Reasons Festival 2016 in Brighton
10 years ago my friend John Davey started his event called Flash on the Beach. By that time, I was running the Flashforum Konferenz (FFK in short) as a spin of from and the member of the German Flash community Flashforum. Sascha Wolter was speaking at this event and had a +1 to give away, which he gave to me. And I am glad he did, since i met one of my best friends these days, who was organising this event.
The moment John and I met and exchanged ideas and experiences of running an event and especially of running our events was, when John and I recognised that we are thinking the same way a lot. We spoke more often, he came to my events, I went to his (and I only missed one event in New York so far!) and we even started to travel around the world, attending other events to meet people and to somehow educate us. You learn a lot, when visiting other events - in a positive and negative way. It got to a point that it felt we were spending more time together than with our own family and people also attending or speaking at events assumed that when I was at an event, John would be there as well and vice vera.
John had, I think I can say this, the most famous and successful event of the “Flash world”. Around 1200 people attended his 3-day 3-theater festival of creative minds from various fields. Highly technical talks, mixed with amazingly creative session, this was what made a fantastic mix in terms of the content, but also the people coming to this event where always truly special. During those ten years, I met so many fantastic people at reasons and made a lot of friends and I always was and always am very much looking forward to the time of the year, when I travel to Brighton.
John made the decision of changing the name of the event from Flash on the Beach to Reasons to be Creative and Reasons To now. And what changed content wise? Not much I have to say and that is good! The focus of John always was on finding creative people and creativity has no limits and is not only reserved or present in the Graphic Design industry or the Design industry in General. People like Mario Klingemann, Jared Tarbell, Joshua Davis and André Michelle (just to mention a few of the long list) have shown and proven this. Sure, nowadays Flash might not be the tool of their choice, but it is not about tools anyways, but about technology someone chooses to express his/her ideas. So yes, the name of this event has changed, but the heart and the idea has not.
I myself always leave this event pumped with new ideas and inspiration. With new energy to try something different and to look into something I never thought of before. I always leave also with good memories about the conversations I had and the people I had these conversations with. And this is, when I think, I can say this is a great event.
Congrats, John, for a fantastic event and thanks for running this event for already ten years for us!