Last year around this time I wrote an article about a new conference in Amsterdam focussed on creativity called Cross Media Week/Picnic. This year Picnic will be organized for the second time and I would like to share my thoughts about this conference from last year.

Picnic was initiated by Marleen Stikker, director of Waag Society and Bas Verhart CEO of Media Republic. An interesting match of two -usually- more distant worlds. Waag Society, a foundation mostly working on cultural and a bit more experimental ‘arty’ projects and Media Republic, a more corporate and commercial entity. At that moment I was still working at Waag Society and at first I was thrilled by the prospect of seeing these two worlds come together at this conference called Picnic. However my enthousiasme was soon replaced by astonishment.

After seeing the ticket prices (€ 500 non-profit, € 750 other) and reading the article ‘Financiën rond voor creatieve week’ in the Dutch newspaper Parool about local and national government subsidaries for the Picnic conference, I was surprised, confused and upset.

Had it been just the ticket prices of any other conference I probably could not have been bothered. After all, preposterous ticket prices are not something new in the world of (corporate) conferences. If somebody wants to organize a conference, ask ridiciculous prices and other people are stupid interested enough to pay for it, by all means be my guest.

However this conference was, according to the newspaper article, partly subsidized by the municipality of Amsterdam and the national government. It actually got quite a lot of money from society, while the conference itself was not publicly accessible and was still asking ridiciculous entrance fees. This seemed very odd and unfair to me.

Another aspect which triggered my astonishment was the fact that Waag Society where I was working took part in organizing this and that its director whom I respected a great deal apperently agreed on this. I couldn’t belief this was actually true, but after contacting some people internally involved with this conference I got an answer along these lines: ‘ticket prices are indeed a bit steep, but anyone who really wants to can apply for a discount. Besides there will be a side programme where everybody is welcome’. Mind you, none of this was, or as far as I know has been made public on either the website at that time or any other place.

I couldn’t belief my ears. Was this the foundation I had worked at for more than four years? After a lot of thinking and seeing questions surrounding Picnic being voiced on the Dutch Nettime mailinglist I decided to write about this. In my ‘thought experiment’ I voiced my astonishment and also asked questions about the intentions of the conference. After I wrote it I sent it to the netttime mailinglist and got some replies on it. Koert, one of the people replying to my email last year said (roughly translated):

‘Thus, perhaps it doesn’t matter if people will go to the conference. The contents of the conference is totally irrelevant. For Amsterdam the primary objective is that everybody knows about something like the Cross Media Week exists and that Amsterdam has a nice outdoor culture where funny money will be burnt in a most frivolous way’.

At that time I did not respond. I was quite disappointed by the whole affair, but I should have replied with:

“That’s all fine and dandy, but for pete’s sake burn your own money!”

As you might have guessed I did not attend Picnic at all last year.

This year I plan on attending at least the partner events I’ve been invited to such as ‘Creative Money’ organized by XS4ALL and Creative Commons Netherlands and perhaps more. The official programme is still way too expensive for me and I presume for any other creative freelancer or (small) organisation. A pity because according to a citation in the Parool article from the Picnic event last year:

‘We want an event which is accessible for the whole creative industry. Not just for the establishment. but also for young talent and new companies. In the end this has to grow into the most renewing week for media, entertainment and technology’ .

So on a positive note at least the partner events seem to be more accessible and thus Picnic might provide a space for the whole creative industry.  Although I’m not sure if we need to thank Picnic for this or the individual organisations of these events.

Let’s hope that *if * the national and local government have spent money on this conference, it went to the most public and open events, but perhaps it would be better if this conference would not get any support of the government at all. In my humble opinion there are better ways to spent comunity money: perhaps a true bottom-up creatives gathering?