Alanis Morissette: “Anger is a Very Important Driving Force”

“Anger creates intimacy; hiding your feelings, whether it’s love or anger, destroys intimacy and could be self-destructive”, says Alanis Morissette to the DLDwomen audience on a really inspiring talk moderated by Maria Furtwängler-Burda.

Alanis Morissette made a surprise visit where she offered to share insights on womenhod, artistic expression, social activism, relationships and wellness. The outcome was a remarkably enlightening panel debate where Alanis managed to project some of the many secrets behind her massive successes as an artist, woman and mother.

“Thank you much for coming, Alanis. It’s so nice being here with you”, says Maria Furtwängler-Burda. “You are such a committed artist, where do you find all that courage to do what you do?”

 “I am honoured to be here Maria,” the singer says. “Thanks for inviting me. As for your question, I think it’s about lack of censorship, not being afraid of who you are.”

“In the old days women were not allowed to show their anger, but we actually need that anger. These are feelings we have to focus on, but as an artist, I need to take the courage to confront them and use them on my behalf.”

“Alanis, do you think men and women are different, or are we just equal?,” the DLD Chairwoman further inquires. To Morissette, the answer is a combination of context and connection.

“We are built incredibly different. In today’s context men provide different things than in the old days”, claims the artist. “It’s not about providing money anymore. For instance, if my husband wasn’t taking care of my child now I couldn’t be here. We, women, are moving to a connective version of ourselves, to interdependency”.

As far as artistic expression is concerned the Canadian artist points out: “silence is very inspiring, I like it because it allows me to hear myself.  For me there are two stages within the creative process; firstly I write for myself – this is the spiritual part of it – and the second stage is when I share my feelings with public using my voice and music. The most important aspect of creation is connecting with your inner self; creations allows for catharsis.”

Morissette has not just won 16 Juno Awards and 7 Grammys, she’s also a very proud mother. “Being a mum is a big commitment and I have to confess that coffee became my best new friend. Women can actually serve and be in the driving seat”.

“Alanis, yesterday different women expressed their mottos in front of the DLDwomen audience… what one would you say is yours?” Furtwängler-Burda asks, as the session comes to an all-too-soon end.

The reply from Morissette is prompt and delightful: 

“Hello you little piece of god, how are you doing?”

A huge thanks to Morissette for joining DLDwomen and for sharing her visions with our guests today. Her new album “HAVOC AND BRIGHT LIGHTS” will be out later this year, and we will be sure to bring you more news on that as soon as it is released.

Remember that you can also review the entire speech by Morissette on our website, in a few moments, thanks to our partners from Livestream.com. 

How to Fall in Love With Your Work (Again)

“We do things that we are good at, but it’s not necessarily something we love. Like PowerPoint.”  Denice Kronau, Chief Diversity Officer Siemens AG, is an expert on burnouts, and today she brought a recipe for happiness to the Enzian Hall. 

PowerPoint is a special skills of hers - she’s damn good at it - but it’s also something she hates doing. It’s the perfect example of how millions of professionals across are doing things wrong, and it could end of very costly, she warned. 

When we start out working, what feeds us is a “sense of accomplishment, or recognition.” But soon, the joy of the paycheck and health insurance takes over as the main motivation for your work. Over time, though, this will lead to exhaustion.

Exhaustions, burnouts and tiredness makes us run away. We give up careers with no plans - as long as we stop working. And this is a trap. 

“It’s a mistake not to ask anyone for help when you are burned out. I thought I could sleep it away. I couldn’t,” Kronau said.

Don’t just quit. Take a step back, look at what made you happy, and “rediscover what motivated you in the first place.” 

“It’s about aha-moments, the rediscovery of your job. You don’t have to change lifestyle, you just have to look at your job and remember why you did it in the first place.”

The long-term solution is “to fall in love again with the work aspects that inspired you when you started out.”

This is a lesson many a busy CEO could surely carry with them. “We are human beings, not human doings,” Kronau added. “We tend to feed the urgent, while starving the important.” 

Creativity and Success, the Perfect Couple?

On a very inspiring panel, Inga Humpe, Desiree Gruber, Leyla Piedayesh, and Ursulla Karven, discuss the relation between success, creativity, and human beings. “What is success? Is it all about becoming famous and rich?” asks actress Ursula Karven to the speakers.

“I think bravery is one of the keys to success.  Fear is common to all of us, we all have fears and coping with them is what makes us strong” claims Desiree Gruber, co-creator and executive producer of award-winning project Runaway. 

German pop singer and songwriter Inga Humpe admits that, at least in the beginning, fame and money were part of her dream to become a musician. “Over the years my understanding of success has changed. Connecting with people is what concerns me the most now. I usually ask to myself: what can I give to people? That’s when the creative process starts for me”.

However we all know that creativity, or talent, doesn’t always lead to success… but are these two the perfect couple anyways?

“I studied business to please my parents, but I was living somebody else’s life”, confesses founder of fashion label Lala Berlin, Iranian Leyla Piedayesh. “I found happiness in knitting, that’s actually what I love to do and that’s how Lala Berlin came up”.

“To me success is doing what you really want to do, it has nothing to do with money or fame. The key to live a successful life is not taking yourself too seriously”, adds Piedayesh.

Creativity is in fact a very broad concept, aren’t we all somehow creative? As for success, only a few are lucky enough to reach it. Yet, as Leyla Piedayesh points out, it may all be about doing what you love to do.

A #Campfire for Conversation

Twitter is the world’s favorite 140-character playground. A phenomenon that started out as an exclusive club of techies and geeks, and ended up conquering the public sphere as a whole. Many have praised the service for being a path to democracy and an enabler in a digital age. But it’s true beauty may lie in that it’s as different as its users - all 400 million of them.

Social media powerhouse Twitter is sends out one billion tweets every three days, making it the very pulse of a digital generation. 

With more than 400 million active users and 30 official languages, the network is a “beautiful asymmetric network of follows and followers that creates infinite information streams,” says Karen Wickre aka @kvox, Editorial Director of Twitter.

Wickre joined Twitter in 2011 after seeing potential in the service already back in 2008 when she first started tweeting herself. As a news junkie she realized that the micro-blogging service was on its way to creating something very big. 

She was right. In 2008 Twitter sent out 27 tweets per second. In 2012, that number had increased to 12,333. 

In the same time, Twitter became “a second screen for major live events, like sports, the Oscars and breaking news.”

Anyone who has been seated with eyes on the TV and their thumps on their smartphone’s “refresh” button during #Oscars, #SuperBowl or #WorldCup will know just how true this is. 

The hashtag itself has proven a revolution for the digitalized social conversation. To use a fitting metaphor, Wickre says that it has become “like a campfire that people can gather around to see what the conversation is about.” 

The true beauty of Twitter, however, is that it can be used in millions of different ways.

Power-tweeting journos, Arab revolutionaries and soccer moms are all part of a digitalized neuron network that has come to define the globalized world. There is no right or wrong. 

“Find a rhythm that is comfortable for you,” Wickre tells her audience as the workshop comes to an end. That way, she adds, you will be sure to get the best out of the service, whether you are a seasoned news addict or a curios beginner.

As she steps off the podium, her words have already reached thousands of users across the globe - in cyberspace, through tweets and retweets, fueling the campfire and carrying on the conversation. 

“We Have to Be More Poets and Thinkers”

How can you reinvent a company over the years? Michael Conrad, co-founder of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership asks three very different but energetic women to talk about their businesses over periods of change. It’s about leading brand innovation through digital, design and communication.

“We have to be more poets and thinkers instead of just acting as business advisers,” says STURM und DRANG agency’s Inga Nandzik. You have to look out for trends, leave the numbers behind and focus on the consumer. “We’re a special task force,” she says. “We stand for ‘soulful’ science and enlightenment beyond pure rationalism.” It’s about drawing the companies closer to the real dynamics of life and consumption. A paradigm shift from possessing (HAVE) over wellbeing (BE) to self-actualization (BECOME) means we have to create relationships with impact. “Look around, not ahead,” she says. As an agency you have to be super agile.

That’s also true for Karen Spiegel. “We experience a nine-year-cycle” of company innovation, she says. A veteran in the digital space, with over 15 years experience, Spiegel directs the global communications strategy for R/GA. Between 1977 and 1985 they pioneered computer-assisted filmmaking, she lists. The next period until 1994 they pioneered an integrated digital studio. The years 1995 until 2003 were all about a new model for an interactive agency, and then pioneering a new agency model until 2012. Right now, we talk about the year 2013, R/GA is searching for new ways to engage with the customer. This future seems to be all about meaningful ways of communication.

A reverse innovation is happening at the same time, in which mature countries learn from powerful rising countries such as China. Kitty Lun, the CEO and Chairwoman of Lowe China, shares an insight into the Chinese soul of ‘Superwomen’ and ‘Leftover Women’  (those unmarried) - who are dominating the online shopping world. The phones of those luxury goods consuming women are already a popular payment method.