Guest post – My take on DLD
This article was written by Chris Kahler of qriously.com, winners of STARTup Live Vienna #3 and a good friend of ours.
The DLD Conference is one of the most esteemed tech/life/design meetups around and pulls together interesting people from all over the world for talks, parties, presentations and demos. Here you can meet people like Paulo Coelho (author), Dennis Crowley (foursquare), Mike Butcher (TC EU), Jason Calacanis (Mahalo, #twist), Stefan Glänzer (White Bear Yard), Reid Hoffman (linkedIn) and so on and on and on… Simply put: cool people.
My take on DLD
The most awesome thing about DLD is obviously meeting incredible people. The talks are really cool, but it’s ultimately all about the face-time you get with people you only normally read about. I personally find that this results in one of 2 things:
1. The person you meet is actually totally ‘normal’ (which happens most of the time), which is great.
2. The person is a douchebag and you become disenchanted with them, which is also cool because it’s healthy to purge yourself of misplaced adulation.
The business opportunities are also awesome: there are many decision makers there that will give you a few minutes to pitch your stuff, which can greatly reduce the agony in ‘getting in’ with a certain company or person. This goes the other way as well: there are many people who approach you who might otherwise have found it very difficult. There is a sense of reciprocation at DLD to entertain people both ‘above’ and ‘below’ you (to hazard sounding superficial and arrogant) that I personally got high off.
My advice to anyone who hasn’t been before:
1. Study the list of speakers and determine ahead of time who you want to speak with. You’ll be overwhelmed if you don’t have meeting goals.
2. Talk to everyone, irrespective of who they are, but especially if you are intimidated. You’ll otherwise miss the chance of getting along with someone who might be instrumental in defining your future, and talking to people you’re scared of (for whatever reason – there are many) is always good.
3. Print DLD-specific business cards. We had Qriously cards printed saying ‘we met at DLD’ which got me great face-time with Robert Scoble (and a few seconds of twitter hype), but more importantly will help the hundreds of people you meet remember where they met you.
4. The line to the coat room at the end of the conference is a freaking gold mine: it will score you about 15 inestimable minutes of personal meeting time with whomever you want if you queue strategically 
5. You will get shut down by some people. Have a whole psychological fanny pack of “who gives a fuck” and move on.
My best encounters:
- Shervin Pishevar of SGN.
- Jim Breyer of Accel Capital.
- Ilja Laurs of GetJar.
- Tom Toumazis of Endemol.
- Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio.
- Igor Pušenjak of Lima Sky.
- Mike Butcher of Techcrunch.
- Robert Scoble of Rackspace.
- Deepak Chopra
Have fun.
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