BERLIN – While thousands of people flocked to the more mature Internationale Funkausstellung over the weekend, a smaller and hipper coterie gathered across town for a multimedia "concept conference."
BerlinBeta 2.0, now in its second year, attracted an eclectic mix of computer engineers, virtual-space architects, electronic musicians, journalists, filmmakers, Web designers, and others for panel discussions about integration and innovation in new media.
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"It's not like the money-exchange-trade-fair thing happening next door," said Stefan, a fuchsia-haired attendee, referring to IFA. "People here are exploring the same issues."
Topics at BerlinBeta ranged from developing business models and financing startups to the nefarious potential of asymmetric cable modems. Workshops and club events were sprinkled throughout the three-day event, which ended Saturday. An related film festival continues until Friday.
"In Germany, there is no festival that really brings together representatives of different multimedia industries for more communication," said Anja Jessen, press secretary for the event. "BerlinBeta wants to create a network where the cyberpunk can dance with the banker."
In fact, dancing launched the conference on Thursday at Maria am Ostbahnhof, the storied East Berlin nightclub that overlooks the ruins of the Berlin Wall. During an experimental live concert, performers spinned records on the ground floor, and scenesters upstairs moved to the sounds of a virtual DJ, whose image and music was piped in live on ISDN lines.
Zane Vella of San Francisco's Beta Lounge was master of ceremonies.
"Until the bartender told people, 'Look, there's no DJ. He's in San Francisco,' a lot of them didn't know," Vella said. Meanwhile, the music at Maria am Ostbahnhof "was streamed back to San Francisco, where an audience listened in at the studio on Illinois Street." From there, both streams were webcast live at Beta Lounge.
"The Beta Lounge is nothing but a party," said Vella, who earned degrees at Harvard, MIT, and Georgetown before co-founding Beta Lounge in 1996. The site webcasts electronic music in real time to a monthly audience estimated at 150,000. Vella changed his duds and his disposition on Friday, when he presented his almost seditious talk, "Transmit or Receive: The Choice Is Yours." The audience expected him to discuss digital audio distribution; instead, he veered into an attack on this age of data services and its commercially driven Web sites.
"The network, as it's currently established, supports two-way communication," he said. "The notion of a federation – as a non-centralized organizing principle – suits this medium... But there is a finite opportunity to explore this."
He reminded the audience that in its early days, radio worked as a transmitter until the Federal Communications Commission limited the spectrum. He warned that asymmetric cable modems, which unevenly support more information coming down the tube than going back up, could likewise turn the Internet into a one-way medium.
"It's asinine to think that ... people just want to surf the Internet and read stuff," he said. "What the Internet does is function as a communications medium for connecting people with other people.
"There's this general acceptance that the Internet has been around long enough, it's nothing new, everyone knows everything already. There's an attitude of 'I'm a successful entrepreneur, and [the Internet] is just a business model for investment.' They're building Web sites without thinking about what is fundamentally at stake.
"Don't forget that your audience can transmit as easily as you can," Vella said. "The things that emerge out of that will be far more interesting than the business models that follow."
Vella shied away from questions about a business model that would suit Beta Lounge, although he acknowledged MP3 technology may soon be used to sell tracks featured on the site.
"The Beta Lounge is destined to be a place where people don't just listen to music, but buy it," he said. "But we don't feel part of the rush. It's still an experiment, it's still forming. The reason we call it Beta is ... we're not ready for sale."
Others at BerlinBeta appeared more interested in the hard sell. Mame McCutchin, director of marketing at Pseudo.com, talked about ways her company is advancing into the marketplace.
