Since January this year, I did not have any stage appearances, which made me sad, to be honest. I enjoy sharing my vision as well as the mission of our team with diverse crowds. Getting feedback from people you did not know before is one of the essential things in business, but also the entire life. I was glad to be back on stage and here is my thought on this extraordinary event. If you missed the conference this time, I am going to share a video link in the end.
This April I was thankful to have the possibility to be on stage again as a speaker. The excellent Karajan Music Tech Conference, hosted by one of our closest advisors, Matthias Röder, was the perfect opportunity for me and us to share some thoughts about the two leading technologies we focus on currently and in the future: Machine learning and Blockchain. I was excited when I read the speaker list and found some well-known names from the tech but also the VC industry. The last couple of weeks have been all about venture capital investment and global scale for us, so I was thrilled to connect further and grow my network.
In the beginning, I was wondering, how we might fit into the conference with our vision and product, Cultural Places. The event was mainly about, how AI is changing the world of music in the future, but it turned out that we fit some holes in there and I got quite some talks and a few new good leads during the conference. Especially our internal discussions about one of Cultural Places' main features - the smart trip planner, came into my mind a lot. Our planner has mainly the purpose of putting you as the hero in every journey you take. Cannot talk too much about it yet, you can try it out shortly. Other connections to the event are our heavy focus on decentralized ticketing services, to provide tamper-proof tickets and a controlled secondary market. While you are reading this, I am sure you can already name a few industries where this is already from very high importance.
Besides the connection to our products and services, several speakers were fascinating to me. I will not pick individual names here, as I learned a lot from many of them. There was this whole thinking of Machine Learning and how it can also influence entire industries in a better and more effective way. But there had also been some definite statements about projects and investments in general. One of these was as follows:
"If your product is not useable on a global scale, it is meaningless!"
This statement was one of the most crucial sentences during the event that made again made me think that we are on precisely the right place with our product, service, and vision. The past often showed us, that you could get off the track very quickly and very fast. We are shaping a little bit of this client here, doing some extra work there and completely forgetting about the essential goals of your roadmap. Don´t get me wrong. Feedback is the most important thing, but especially when it comes from users. I cannot stress out the word "users" more. Making it "right" for every client and everyone in the world will only lead to extensive failure and a lot of tears, hours and stress for nothing.
I was glad about meeting a lot of decision-makers from the cultural industry as well as technology in general, to talk about new ideas, developments and also struggles everyone is facing. Here I would like to mention a stacked panel on the main stage, including representatives from the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival and many more, talking about innovation within the cultural sector, but also about the challenges from the legal and our force of habits. I am glad everyone agreed where the journey should go to and that cooperations are heavily needed, also with startups that aim to solve pain points and problem.
The performance that thrilled me the most, besides all the great innovative exhibits shown in the innovation lab, was the concert in the end — a concert about the symbioses between human and machine on one shared topic: Music. It is not happening too often nowadays that something leaves me speechless, the show was one of them. You can check out some more about it here.
I am going to be on stage again very soon again. I promise. There are still so many of you out there to tell our story. I keep you posted on all my social media channels as well as the website. For those who don't know, find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook using the name @ptomelitsch
Talk to you soon!
Patrick
