Yes, all of the above. With speakers including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, BuzzFeed’s Laura Henderson, venture capitalist Leonard Brody, A+E’s Amanda Hill, designers Dror Benshetrit and Karim Rashid – to name a few – plus a bewildering array of workshops and labs, parties and brain dates, no person could report on it all.

So here’s a cheat sheet on some of the most profound, surprising and inspiring things I heard. Just don’t ask me how to get from the Hangar to the Plaza to the Studio to the Forum in the Arsenal. My sense of direction is challenged at best, but when intellectual and sensory overload sets in, I am lost.

Hanging from the rafters at the Arsenal.

Leonard Brody, venture capitalist

We are now at a tipping point, going through The Great Rewrite in history, with more change in the past 100 years than at any other time in history. We are better off on most counts, Brody says – life expectancy, literacy, work load – but most North Americans don’t see it. Why? Because institutions are failing to keep up with the societal shift.

For the first time in history, we own our own means of communication. “Part of the instability you feel – that society seasickness,’’ he says, is because we are not sure how institutions are going to keep up.

And our behaviour has fundamentally changed because of the internet. He calls it bifurcation. As an internet user you have a physical self and a virtual self.

Some predictions:

*Virtual performances by, say, a Michael Jackson.

* Housing will be the new water.

* There are 3 billion people on the network now; in 24 months there will be 1 billion more.

“This will be the single largest economic even in human history.”

Laura Henderson of BuzzFeed under the big top at C2 Montreal. Photo: Allen McEachern

Laura Henderson, BuzzFeed marketing senior VP

“BuzzFeed is a next gen-media company built on human connection,” Henderson says, “Everything we do is built from the audience.

“Everything is focussed on sharing.”

And: “We have zero editorial vision.”

It garners 9 billion views a month, and with its “digital advantages,” is quick to react.

So when, on Henderson’s first week on the job, incoming President Trump call BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage,’’ after it published salacious reports on the president-elect, the company quickly launched a line of merch, featuring trash cans and T-shirts. It made $25,000 in nine hours, and donated the money to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Henderson suggest brands do simple things to adapt to the digital age:

* Rewire for responsiveness.

* Get good at prototyping in bite size pieces, with small stakes..

* Resist the urge to create strategy.

* Experiment. “Experimentation is about creating space for serendipity,’’ Henderson says.

Henderson’s boss, founder and CEO Jonah Peretti, would say, “I’d rather just put out a whole lot of crap and see what sticks,’’ Henderson recounted.

Karim Rashid, designer

“If we design well, we make better human experiences,’’ says design superstar Karim Rashid. Rashid is not just thinking about better products; he is concerned about the state of the planet. Humans have been around for 100,000 years, but in the 180 years since the start of industrial revolution, we have destroyed, extracted and robbed the earth, he says..

At a design fair in Milan, there were 30,000 products. “It’s absurd.”

He went on to make a case for sugar-based plastics – “Who needs sugar, anyhow?” and talk about an epoch of creativity and empowerment. For the first time in history, he says, every one of us has a voice.

“We’re on this earth to create. That’s the meaning of life, to create,’’ he says, meaning both procreation and intellectual creation.

Furthermore: “The digital age came along to save the planet.”

Why? Because there are no borders, the world is shrinking and it is bringing humanity back together.

But we’re only 40 years into the digital era, at a tipping point between analog and digital.

The most important thing about the digital age: it affords us heightened experiences with much less consumption, Rashid says.

The post C2 Montreal: Bewitched, bewildered, inspired appeared first on Eva Friede.

This week, Monday was quiet. But Tuesday, there were some 10 events around town for fashion and beauty bloggers and the general beau monde.

Let’s start with C2, the conference on creativity and commerce that has been mushrooming in its three short years. It has now reached the pinnacle of Montreal trademarks – the jazz fest, Cirque du Soleil, the Grand Prix (Oh my god! That’s coming up!).

Martha Stewart was a headliner this year, along with a gaggle of business leaders, thinkers and even a Nobel Prize winner. Some folks just take it all in. Me, I am afraid of dates – and the thought of a brain date is downright terrifying. As is eating cod bladder chips, concocted by Newfoundland chef Jeremy Charles of Raymonds.  

I did plunge into the bubble bath (clear, hard plastic bubbles) and found it quite relaxing until I tried to get up – difficult with one hand clutching my cell phone and away from the walls. A Washington Post photographer found that amusing or interesting, and started snapping away. I have yet to see myself on the front page of the Post, quel (or is that quelle?) relief.

The bubble bath.

Resumés of several speakers.

Aldo’s Frisk

Patrik Frisk, appointed CEO of Aldo Group in October 2014, spoke of the changes and challenges in the retail world, and of Aldo in particular, which, as a retailer, online seller, wholesaler and franchiser, and with 2,000 stores worldwide, is undergoing a major transformation, he said. He  spoke of the “end consumer,’’ presumably meaning the target or simply the buyer.

What he knows about that person is that he or she is in charge today, he said, recalling all that has changed over the decades. The company used to pick great real estate, build nice stores and the customers would come. In the 1950s, the store was god, the ‘60s was the era of brands, and now it’s about the consumer journey, Frisk said.

On Monday mornings in the past, the team would look at what was needed for the stores and get it there by Tuesday.

Now, the insights come from multiple channels – CRM, social, digital, brand trackers, and wholesale.

And stores are more like service points and less about transactions, he added.

More insights from Frisk:

Clients are more informed, so better staff training is required.

People buy shoes as a reward, to mark a milestone and for occasions.

Clients want their shoes faster to market, long lasting and affordable.

Overall message: Mr. Frisk has his work cut out for him.

Vice’s Suroosh Alvi

The Vice story is so fascinating on so many counts. Suroosh Alvi was candid and amusing on how he started his global media empire in Montreal in 1994. “It was a dark year in Montreal,’’ he said, deadpan.

He had been in rehab, and his goal was to write for the weekly Hour or Mirror, he said in conversation with Adam Gollner. A job was not forthcoming.

“I was a magazine junkie. I was a real junkie,’’ he said. “I channelled all the energy I used to put into self-destructive behavior into this magazine.”

He wanted to create real content and “wrote embarrassing editorials about the search for authenticity,’’ he said, with no such thing as aspiring to objectivity.

They tried everything from a fashion division to music to Vice guide to travel DVDs, which is where Spike Jones came in  and “taught us how to make it work.”

The game changer came with an article and DVD on the gun markets of Pakistan, which made it on to the home page of CNN. Vice has since reported on Baghdad, Congo, Egypt, Cambodia, Saddam’s shadow and much more.

Now, there’s a deal with HBO, with a daily news show to come in a few months. And Viceland, a TV channel, is set to expand to 20 more countries, with a deal for Quebec in the works.

Byron and Dexter Peart at C2MTL show a slide of their 5-year-old selves.

Byron and Dexter Peart of Want Les Essentiels

Twins Byron and Dexter have always had their act and their message together. Marking 10 years in the business, in which they have managed to build a global luxury brand from Montreal, they took to the main stage at C2 with a presentation as slick and minimal as their bags.

Their message is about want and need.

“This idea of wanting – we think it needs a counterbalance. That counterbalance is need,’’ Dexter said.

Added Byron: “Fashion is inherently built on newness and change. It’s a perfect balance of creativity and commerce.” But, he pointed out, it’s also a perfect recipe for making products not meant to last.

They talked a bit about the fashion cycle, saying it in in “extreme disalignment between what the consumer wants and needs.”

Their guiding principles “to navigate what is essential:” a thing must have purpose, be intelligent, beautiful and universal.

The cutest slide at the conference (with the exception perhaps of some of the robots in the artificial intelligence talks): a picture of the twins, age 5, on the tarmac by an Air Jamaica plane. On the ground, a cool vintage suitcase. As they said, they were early cool travellers.

Ethan Song and Hicham Ratnani of Frank & Oak

Another Montreal success duo, Ethan Song and Hicham Ratnani of Frank & Oak, the online store that is rapidly expanding in bricks and mortar, also took their story to the main stage.

Song spoke about his penchant for black jeans and Ratnani’s liking for white sneakers, then proceeded to scroll through the thousands of offerings on Asos.

Ethan Song on the grounds the Arsenal, where C2MTL is held..

There are so many options, Song said, so consumers can’t choose.

So if you’re a brand, how do you stand out? Stores are closing, e-comm struggling, but Song sees opportunities. His messages:

As a brand, you are builidng a relationship with a community.

The product and the experience are merging.

“Our purpose is to help a full generation of men not only to dress better but to live better,’’ he said.

For the future, the next wave of technology is when digital meets physical.

Concluding, Song said that there is no product that can stay differentiated for more than 24 months. So the ability to move fast will mean success.

Martha Stewart

The session opened with a “brain-off” between Martha Stewart and P.K. Subban, the hockey hero with heart and soul. Mindball, as the game was called, challenged the pair’s ability to stay stress-free. Subban won the first go; Stewart wanted another round and wound up winning two of three.

Whatever.

Martha Stewart. Photo Allen McEachern for C2MTL

The talk lent little insight into the creative process of the doyenne of living and even though she alluded to her prison term, back in 2005 – “I am more fearless than I was before. Life goes on. You learn to cope.” – there was nothing on that either.

We learned she lives in the country, raises chickens, eats meat, will not eat dirty farmed salmon that eat their own poop, keeps and rides horses and the like.

On tips for aging well, she suggested a green juice and going to the gym in the morning.

“Then you go to work.”

In an article titled Martha Stewart’s Big, Fat Marketing Miss, Marketing Magazine editor Shane Schick summed it up well. “What was missing here was any sense of how she had built such a successful brand, one she personifies and that has weathered the kind of reputational damage that makes Volkwagen’s recent troubles look insignificant.”

As for P.K., he was simply inspiring as a human being, with heart, soul and apparently some great hockey skills.

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