Yesterday, I decided to meet personally with a Swedish friend of mine. We had a mindblowing conversation about what people and businesses are capable of, especially facilitated by technology, and other people.
To give you a bit of a backstory, I first met her when she hired me as a consultant to a Danish insurance company. We had to find out what people were saying about their brand on the internet. She hired me to speak about my book, “Return on Involvement”, at her conference in Stockholm back in 2009.
We’ve been meeting regularly ever since, especially when she was in Copenhagen. We had meetings about her startup and covered a tech conference as a ‘blogger’ producing content.
Anyway, we started talking about climate change, climate action, and political correctness. We also discussed the fact that immediate action is needed when it comes to climate change. Everyone, from the world leaders to the individual Swede (who refuses to fly anywhere and only eats vegan), knows this. Even my mother knows this.
We all know that we have to do something substantial. Soon, a new report from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) will come out.
I am hoping that with our knowledge of the gravity of the situation, there would still be recommendations on how to cut carbon quickly. This would help predict a hockey stick curve (no pun intended to VC’s) of exponential growth when it comes to saving the planet, circular economies, and implementation of renewables (and not just when it comes to returning investment).
However, we ended up with a lot of the ways to approach these global challenges which weren’t so efficient, and sometimes they are even wrong due to lack of accessibility between people.
Personal meetings are always better
Most great things that happened in my life have been because I was lucky enough to meet brilliant people. Not follow them on digital platforms, but actually meet them personally.
Even Steve Jobs agreed that face-to-face meetings are still the way to go for better communication. He encourages people to meet personally and discussed the reasons why in an article published last 2018.
That’s when you spur conversation. That’s when you have your eyes open and hear what other people have to say. You get to ask them about all kinds of different questions. You can even ask them for feedback on your crazy ideas, and maybe even build something cool together.
Amazingly, I and my cool Stockholm friend have kept the conversation going for almost a decade now. I plan to do more of these things such as getting in touch with old friends. Keep conversations going and documenting some of the stories and ideas I find on crossroads between tech, sustainability, impact, and branding on this blog.