The new normal and lurking dragons – more bloggers on NEXT13

Anab Jain has recreated her NEXT13 talk in blog post form - and other bloggers went away haunted by their own dragons. More great blogging about the conference.

Some more long form, thoughtful posts are starting to emerge out on the web, as people have the chance to mull over the themes explored in Berlin last week. Here’s our pick of the more challenging ones published in the last few days:

Anab Jain gave one of the most mind-expanding talks at NEXT 13, and has recreated that experience in blog post form as Design for the New Normal (Revisited). Several people told me that they tried to grab all the links she included, but didn’t manage it. Well, you can now find them as 70 slides and commentary, with the time to really drink them in…

She’s also created a new Tumblr blog to catch related ideas.

Kathrin Kaufmann was a repeat visitor to NEXT – but found it less challenging than in previous years:

Last week, I went to NEXT Berlin, a conference with a focus on the digital future and start-ups. I’ve already been there last year and left with many things to think about. All in all, it had changed my perspective on certain things. I guess as I’ve followed up all the topics and speaker that thrilled me, it was no surprise that this time my horizon wasn’t broadened quite as much as last year.

Still, she found plenty to write about

Nicolas Sierro was paying careful attention to the dynamics between startups, established companies and investors at the show, and has some interesting observations:

I would like to highlight mixed feelings and tangible sources of tension felt among these players. Some startups founders noticed the visible presence of these 2 other groups (companies & investors) during the event, a reminder of their important role in this ecosystem. One of them told me “perhaps in the future we, startups, will be mainly on stage and VCs in the audience to learn from us”. Another sign of tension was revealed during the last presentation by Bruce Sterling. He criticized the VC/Startup financial model where investors get rich while founders could be eased out by investors anytime once the later have enough participation.

It’s clear many people came away with their own, personal dragons to think about. Jasmina Tesanovic found plenty in her lyrical and unsettling meditation on what she learnt at NEXT13:

Those who wear the network become its surveillance devices, those who track are tracked in return, those who anticipate will increase the pace of the events that befall them, those who know their customers in deep detail are eagerly spilling their own guts on the forensic slab of Big Data. No product or service will go untouched by low-cost sensors, augmented reality, health probes and instrumented self-hood; it’s mindshare as well as marketing, all in a cavalcade of meter-high break-dancing robots and personalized anti-Barbie dolls.

Others, though, fought their dragons and came away with practical advice – like Startupbootcamp’s Lauren Ingram:

As engineers have the potential to go straight from Stanford into high-paid jobs (as much as $200k), they are considered gold dust – Stanford’s top engineers provide much of the lifeblood of Silicon Valley startups. So if you don’t have the advantage of being an engineer, you still need to think like a techie. Julia Hartz, co-founder of ticketing giant Eventbrite (based in Silicon Valley) says that part of the success of Eventbrite is down to thinking like a tech company rather than thinking like a ticketing company.

Some dragons are all in the mind…

Written something good about NEXT 2013? Let me know…