Five Questions with Internet Age Media Weekend

Interview
Neon Moiré sets out to interview festival organizers and tries to find out what motivates them to organize their events and what they are most excited about. We talked to Andres Colmenares, co-founder of Internet Age Media Weekend, a yearly event and platform designed to cultivate the open ecosystem emerging from the evolution of internet as culture. The IAM Weekend takes place April 7–10, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.

Why are you organizing Internet Age Media Weekend?

We, Lucy Rojas and I, decided to create IAM Weekend to meet, inspire and connect the people behind the blogs, publications, companies and projects that we consider are shaping the future of creative industries. As trend researchers we also wanted to understand how the internet is evolving as culture and reflect on big ideas about the future of this thing we call the internet, through the lens of media, education and arts. Also because we like to "say WTF!"

#WhatTheFuture

What is the biggest challenge for IAM Weekend?

The biggest challenge is to make it a sustainable project while keeping it under 300 attendees, which is for us key for a true IAM experience. Organising such event is very very expensive and we started this project, with a zero euro budget, a year ago. No investors or big savings or anything. So we cover most of the costs with ticket sales, and we found a few sponsors and partners who believe in our bold vision and support the project. We want IAM to be a community-driven project, as independent as possible from commercial-driven sponsors so that is a huge challenge. But you know, in randomness we trust.

What do you want your audience to take home after a IAM Weekend visit?

What makes IAM Weekend very special is that people not only come to Barcelona for a fun and inspiring weekend. They also join our blue family. A global community where amazing things happen: collaborations, feedback exchange, unexpected connections, new friendships. So beyond the valuable insights, inspiration and fun memories, attendees go back home belonging to a new internet family :)

iam-weekend-2015

What are you most proud of or excited about if you look at the IAM Weekend program?

We feel very proud of this year's speaker lineup, as a whole. It ended up being very different from the first draft we made last summer, when we defined the dates for the second edition, but now it reflects an imperfect mix of experience, perspectives, discoveries and randomness that IAM wants to share. Our event is more about the collective intuition rather than particular "stars" or keynote speakers. We make no difference between a young editor or an Executive Creative Director of a big media company. What matters is their perspectives and stories. We want to cultivate the idea of scenius, as described in the first episode of our video series.

We Are Internet - Episode 1: WTF is the internet?

What other festival or event / happening inspires you and would you recommend to your peers?

Internet Age Media Weekend

April 7-10, 2016
Barcelona, Spain
internetagemedia.com
Get your ticket here

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