Chicago BiTS: Find sense in what you are doing

By Marvin Engel

Welcome to my blogpost for the excursion

to Chicago's McCormick Place.

The big convention center in Chicago.

The panoramic view from the rooftop.

You can visit here:

I thought somebody will write about the day agenda so I decided to write about the sense of this day-excursion. The question for me was: Why a master class in enterpreneurship and new business should go to a convention center? In germany we have some of the biggest conventions in the world like Frankfurter Buchmesse, the CeBit in Hannover, the Internationale Automobil Ausstellung (IAA) in Frankfurt, the Games Convention in Cologne and some more. At the beginning of the day I answered the question with "This make definitely no sense for me". This all sounded and looked like filling a day with stuff we don't need for our future life. Even the blogpost after this day made no sense for me. I am a child of Internet 2.0. I know why and how blogging works, also as a part of communication (in a company or private).

BUT: After the day I can say "the excursion made definitely sense". Every reader is burning for the "why the change of mind?".

First, what is a convention center? For an enterpreneur is it a place where he (or she) one day will have a place. A place where - one day - the networking (which everybody says is most important) takes place. A place where the work is presented and judged face-to-face. As an internet company you see your customers maybe only there face-to-face and maybe this is the only chance to learn from interactions with them in the real world.

Secondly, I did not expect such a rabbit burrow. You walk from hall to hall and its getting bigger and wider all the time. The center is big from the outside, sure. But, it was a kind of surprising to see it from the inside. That can also be a metaphor for your new business model. First there is the idea, the outside, just the building. But when you go inside you will find surprising things and, if you are not watching out, you will get lost in the rabbit burrow. You must stay focussed or you need a guide, that can be for example a mentor for an enterpreneur. You will need a person who understands leadership not as a way to be the boss but as a person who defines the mission, every day of work. Somebody who pushes the Team forward with respect.

Thirdly we talked with people who work there. To be honest, the topic of WiFi in a convention center was not new for me and that you need servers and many routers for such a big areal is for sure. We all know the difference between mega and gigabyte. Also terabyte is nothing new for us, it is our daily life. But much more interesting was the talking about the daily work-life at McCormick. That leads me to the conclusion, that no matter what kind of job you have or what work you are doing, if you are happy with it you can tell a story. That brings me to the last similar point to an enterpreneur. You definitely will need a story. Everytime. Everywhere. Without a story your ideas are empty shells, a concert-hall without music, a convention center without events. So most important for your business is a team behind your idea that respect each other. When Ken talked about Jessica and Jessica about Ken, they had respect and a connection as friends. Without this connection they could not be as successful as they are. Thank you for sharing this important thoughts and feelings with us.

Now something for the eye. Find my photos attached. Thanks to everyone who made this possible.