joeadamfry — MLove 2011 - Bloody Marvellous.

MLove 2011 - Bloody Marvellous.

I have spent the past 5 days at a castle in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany for ‘MLove 2011’, a Mobile ConFestival positing itself as a hybrid between TED and Burning Man.

This was an accurate description.

And so whilst it is literally impossible for me to describe in person, never mind in the written word, the full sensory bombardment of surreal locations and activities, mind-blowing conversation, hilarious situations, exciting ideas, truly inspiring stories and, shall we say, anecdotally rich experiences provided by MLove, I’m going to give it a crack, from my POV. Sorry its a bit long. But its worth reading.

Wednesday

Upon our arrival we were taken to the castle, in the middle of nowhere, and thrust into the loving arms of MLove. A few beers later we shared stories of our passion (mine was playing piano) with a table of then strangers from all over the world…and heard some of the most fascinating tales I have ever heard. There was a lot to take on board but in the words of organiser Harald ‘My brain was tickling’. And that didn’t stop.

Following this we were lead into the biggest drum circle I’ve ever been a part of, facilitated by Jon Fitzgerald, all round nice guy and drum circle man for REMO “from Bangalore to Singapore, Norway to Chil-ay”. Great fun and a cool way to let your dinner go down.

That evening brought beer flowing from seemingly every orifice of the castle, dancing, talking and learning til the small hours.

Thursday

After a hard night of partying and meeting new people we awoke on Thursday in our hotel ‘The Healing Castle’ (not entirely sure how we got there but it definitely involved an unnecessarily overcomplicated bus journey) and breakfasted with our hosts Jim and Ingrid, a scouse nutcase and amazingly centred German Spiritualist respectively, both complete legends and both completely unlike anyone I have ever met. Indeed, the brain tickling did not stop.

We set off to the conference only a little late, thanks to Dan Graf and Maks’ slightly worse for wear 911 - there was a lot of wheel arch scraping going on with four of us in the little beast, but we arrived in one piece, ready for the morning session.

Jmac mlove11

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Some highlights from the talks that morning included JMac’s inspirational introduction and Thomas Goetz from Wired.

After coffee we broke out into groups for ‘open space’ sessions discussing topics ranging from Education to Singularity, from Sustainability to ‘Making Fucking Money’ (thanks for that, Mike Butcher, self-confessed hippy hater and essentially Satan). These were great and the insightful outputs even greater - “…can mobiles make us happy? They already have a ‘happy button’ - its called the off button”, ideas around the shifting relationship between teacher and student in a digital age, using mobile to crowdsource social revolution and the possibility of using individuals as physical affiliates for clothing stores. Wonderful.

A cracking and hugely meat-focused lunch was then followed by some amazing speakers from across the globe.

Above - Heather and Nora from imagethink.net visualised the talks so effectively all week

A panel from ‘the corporates’ discussed the future of mobile from their point of view, and how startups could integrate and work symbiotically with them. for me it was great to see these guys opening up and trying to talk through some of the barriers to adopting a startup culture and innovation within such large bureaucratic structures.

Next Russell Buckley exploded our brains with tales of singularity, veganism and the future of humankind. If robots became the ruling class, how would they treat humans in light of our treatment of ‘inferior species’ (think battery hens). Powerful stuff. He has published a reading list of his references, you should read it. Russell advises us that by 2045, we’ll have worked out how to live forever, and tells us we should “try and stay alive til then - dying before 2045 would be like being shot in the last shot of the war, when the peace treaties have already been signed”. Funny.

Any parts of my brain left over were then finished off by Yuri Van Geest, complete with EEG headgear discussing the possibilities of singularity to shape mankind through nanotech, biotech, AI, robots, DNA manipulation and so on. Truly incredible and the reference of the conference for me: “The best way to increase your serendipity is to increase your vulnerability” - John Hagel. True. The session was finished off by Corvida Raven, who spoke passionately about the cost of mobile.

After a much needed coffee and cigarette break (in my opinion still the most serendipitous way to have an amazing conversation) were Kei, Takeshi, Takashi and Katsutoshi, introducing us to iButterfly, a world premiere. Takeshi is now my new favourite Japanese person - a true creative.

Next came Beverley Jackson from the Grammy’s, introducing the irrepressible John Fitzpatrick and a genuinely cool talk from Justin Ellington, mega talented US producer. The day was rounded off by an honest and very well articulated ‘off the cuff’ talk from Chamillionaire. All I can say is, he is a dude, and eating breakfast with him is perhaps the coolest I have ever felt.

mlove show from PROJEKTIL on Vimeo.

I remember when Dan Graf took this photo. He was pretty happy with it.

The night time saw a combination of surreal activities that ranged from a wonderful ‘all in red and white dinner’ to Roman and PROJEKTIL’s incredible projection map onto the castle VIDEO, super cool interactive ARG ‘MLove Stars’ (all built just for us!) to a German Pyro-band (flamethrowers and beats anyone?) and of course resident DJ Izzy laying the tunes til the early morning.

Friday

Shaking off the shackles of thinking til the early hours of the morning we reconvened at the castle where the speakers continued to rock. Will Samson from Contagious discussed more familiar territory to me with some great innovative brand campaigns, and Peter Hale (GBH) gave a very refreshing and hilarious talk on his view of design. Bernd Becker (VW) inspired from an automotive perspective (pretty relevant to my agency, actually), Martin Lange form Ogilvy rocked out his cool new mobile and customer journey insights and Ariel from Mediamind leant some context to a lot of what we have been discussing with some great engagement stats.

Bernd Kold blew us away with his talk on Club of Marrakesh - best if you read this post to find out more, as Ralf puts it better than I ever could. My healing castle buddy Daniel Graf told tales of Kyte and his new role at Google Mobile Innovation Labs before a set of Startup pitches. The most hilarious background on VCs I have ever heard from Jean Schmitt introduced the stage to some great ideas.We also heard from the teen camp - a truly inspirational bunch of youngsters - followed by a really important message on FTC online guideline reform (below)… more on this to come.

The final fling for the conference were the Future Cube ideation workshops - a really cool and intimate creative session with, again, a range of topics and some fascinating outcomes - highlights included looking at how singularity will affect our day to day lives (biotech robots diagnosing our poo in the morning anyone?), rethinking education with MLove’s interpretation of Pink Floyd, telepathic business inducing orgasms (don’t ask) and some very clever thinking about presenting modular content in the entertainment and music business. Truly awesome.

There was just time left for one last party, an incredible bonfire, more projection mapping and I think Izzy finished DJing at about 8.30am before running off to the airport (she is hardcore). Very little sleep (if any) before everyone headed off to their respective countries and lives - and I can say almost certainly that everyone will have taken some of that MLove spirit to go and spread in their own worlds.

It rocked. Seriously. So a massive thank you everyone who was there and I’ll see you next year…and for everyone else - feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about anything.

Love Joe

And finally - a few words from my colleague @jamsim on the conference, taken after Friday night’s shenanigans, at about 8am Saturday morning: