[bschne]

Joined yesterday after it started taking off in part of Europe for some reason or other.

First impression is that it's nice that people talk longer, don't cut each other off as much as in other debates, etc. but it definitely sounds like mostly berlin tech entrepreneurs & VCs (and some tech-adjacent politicians/journalists/...) at this point, and the "diversity" on panels is somewhat superficial (people from mildly different backgrounds who think alike vs. people from whatever background with deeper differences in viewpoints). That being said I also randomly ended up in a room with improvised music & poetry, so there do seem to be different things going on.

I can see myself using this if the content diversifies further into different topics, e.g. I'd enjoy loose discussions about e.g. academic / more technical topics, etc. For now it sounds mostly like your run of the mill panel discussion at a big tech conf., which can be inspiring for a bit but not everyday.

[xiaolingxiao]

Could I ask you why/how it started taking off in Europe? Was there a specific big name who joined, pulling everyone in? For example, when Joe Budden joined C.H. in early October, he mobilized many people in the ATL music scene to join. And there was a sudden influx of music industry and Music adjacent people.

[mintone]

They're quite cleverly leveraging the invites to give them exponential growth, so it has exploded this month - it looks like everyone is being given 2 invitations. I'm London based and signed up for the waitlist in maybe September last year and then forgot about it - someone I know bumped me up at the weekend (which doesn't cost an invitation). Within 2 days of my joining I'd say about 10 other people in my contacts have joined too. I'd say it's less big names and more FOMO.

Interestingly the person who bumped me up appears to have had an outsized effect on which rooms I see.

[bschne]

TBH I don't know, it seems to be mostly tech and tech policy people, but the hype with people mentioning it on LinkedIn et a. has gotten to the point where mainstream media is covering it.

One thing I've noticed: If one of my contacts signs up for the waitlist, I can give them access w/o using up one of my two invites, so it might be that they just relaxed the exclusiveness on that front to push it.

[Jommi]

It started from berling tech scene with the recent success of german entrepreneurs in US.