Over the last month or so I had the time and good fortune to attend two of the (increasingly frequent) events targeted towards München’s creative class. The first was Creative Nite, I’ve written about Creative Nite on this blog before, and even had the honor of being one of the speakers on the event’s debut evening.
I really like Creative Nite, but this last one was especially awesome. The location, Milla Live Club*, was great (despite a small mix-up with the address) as were the speakers, but the cherry on top was the audience and the general buzz of the evening.
The speakers included:
Lucas Bock, Julio Brinkmann und Gabriel Czembor, the young cuties from sueco – Einfach Selbermachen. A company they founded where you can order kit online to make your own leather bag (needless to say I found the self-production idea brilliant!)
Till Hoffmann who owns the underground music club, Milla (and I mean that literally, the venue is in a cellar, under the ground) as well as Millaphon Records. A self-effacing Bavarian chap who talked about starting the club and his experience.
The whole thing made me feel glad and happy to be exposed to and part of such a vibrant creative scene in Munich. (That’s me, chatting with my friend, in the first row on, second from the left!)
I also usually find German audiences to be very reticent and shy to speak (as opposed to a bunch of loud-mouth Americans), but that was utterly not the case at this Creative Nite. When people’s side chatter got too loud someone shouted ‘Ruhe!’ which met with roaring applause. The audience was boisterous, engaged and asked a lot of questions. People didn’t hesitate to push a little on the, ‘high-concept’ way that Kulturkonsorten presented their idea. A friend of mine asked ‘Maybe I’m stupid, but What do you actually do????’ which met with another approving round of applause. All in all the ‘nite’ was herzlich, authentic and fun.
A few weeks later, in the cold light of morning at 8:30 a.m. I went to the inaugural Creative Morning in Munich. Creative Mornings are a monthly, worldwide locally-hosted creative lectures, started by Tina Roth Eisenberg.
It’s high time that Munich hosted one of these, and kudos to Frog Design and Kalle who organized it. It was a stroke of genius to host it at the Bayerisches National Museum; the contrast of such a design-y event against the marble, classical art and traditional European museum architecture was inspiring.
The speaker was Mirko Borsche who showed his portfolio reel and then kicked-off a QA.
I enjoyed the questions, and appreciated Mirko’s honesty, but I was also disappointed that there wasn’t something more prepared for the specific monthly theme of the event (in this case, ‘money’). I don’t need to rush to get somewhere before work at 8:30 to spend 20 minutes watching someone’s portfolio reel.
This felt a lot more like an ‘industry networking event’ (nothing wrong with that!) rather than a community happening, which I suppose is what it is. It also took place in the broader context of Munich Creative Business Week (read up on that on another old post here).
I’m glad this got kicked off, and look forward to the next one. The audience was, in this case, the more reticent type, but I attribute that two things: People are not at their loosest at 9:00 a.m., and the whole thing is in English. I understand that the event is global, but it’s a shame because I think the tone may have been a little different and the mostly German audience might have been less hesitant to speak if they could ask questions in their native language.
Find out when the next Creative Nite is happening here, and the next Creative Morning Munich here.
*Years ago, like ten or so, there used to be an event hosted here called the ‘Bachbett Party’ (or something like that). They were fantastic; great DJs, live percussion, good vibe. I am NOT a club person and never have been, but I remember walking out of the place as the sun was rising which is totally insane behavior from me, even in my youth, that’s how great they were.)
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