C2’s CEO on Intentional Design and Orchestrated Serendipity
How do you get occasion attendees considering in new methods about creativity and commerce?
That’s the mission behind C2, which was named by Skift Conferences as one of many Greatest Enterprise Occasions of 2024. Throughout an internet occasion held this week, Anick Beaulieu, C2’s CEO, make clear the organizers’ intentional design methods.
“What we attempt to do is to get folks to take a few days out of their busy lives to confide in the place the world of enterprise goes and the way we might be higher actors, each in our roles and our firms, but in addition as folks,” she stated.
Past Consolation Zones
The 2024 C2, held Might 21-23 on the Grand Quay of the Port Montréal, was a mixture of instructional classes on subjects equivalent to renewable vitality, sustainable structure, and the societal affect of know-how, together with performances, grasp courses and Braindates, the place the attendees formed the dialog.
The primary C – the creativity of the occasion’s design – leads to moments of what Beaulieu calls ‘orchestrated serendipity,’ the place the 5,000 attendees from all around the world (a mixture of entrepreneurs, innovators, creators and enterprise executives) retreat from their consolation zones to strive actions like hanging 30 toes up within the air or baking lasagna collectively. It’s throughout these classes that they get to fulfill different like-minded people that they might doubtless not get to fulfill in any other case.
“It’s inconceivable for us to know precisely what that magic can be, nevertheless it’s potential to architect the occasion and the expertise to multiply these variety of connections.
“I feel that that is all a part of the magic we wish to create, and orchestrating or pulling the strings to see what emerges is considered one of our passions.”
The second C – commerce – arises from the brand new connections. “We design codecs, methodologies and methods for folks to get to fulfill quicker, deeper and extra meaningfully,” Beaulieu stated. “We imagine that by doing that, there’s truly extra probability that folks will discover their subsequent enterprise companion or shopper.
“At C2 we at all times say, ‘Folks do enterprise collectively, firms don’t do enterprise collectively.’ ”
Three Pillars
C2’s three pillars are experiences, sustainability, and transformative applied sciences.
“These pillars are actually on the core of what we’re exploring,” Beaulieu stated. “They’re basic in the way in which we predict, and in how enterprise will evolve within the coming years.”
As a throughline, every of the three days of the 2024 occasion had a theme: Experiential & Immersive, Sustainability & Innovation and AI & Commerce. These themes had been anchored by the host vacation spot of Montreal.
“Montreal is a vital a part of our identification,” Beaulieu stated. “It’s a particularly inventive metropolis and residential to a number of the greatest experiential studios on the market. It’s a metropolis that’s vibrant by way of know-how, and AI specifically. It’s additionally a really sustainable metropolis.”
It’s this framework that constantly leaves C2 attendees feeling like they’re a part of one thing particular, she stated.
“You’re going to be way more taken with sharing the place you might be, taking an image, or posting on Instagram when you’re a part of one thing that you just really feel is significant. And so for us, that’s the place we predict that creativity is admittedly linked to enterprise end result.”