Digital Media - the Wind is Shifting. Snippets from the Media Congress 18

TLDR: This year's Media Congress 18 offered surprisingly broad views of coming and big changes in "digital media." For the congress of an industry that is not exactly known as an innovation driver, this is a nice surprise. Here are some lasting, highly subjective impressions.

"Digital" will soon be the new "normal". NOW is the time to shape the future.

"We live in times of dramatic - I repeat, dramatic - upheaval. And almost nothing is working yet. But what if it does work? We have to ask ourselves today exactly what kind of future we want to live in. Tomorrow is too late."

"The fact that soon no one will have to do dull jobs anymore, that I can hand them over to a robot - that's awesome, that's fantastic!"
Reinhard Springer, advertising legend, ex Springer & Jacoby, at 70 incredibly energetic and cheerful, pulverized every moderation attempt and made the whole hall grin permanently. Belongs in THE form on television. Click here for the video.

"Digital" must become manageable. Marketing is upgrading internally. There is no other choice.

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"With all the investments coming in "digital," the internal perspective is the more important one. It's about building up know-how. The decisive factor is the employees"

"You can't outsource digital controlling; it has to reside within the company."
Tim Alexander, CmO, Deutsche Bank

"AI or not, the biggest competitive advantage is still the human being. To teach a computer to play Go, you need 16 million euros worth of electricity. An employee's brain uses only 20 watts to do that! Use people to control machines and they have an efficiency advantage of at least 95%."
Chris Boos, Founder & CEO, Arago

Digital polarizes and disintegrates society. For a plural whole, everyone has to do something. Individuals and companies.

"I still feel pretty good on Facebook as long as the number of people calling me a Nazi is about the same as the number of people calling me a communist."

"If 50% of opinion formation is on this small display, then as a politician I have to be on that small display."

"I don't want our democracy to die out with the daily newspapers."
Boris Palmer, green mayor of Tübingen. Why was he actually there? Unclear. But it's good that he was there.

"We advertisers have a very great responsibility these days for the functioning of our society. The advertising and media market is facing the greatest challenge in its history." 

"We don't see our years of demands for transparency being heard at all"

"Regulatory challenges in data privacy will transform the entire market."
Tina Beuchler, OWM Chair. Has identified blockchain as a solution to regain control over media processes. We'll call if it's fast enough ;-).

"Digital" will be regulated, monopolies broken up. The only question is when.

"Prenzlauer Berg, that's a cradle of philistinism, where even our journalists unfortunately feel far too comfortable."

"Break up Google and Facebook. What do they really have to do with capitalism anymore? They are monopolies"

ZDF editor-in-chief Frey calls for state regulation of platforms - up to and including breaking up Google, Facebook and Co."

"In the US Google and Facebook are under increasing pressure which is already high. They stood for "the best" we have in America. Now they are regarded like the Tobacco Companies some years ago and soon they will be treated this way."
Brian Morrissey, Editor-in-Chief, Digiday

"We will launch the single sign-on in the spring. The connection to the sovereign tasks of the reporting system will come in the second expansion stage. We are cooperating very closely with the federal authorities."

Donata Hopfen, CEO, verimi GmbH in a joint (!) "pitch" with Prof. Dr. Johannes Caspar, Hamburg's top data protection official. Verimi is a consortium, a digital rebirth of the 90s "Deutschland AG" with Bundesdruckerei and Here.com at its center. Can it be that Germany / Europe is the first to manage to use the structurally totalitarian digital and surveillance technology not to violate civil rights but to defend a democracy? They are building " the most secure trust platform for identity services and payments in Europe ." Fingers crossed. Otherwise, we'll have China's monster surveillance app WeChat on our hands.