I just had a very interesting and valuable four days on what is known as the “quiet” Balearic island of Menorca. It’s quiet compared Mallorca and Ibiza.
The conference is Menorca TechTalk and is hosted by tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. He gathered a number of really smart, successful entrepreneurs and investors (and young and upcoming startuppers) from around Europe, Latin America (he’s originally from Buenos Aires and is now based in Madrid), Asia, the States.
I prefer to network one-on-one… visit people at their offices, go to breakfast, take walks with people. I guess you could say I like the quiet approach. And that is why I liked this quiet conference. The ratio of organized content to total time was an astonishing 3 content hours to 48 total (waking) hours (with waking hours varying by person). Most people were in attendance for four days).
Slow and quiet is good for communicating. I really enjoyed experiencing the interactions and connections with people unfold over four days. I learned a lot. I was able to help people as well. Different small groups and interactions formed, then broke apart. Informal demos were given, ideas and advice explored…
My gut is that the relationships I made (or reinforced) in Menorca will have a different quality to them more quickly than others made at louder, more content-heavy conferences. And the information I gathered and was able to impart was better too.
Quiet is good for relationships and information.
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I find I get as much if not more value from interacting with people in these more intimate settings than the keynote sessions themselves. It puts you in a place where you interact with people of similar interests and everybody is able to share their own experiences.