This year I have found again the time to be at the Medientage München, Germany’s largest and best attended media congress afaik. It is dominated by „print“ media, i.e. representatives of print and online journals, newspapers, film, tv and radio. However, more an more games, web and other companies and bloggers find their way to it as well.
First and foremost it is the best way to get to know what the deciders of the industry think or at least what kinds of views they have towards their industries (one needs to be able to understand German though). This year I attended the first two days, the discussions I listened to were dominated by the challenge the print media faces when it tries to make money online. Not many companies seem to have a clue what to do, some though seem to be well on the way into the new era, some will probably simply disappear in th next couple of days as the xing founder Lars Hinrichs hinted at, when he opened his part in the discussion about print with the statement that he has not paid for such products for a long time and does not intend to do it in the future either. Döpfner, the chairman of the media group Axel Springer saw „more possibilities then risks“ in the digitalisation and seems to make many efforts to bring his company in the rigth shape to make use of them anyway.
The most interesting discussions were about the frameworks of the future digital society, i.e. net neutrality, DRM, actvities against piracy etc. so I enjoyed the contributions of Constanze Kurz and Alvar Freude the most. They recommended to think in a different direction than to sue potential clients. I guess we will be able to hear more of the same at the Medientage München 2011.
