects. An interesting approach that his projects take is to not pay anything. According to Mr. Schmerberg this works out perfectly. The idea is simple: They don't pay themselves, external service providers, and they also not sell their movies. He made the comparison of what would have happened if they tried to sell their latest documentary. Had they tried the traditional channels he claimed that they might have sold 50k copies of the film but instead they made it available online and had 4m views in a very short time. Overall, Mr. Schmerberg's message was to really think about how independent you are from people, money, ideologies, and preconceived opinions. Peter Eigen - Grand Corruption & Petty Corruption - Fighting them Through Civil Society Mr. Eigen was the most inspiring speaker of the day for me personally. Having worked for the World Bank Mr. Eigen told stories about facing grand corruption and his deep desire to stop it. In other words he said that corruption is in many developing places the root of all evil and rather culminates problems than to solve them. He named corruption as prime reason for poverty since corruption creates inefficient and economically unjustifiable situations. He founded Transparency International with this dilemma in mind and formed the hypothesis that corruption could only be fought through the formation of a civil society. Mr. Eigen went on to explain this: The backbone of the idea is that corruption is criminalized (in many developed nations this is apparently still not the case) and society itself is the driving force behind an enforcement. In other words corruption becomes socially unacceptable and is not tolerated at all by the citizens. This is especially important in developing nations as this would prevent waste of public money. One of the most remarkable things about Mr. Eigen's talk was that he spoke from decades of experience. His service in the World Bank gave him a great look and perspective from the inside that he generously shared with the audience. Also his level of passion for the topic and clarity with which he presented made is a pure pleasure to listen to him. My Favourite Video One rule a TEDx event has to apply is to show a certain amount of videos of the "real" TED conference in Monterrey. The team of TEDx Berlin presented a great choice of videos: David Logan's "Tribal Leadership", Pattie Maes' "The 6th Sense", and "Hans Rosling's "The Best Stats You've Ever Seen". I knew Hans Rosling's and  Pattie Maes' talk already and they are more than a must-watch. The talk given by David Logan is very inspiring and fascinating since he shows how our society (or better: all societies around the globe) actually work like tribes. His main point is that we all live and work in tribes and that we are part of many tribes. You can find the video here: David Logan on Tribal Leadership (At this moment TEDx Berlin has not yet published any pictures or videos - I will add them when they come online eventually.) So would you go again? It was the very first TEDx in Germany and I will try to attend all the upcoming TEDx events near me. The level of inspiration is overwhelming and I can only recommend it to anyone who is interested beyond whatever it is they are doing. Luckily, the organizers announced that in about 6 months they will try to realize TEDx Hamburg which I will try to be a part of as well. Thank you for the great event!

Just this week I visited ATEC (Aachen Technology and Entrepreneurship Conference) with distinguished members of Momentum Maastricht. The event took place at Schloss Rahe, which was a great choice for this event. The Maastricht delegation was especially invited by the organizing team of AC.E as part of a cooperation of the ATEC and the Maastricht Week of Entrepreneurship. The conference offered many workshops, lectures, presentations, and opportunities to network. A participant could chose between three tracks, namely Mobile Technologies, Automotive, and Energy. The Mobile Track I chose the mobile track and had the opportunity to hear and get to know a very interesting speaker and personality, Prof. Dr. Jan Borchers. His presentation about usability and how the topic should be approached by companies, especially engineers, was funny and very well structured. He gave great examples of Dos and Don'ts when designing a new product and showed the audience some hilarious product design disasters. It was a very valuable speech since he showed the different perspectives (R&D, production, marketing, sales, user, etc.) on product design. Overall, I enjoyed his restless enthusiasm for the topic and the way he talked about it.  His presentation was definitely the best of the track and possibly one of the freshest of the whole ATEC. One version of his presentation is available at his departments website. Other speakers of this mobile track included a representative from Metro AG, who showed a new concept that Metro wants to implement in their stores which makes the consumer's cellphone center of the focus. With an everyday mobile phone customers will be able to scan their merchandise and use a quick check out. In essence a system that Albert Heijn uses in its stores but instead of the "Albert gun" the cellphone will do the job. Another presentation was given by a representative of business consulting firm McKinsey & Co. about mobile trends - yes great consultant charts that left no doubt that the proper resources like Gartner, Datamonitor, etc. were harvested in countless hours of all-nighters... To give some credit, it was very informative though if you spoke consulting. The fourth speaker was an entrepreneur (the first and only one in this track) who presented the history of his chip manufacturing business and had the great ability to convey some entrepreneurial spirit to the group. He shared his experience and gave some great advice on how to get started and how to fight the fear of going on "alone" if you are a non-business student. His presentation had among all the highest perceived value since it was as real-life as it could get and very personal. The interesting thing about the conference was the schedule. The morning kicked off with the workshops without one real word of welcome (we were greeted very nicely though) and only after lunch the opening ceremony began. This had an up and down side. The good thing was that you started off immediately after you arrived but the downside was that without the opening ceremony in the morning the feeling of a united conference start kind of got lost. The location and the students organizing the event did everything they could to be very hospitable but to me a conference should start with everybody and should end at some point with everybody. Maybe this is just a matter of habit, nevertheless, quite noteworthy. StartUp MeetUp In the morning I participated in the StartUp MeetUp session which brought together four founders and their start-up story. Here is my twitter feed from that session to give you an impression of what was said:

Just heard a presentation of Felix from #conangel cool iphone app for conventions and fairs - def. bright future, great job #atec09

Just checked out the iphone app from @conangel after hearing a pres from founder Felix. Awesome tool that every event should use!#atec2009

Joerg Meyer of EUtech biz advice: have fun at work, watch for quality, watch your liquidity, choose your own project, think longterm #atec09

Claus Overbeck from RedTeam Pentesting talking about his biz: playing the bad guys (hacking) and getting payed for it - awesome!#atec2009

Sven Wilhelm from #collectiveiq: you dont have to be an IT guy to run an IT company, find great support, think about your biz model#atec2009

The AC.E Invitation The organization of the whole event was remarkably well done. The subscription online was easy and quick and the day itself was perfectly executed. At this point I want to thanks all the people over at AC.E - who invited us - to make this such a special, meaningful, and informative day. The Highlight The highlight of the day was probably the speech done by Microsoft Germany CEO Achim Berg, who presented some of the latest Microsoft brew, which will hit the markets very soon. The focus of their R&D seems to go further into the direction of artificial intelligence and cognitive learning. He showed some videos and figures which paint an interesting future.

Probably one of the most interesting and inspiring characters in the German business arena is Wolfgang Grupp. Apart from is entrepreneurial talent to turn-around textile manufacturing company Trigema, which he took over highly indebted he is also one of the most prominent and extravagant business owners. Grupp not only makes the news regularly because of horribly done commercials involving talking chimpanzees selling the brand but also because he deeply belives in the mantra only to produce in Germany. While other companies are busy finding the next best (cheaper) country to produce their goods, Grupp rather worries about the jobs of his 1200-something employees. Why is this so interesting? I had the pleasure recently to be directed towards a documentary about Grupp that ran on German television station SWR (Südwest Rundfunk) in early 2008. The video is available on YouTube and a must watch for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and an acceptable ability to understand the German language. One thing that is commonly, publicly criticized about Grupp is his way of presenting himself. As it becomes evident in the documentary there are certain qualities of his personality that - in my opinion - make him a successful business person and a peculiar individual; which might easily mislead people what he is about. Yes, Grupp takes the milk for his lunch-muesli from a golden "gral", and yes, he likes to take his helicopter to inspect his stores, and again - yes - his mansion is conveniently located across from his manufacturing site. The documentary is titled "Der König von Burladingen" (German for "The King of Burladingen" - Burladingen of course being the city of his production facilities), which makes it quite apparent what position he has in that area. Undoubtedly, there is not a living soul in this region that does not know and respect him. The title, although seeming ironic, is quite well deserved as Grupp achieved something unparalleled in Germany. According to news reports he never had to let people go because of economic reasons and in addition to that he guarantees a job or traineeship for the children of his employees. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGZ968iuGFY&feature=PlayList&p=88869804F4621AE2&index=0] But what is it that makes him so successful? In the film Grupp mentions one core principle of his management style. He declares that the most important thing is to the decide. He says: "You always have to make decisions, if you do not make decisions that is the worst decision of all". I could not agree more. Having started two businesses one lesson I had to learn "the hard way" is that you have to keep on keeping on. Once you stop deciding or to initiating activities - may they be operational or strategic - the business stops as well. As we all know what does not grow, dies. This is also true for a business. Looking at the Trigema track record there are no signs of demise. The other side of the decision medal is most certainly character and integrity. Grupp obviously is a very self-confident and powerful authority figure. Since I do not know him personally I can only guess that this is not something he was from birth on but that he had to work hard for. Not in the sense that he is limited in his capacity but more in the sense that once you take that role you will most certainly also experience some fair amount of head-wind. People that make decisions quick and "decisively" will often also make themselves target of other people's displeasure. I named this post "Idol Entrepreneur: Wolfgang Grupp" because his ability to really lead his business this way can be a great example for any kind of entrepreneur or business person. Obviously there is more to Wolfgang Grupp than just this quality. Perhaps one is that Trigema since years has no debt and is 100& self-financed...