Face to Face | In dialogue we trust

Last Week my GF and I attended this year's "Face to Face | Indialogue we trust" conference. It was held in the proud city of Ludwigsburg by Stuttgart. The specialty of this conference was that it features both designers and clients so that visitors experience both sides of a deal. One could see, how a decent designer-client partnership is established and nurtured in many presentations.
The presentations were held in German and French, France being the partner of this year's presentation. So on top of featuring clients and designers, the conference also featured german-french team-ups which gave an interesting glimpse at design and enterpreneur cultur in both countries. I am happy to say that I did not need the services of the translator to follow along, my French classes in school paid off after all. :)

Many presentations showed that when client and designer understand their collaboration as a partnership rather a master-servant deal, the process and the final results are mostly fruitful and successful. The claim "in dialogue we trust" was enforced by the organisators by having 15min coffee brakes roughly every hour, so there was plenty of time to make new friends and discuss the topics of the presentations. The location in the "Reithaus Ludwigsburg" was nice and very fitting for the event.

For my taste, the presentations went a little too smooth at times, with no real dialogue or dispute about certain topics. That was probably due to the 20min format and overall amicality of the event and that nobody wants to make enemies at such a business meeting.

Only one presentation by Justus Oehler (Pentagram) on their public relation work for the Deutsche Kinemathek, Museum für Film und Fernsehen was a little diversion of this overall piecefulness. Oehler, rethorically strong and with a somewhat arbitrary but charming personality, opened with strong arguments regarding certain design choices of other museums and agencies and presented pentagrams designs for the Kinemathek as the real deal. His presentation was applauded but then he was challenged by a design professor, who I could not identify and Martin Grothmaak of ProjektTriangle.
They gave polite but certain criticism and I really enjoyed the short exchange and flaring conflict as it was a good example of making and countering arguments and it was entertaining to see some people who think they are the shit slugging it out. :)

Other than that, it was smooth sailing.
I recommend every designer out there to visit the next face to face event or even join the club.
It is an informative, relaxed and very professional event and most imporantly, the catering never disappoints.
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Side notes:

-Visit the Mercedes Benz Museum as an absolute obligation for every design-, architecture or car fanatic. I was blown away by it. And I don't even like cars all that much.

- Ludwigsburg has some nice food joints. Hotel Rivera on Karlstraße has an excellent cuisine.

-According to google analytics my blog receives 90% traffic from Germany. But the idea of some guy sitting in Australia or Russia reading my shit feels so intruiging that I'll keep writing in English.