It’s an unlikely alliance. Car giant Mercedes-Benz and festival behemoth South By Southwest conspired back in 2017 to create the Me Convention. At a time when speaker conferences seem to be taking place everywhere, the Me Convention is marketed as “a unique conference and festival event, aiming to connect bright minds across all industries in order to shape the future”. The first result of the ambitious collaboration was held in Frankfurt in 2017, the second conference on the home turf of South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, and now when this upcoming third instalment – the first on neutral ground – goes on the road, its first stop is right here in Stockholm.
Over three days, about 100 enthralling speakers from all over the world will congregate at the convention centre in Nacka Strand and help us mere mortals navigate the future. The cross-cultural event aims to unite creatives for a critical dialogue about the future with its headline topics being New Society, New Leadership, New Economies, New Creativity and New Bionomics.
Natanael Sijanta, “Global Marketing Communications” at Mercedes-Benz, was kind enough to chat with us to help us learn more and highlight some of the visionaries that will be speaking.

Could you give us the background as to why Me Convention was created and what the overall aim is with the event?
Me Convention was created in 2017 as a collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and South by Southwest (SXSW), in order to shape the future together. It’s an open and inspiring platform for interdisciplinary discourse in a festival-like atmosphere, and especially addresses people who are unconventional, creative, open-minded and curious about the future and interested in exchanging ideas.

In what ways does the Me Convention want to stand out from numerous other speaker-events and new technology, new thinking and future-related conferences?
It is a unique combination of a future convention and lifestyle festival, with focus on days and nights of inspiration, participation and partying with a further focus on dialogue and networking. It’s not just sitting in an audience and listening. Participants can engage with the speakers in workshops and exclusive one-to-one mentor sessions, as well as experience future topics on the playground.

Why did you pick out Stockholm as the destination for this edition of the Me Convention?
The future is not just Silicon Valley, it’s being created everywhere. Therefore, after Frankfurt and Austin, we are proud to now host in Stockholm. The Scandinavian countries are known to be among those with the highest quality of life anywhere in the world. Sweden — and especially Stockholm — stands for modernity, social and technological progress and innovation. For example, Scandinavian design has long been a source of inspiration for people around the globe. Such a setting is an ideal fit with Me Convention, which aims to provide thought-provoking discussions on the future inspiring people to ‘create the new’.

How much does the location, in this case Stockholm, influence the topics or speakers for a Me Convention? Is this instalment in any way tailor-made for the Stockholm audience and environment?
The Me Convention is an international event with participants from more than 20 countries and the topics are one that affect people globally. Therefore, the speaker lineup is independent of the location. Our overall aim is to put together an exciting mixture of businesses, topics, nationalities, hidden voices and big names from science, art, economy, design and all other key areas that are changing as we progress into the future.

For the first Me Convention in Frankfurt you had the start-up cities programme, with representatives from many different cities. This time you have the five different headline topics, but I still see a lot of people from various countries on the Stockholm speaker list too. How do you pick the speakers, and are they free to talk about what they want within a certain topic?
We are putting lots of effort into the content curation and research, scanning relevant societal trends and finding the right experts for our main topics – New Society, New Leadership, New Creativity, New Economies, and New Bionomics. If these experts accept our invitation we take the time to have talks with them personally to really find out what they are working on and what they are up for sharing with the audience, either in a solo talk, as part of a panel discussion or in a workshop. In Stockholm we will have a great mix of hidden voices, researchers, entrepreneurs and corporate representatives and CEOs, but it’s never about names and titles but always about the outcome of the talk and all the insights and stories. We will also have the Startup Cities Track again which was very successful in Frankfurt. It will be featuring 20 cities and their representatives, speaking about the special benefits for startups.

What do you think will be the main takeaways from the Me Convention for the average Stockholmer prepared to sit, listen, learn and be influenced by your invited speakers this time?
The motif of Me Convention is create the new (#createthenew) and opportunities to learn are boundless. Tech magician and hacker Tom London will illuminate why hacking is an essential part of innovation and creativity, Renée Di Resta and Bret Schafer will be analysing the intersection between media and democracy and yoga teacher and entrepreneur Adrine Mishler will explain why love saves the day in “Giving to Receive: Building Community & Meaning.” And last but not least, there will be an exciting evening program with concerts and parties, inspiring side events and lots of opportunities for networking and making friends.

The Me Convention, 4-6 September, Nacka Strandsmässan