Hello everyone,
welcome (back) to aoevision and a new edition about some crazy (but hopefully exciting) ideas and thoughts of mine…
While the world we grew up in already seemed to be as chaotic and strange as it could get, the past year taught us another lesson that this craziness doesn’t stop so soon. All of that and the fact that my whole generation and I still have most of our lives ahead of us, makes me rethink some basic questions once in a while…
Who am I, who do I want to be? Why do I get up every morning? What do I consider to be the “sense of life”? When, how and where would I like to work? Do you know how your working place should look like? Do you have a business idea and don’t know how to realise it? Did you maybe fail with a former business idea already and now you don’t know how to move on? Have you ever asked yourself “what, if”?
Those are just some examples but all of them concern our personal and common future on this planet. Most of the times, I thought there are not many people who ask similar question.. in January 2016 I read about “Z2X – the festival for new visionaries” addressing exactly these questions…
The Woodstock of Generation Z
In the beginning of September, I’ve discussed those and many other questions with about 600 other young people in Berlin. It was an amazing experience to get to know so many people who think about similar topics and being full of energy to do something about it as well.
Due to the 20th birthday of the online magazine ZEIT ONLINE, partner of the German print DIE ZEIT, they had invited people aged between 20 and 30 to investigate what they think about the future of society and politics. As part of the conference we’ve had numerous workshops and question’n’answer sessions throughout the weekend. The wide range of topics and the huge amount of people gave us the chance to start thinking processes from completely different perspectives.
Looking back, the festival has turned out to be the start of an amazing ideas and projects that are worth to be supported. In the very beginning, however, Z2X itself has been such a small idea that the chief-editor Jochen Wegner is still totally amazed by the bare number of people who actually showed up and stayed with them for two days to realise this idea. The overall atmosphere, the constantly positive and energetic mindset and seemingly never ending discussion made some people call the event “the Woodstock of generation Z” later on.
The festival is not even completely over when the Z2X-people already start to discuss online. Despite the amazing atmosphere during the weekend, the generation Z also knows how to criticise: One of the most discussed issue is the missing variety of educational background among the participants. Definitely something to be considered for the upcoming edition of Z2X this year.
Besides meeting in person and debating in Berlin, many topics and projects develop further and online media allow controversial debates on daily politics as well as general questions of life. Instead of just raising awareness among local friends and family, the Z2X community allows a much wider range and platform to organise and reach people.
The spirit from last year is still glowing and this years meetings have already been announced – first of all three one day Z2X edition will take place in Leipzig (21st April), Stuttgart (22nd April) and Essen (23rd April). The application just opened here!
Furthermore, the big Z2X 2017 festival in Berlin is on September, 2-3.
Don’t miss out on the chance to start to make this world a better place and join us with your ideas and projects!
If you’re interested in more details from Z2X 2016, a summarising little textbook will be finished soon – let me know, if you’d like to have a copy.
Hope to see you around again soon! 🙂
Cheers, Anna
PS: The photographs have been kindly provided by Phil Dera and ZEIT Online. Thank you!
