What We Did in Berlin Today

Today in Berlin we met up at 3pm for a walking tour of the city, then ended up at 5pm at the British Council office at Alexanderplatz 1 in East Berlin next to the Fernsehturm television tower that was a major symbol of the GDR in the communist era.

We began at 5:30 with a brilliantly led introduction and ‘The Great Transatlantic Debate.’ We lined up in order of height, grouped into teams of 5, and then separated into planning rooms.

Each of the six teams (we were team 3) had a provided thesis they had to prepare to prove in the upcoming debate. Our team was tasked to prove that ‘the relationship between America and the E.U is strong and getting stronger.’

In our five minutes, Peter Macleod from Canada played the American husband and Angela Brunete from Spain played the European wife. Peter allegorically referred to the EU/US relationship as a marriage in which there were ups and downs but at the end of the day we would always be together. Angela accused Peter of cheating on her with India, and Peter accused Angela of cheating on him with China. But they reconciled as Rabah Ghezali from France shared the cultural and historical ties including the core values of liberal democracies and the Marshall Plan, Dragos Pislaru from Romania shared the strategic and military ties including our recent learnings of what can happen when we don’t truly work together in global conflict, and I shared the economic ties including trade and FDI growth. Team Four proceeded to present the other side of the argument for five minutes, followed by a one minute rebuttal.

Following the debates, we discussed issues including the identity challenge, citizen media, technology and mobility, E.U. enlargement, the relative stasis of the U.S., whether there were 4, 5, or 7 continents in the world (Europeans learn 5), red blue and purple America, the Stockholm consensus, lateral relationships between the U.S. and Eurozone countries, whether the West or East would most define the 21st century, demography, and our shared history.

After the group discussion we held a reception and dinner and followed on with about three hours of networking in the lounge of the British Council’s office. Around 10, Jeff Johnson and I worked to persuade the group to go to ‘Weekend‘ the dance club across the street in the Sharp Aquos building until we found out that GMF was not name of the Sunday night DJ but rather meant that Sunday night was Gay Night–so we headed to Bar Wave at the Novotel instead.

We’re all building some tremendously valuable connections that will help our businesses, non-profits, and public service organizations for many decades to come while broadening our understanding of global challenges and global entrepreneurial opportunites.

I’m off to get back to work on my Sunday night email catchup.

Building Bridges Across the Atlantic

What’s up, what’s up. It’s Sunday at 3:34am but I feel like I’m still on EST. I’m over in Berlin this weekend doing some analysis of the usage of email marketing in German small businesses and attending a pretty cool conference put together by the a group called the British Council.

They’re calling it Transatlantic Network 2020. They’re basically bringing together 100 people from N. America and Europe for each of the next 12 years until 2020 to build relationships among future world leaders from the NATO countries between 23 and 36 years old. 2008 is the first year of the program.

The attendees are off the heazy. The 15 or so U.S./Canandian participants got together tonight at 6 in the hotel bar and then we headed off for dinner at a biergarten and had the traditional bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potatoes.

I met some mad smart people tonight–including social activist Jeff Johnson from BET, Washington Post “How the World Sees America” blogger Amar Bakshi, NASA public affairs specialist Stephanie Schierholz, Bethan Jenkins, a 26 year old Welsh Parliament member, and David Kirby from America’s Future Foundation and KSG at Harvard where’d I’d love to be at in a few years.

It’s wonderful to have a dinner in which we can get wide-ranging perspectives on topics like ice cap melting, microfinance, U.S. space program research, asteroid path projections, bilateral aid inefficiency, fuel cell physics, U.S. rural poverty, nationalism vs. internationalism, global health, genocide, the role of colonialism and Nation-State border creation in global poverty, Barack Obama’s triangulation of internationalism, government efficiency, and social liberalism, and the degenerative devolution of hip hop since Dr. Dre’s Chronic album in 1992.

I can’t wait until the outlook and ideas of the participants from Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Romania, The Netherlands, N. Ireland, England, and Turkey are added tomorrow.

The other cool thing that keeps happening is that I keep running into iContact customers wherever I go. I ran into three our four while speaking at Metro State College in Denver on Thursday and here at the conference David Kirby from America’s Future Foundation uses iContact to send newsletters to the supporters of his non-profit. Word is spreading.

We just got back from a dance club called Tresor in a former communist-era power plant in East Berlin that seemed to just be getting started at 3am when we left. Man it’s harder to dance to techno than hip-hop, especially with the unvarying/long beats of underground Berlin trance.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be meeting the European participants and doing a guided walking tour of the city. The main conference runs from Mon-Wed.

If you are interested in being considered for the Dublin Transatlantic 2020 Conference in September check out their site and contact Jacqui Allan.

From their site:

ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Transatlantic Network 2020 (TN2020) seeks to create sustainable, multilateral networks that span the Atlantic by engaging future leaders from North America, the UK, and the rest of Europe to collaboratively address global issues. Building on the history and shared values of the transatlantic relationship, the program aims to foster long-term relationships among future leaders and to incite grassroots action on important global issues. It is designed to run until 2020.

WHY FOCUS ON THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP?

North America and Europe share a common set of interests – in the advancement of fundamental rights and liberties, education, science and technology. Reports indicate that North America and Europe need to strengthen the transatlantic relationship and work together more closely to best tackle global issues like climate change, immigration, and security. TN2020 will foster collaboration between the next generation of North American and European leader

HOW WILL THE PROGRAM WORK?

TN2020 will feature initiatives that give a voice to the next generation of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging them to work together to explore common solutions to current and future global issues.