DLD-09 Kicks Off

I am currently at one of Europe’s leading digital innovation conferences, DLD (Digital Life Design) taking place from Sunday - Tuesday in Munich for the fifth year. Around 800 entrepreneurs, thinkers and creative leaders from a variety of sectors will gather at this synergy exchange at the invitation of Hubert Burda Media, to compare their experiences between panel
sessions from high calibre specialists. All panels at the English speaking conference will also be broadcast on the DLD video portal (www.dld-conference.com), so if you haven't been invited you can watch on-line.

This year the theme is “New Realities”, and it is calling on its participants to formulate perspectives for the future of their markets and sectors after the credit crunch. In the digital area new business models, video networks, cloud computing, internet

The group of 80 speakers will include successful entrepreneurs such as René Obermann (Deutsche Telekom), Martin Halusa (Apax) and Abigail Disney (Daphne Foundation);thought leaders such as Daniel Kahnemann (Nobel laureate for economics), Nassim Taleb(author of “The Black Swan”), Matthew Bishop (author of “Philanthrocapitalism”) and Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post), and creative stars such as Rem Koolhaas(architect), Ross Lovegrove (designer), Fernando Sulichin (film producer) and Michael Schindhelm (cultural manager).

I hope there will be a connection to last year's DLD. There were several speakers, especially Martin Sorrell, who made predictions about how the market would change in the next couple of years. Sorrell was spot on, especially with the comments about Facebook and Murdoch. We shouldn't forget who got it right, for they are definitely the ones to watch.