Munich Web Week: "Blogging is graffiti with periods and commas"

These days, everything in Munich—or at least a lot of it—is focused on the 5th Munich Web Week. As is tradition, it officially opened yesterday with an evening reception at the Old Town Hall. The highlight of the evening was the presentation of the Isarnetz Blog Awards in 10 categories.

But before that happened, the guests in the venerable Old Town Hall were first greeted by Kurt Kapp, Head of Economic Development and Deputy Head of the Department of Labor and Economic Development of the City of Munich, officially welcomed the event. He thanked the Web Week team led by Prof. Wolf Groß for their hard work, without whose partly voluntary commitment, the Web Week would not have been possible at all. Kapp is certain that Munich is the perfect location for the event. Not only is Europe's largest IT cluster already located here, but the Bavarian capital has also set the right course for further digital developments. Keyword IoT Watson headquarters with a 200 million investment from IBM. The major challenges associated with the digital revolution were then highlighted Peter Driessen, Managing Director of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Munich and Upper Bavaria, and particularly pointed out that the areas of business and training have a huge need to catch up.

Kurt Kapp at the welcome speech (© Munich Startup)

Everyone busy at the Business Speed Dating (© Isarnetz eV)

Blog Awards ceremony (© Isarnetz eV))

After these introductory words, the guests should also have their say. Business Speed DatingLively conversations unfolded across two floors, with everyone eager to share what they were doing and why they were there. So eager that only the loud drumming of the Diappo drumming group from Senegal could silence the guests once again—or rather, to make them listen.

The keynote speech by Christiane Brandes-Visbeck on the topic of digital leadership. The Hamburg native explained in considerable detail how each of us can—and must—become a digital leader in times of digital transformation. Because the digital revolution is coming, whether we like it or not. Her tip: Always stay in the flow, try things out, and forget about fears. Brandes-Visbeck makes it sound easier than it often is in the everyday working world. But she certainly provided some food for thought.

Blogging is graffiti with periods and commas

After that, the real highlight of the evening was on the agenda — and the reason why, alongside quite a few suits, there were also some young faces in the hall of the Old Town Hall: the award ceremony for this year’s Isarnetz Blog Awards.

Before that happened, Marco Eisenack, founder of mucbook and thus also co-organizer of the awards, first of all raises the question: What exactly is blogging? And who would know better answers than Google? So blogging is — according to the search engine — the opposite of “keeping everything to yourself”Or to put it more positively: Blogging is graffiti with periods and commas.

And Munich can now look forward to some desk sprayers: For this year’s blog award alone, the Jurors Choose from over 200 suggested blogs in 10 different categories. The selection criteria included:

Text quality
layout
Usability
Interaction (especially on social media)
Topic relevance
continuity

Despite some heated discussions, the jury was able to agree on nine winners. The audience itself chose the tenth—there's nothing like a good fan base.