Once, There Was Awe
There was a time when being invited as a keynote speaker felt like being called into the agora—when the invitation was not just a credential, but a promise. A stage was a sacred thing, and an audience was an assembly of minds eager for new ideas. There was also a time—let’s not kid ourselves—when buying tickets to a concert, especially for a name like David Garrett in the storied Plovdiv Amphitheatre, was to make a pact with transcendence. These were meant to be experiences, with all the charge that word used to carry: unrepeatable, unpredictable, alive.
But somewhere along the way, something broke.
Recently, I was invited to deliver a keynote at what was once a flagship event for technology and innovation. I’m no stranger to the circuit; I’ve given my share of big talks, navigated the backstage chaos, and endured the ritual humiliations of lanyards and badge scanners. I’m not one for the IKEA maze—the endless, circular walk where every aisle looks the same, and you emerge at the end lighter in spirit and heavier in resentment. But, as fate (and the necessity of breaking in my new speaker boots) would have it, I walked the floor.
What I found was a funhouse mirror version of innovation—a place where even the Wi-Fi didn’t work, where “hospitality” meant being held at the gates by security because I hadn’t downloaded the event app (which, by the way, the security team didn't have scanners that could read it anyway). Lunch was less about breaking bread, more about breaking one’s spirit.
Inside, the stages—a carousel of speakers, each whirring by like widgets on an assembly line. There was no conversation, only conveyor belts. No space for friction, only frictionless consumption of TED-talk soundbites. Each speaker, shuttled in and out like so much livestock. No wonder, attendance is dwindling. If people wanted to be processed, they’d visit the DMV.
Events like these were once campfires for the future—now they’re just another item on the checklist, another notification to swipe away. We talk endlessly of innovation, but have we innovated away our very capacity for real engagement?
Factories of Experience: From Events to Concerts
The second chapter of my disillusionment came not in a convention centre but beneath the ancient stones of the Plovdiv Amphitheatre. My wife, ever the optimist, had gotten us tickets months in advance: David Garrett, the virtuoso, in a venue that by all logic should elevate any evening into something transcendent.
Instead, we left midway through.
Let’s be clear—there are good concerts and there are bad concerts, but this was something worse: an experience so hollow it was actively depressing. The stage design was phoned in, the sound was muffled, but most egregious of all, Garrett, a violinist of remarkable skill and pedigree, spent the evening playing covers. Yes, (f%#king) covers. The familiar, the market-tested, the safe. Not reinterpretations that pay homage or subvert, but hollow reproductions, as if innovation itself was anathema.
There’s a place, certainly, for homage in art. I understand that an artist’s journey is shaped by influences—by the musical DNA of those who came before. But when does influence turn into abdication? When does creative homage become just another algorithmic playlist?
To sit in an ancient amphitheatre, hearing echoes of Spotify’s Top 100 played on a Stradivarius, is to feel the weight of creative surrender. It’s as if the industry, fearful of risk, has chosen to domesticate even its wildest talents, to clip the wings of anyone who might actually dare to surprise us.
The Rise of the Template
Both the keynote event and the concert expose a deeper malaise: our obsession with packaging experiences for mass consumption, rather than actually creating experiences worth having.
Look around. Everything is “optimized”—for profit, for virality, for ease of access. We build event apps, not communities. We design stage lighting, not moments. We champion “innovation,” but the word has become a placeholder for novelty without meaning—a new logo here, a minor tweak there, but nothing fundamentally new. We replace the messy, vital unpredictability of engagement with the smooth banality of predictability.
It’s as if the people in charge of these experiences are content to live off imitation, never striking out to create something of their own. The market, once a place for dynamic exchange and value, is now shaped by those who are afraid to risk anything truly new. The result is a flattening of experience. You can attend any event, any concert, anywhere in the world, and never once be surprised, never once feel the crackle of something real.
Of course, all this is justified by numbers. Engagement rates. Net promoter scores. Ticket sales. As if the quantity of eyes or ears could ever substitute for the quality of impact. We have surrendered ourselves to a tyranny of “thin slicing”—reducing the rich, layered tapestry of human experience to a series of data points, each one less meaningful than the last.
The most damning part? We’re complicit. We go along. We tolerate frictionless boredom in the name of convenience. We accept covers when we should demand compositions. We download the app, endure the queue, and allow ourselves to be processed.
From Commodity to Community
So what now? Is this just the bitter nostalgia of a man who’s seen too much backstage, who’s sat through too many hackneyed “future of innovation” panels and half-hearted classical remixes?
Maybe. But maybe it’s also a call to arms—a reminder that if we want wonder, we have to fight for it. We have to build experiences that are wild, that risk failure, that refuse to be anything less than necessary.
We need creators who are not afraid to be difficult, to say no to covers, to demand that audiences meet them halfway. We need event organizers who remember that the point is not just to fill a space, but to fill it with something irreplaceable. We need, in short, to re-learn the value of doing things the hard way: of conversations that don’t fit into fifteen-minute slots, of music that isn’t afraid to go off-script, of experiences that can’t be downloaded.
What if we built events that were less about seamless logistics and more about irreplaceable moments? What if a keynote speaker had time to engage, to be challenged, to digress and argue? What if a concert dared to break the fourth wall, to embrace the awkward and the improvisational, to risk silence and surprise?
Here’s the irony: most of us are desperate for precisely this kind of experience. The popularity of underground gigs, unscripted salons, and even messy, unpredictable festivals isn’t an accident. It’s a symptom. People crave the real, even when they don’t know how to name it.
And the creators who dare to ignore the algorithm, who refuse to turn their art into mere product—they attract not the largest audiences, but the most loyal ones. The kind that remember. The kind that come back.
The Call to Reclaim Wonder
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about these failures—my keynote grind, my concert letdown—is that they force us to re-examine what we want from our limited time on this planet. Are we here to be entertained, or to be awakened? Are we here to be processed, or to be provoked?
What do the times demand from us now? Not more “experiences,” but more living. Not more content, but more courage. The courage to resist being processed, to refuse the cheap thrill of the cover song in favour of the hard-won joy of something new. To show up, to pay attention, to let ourselves be changed.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s urgency.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, a future where the extraordinary is possible again. Where a tech event feels less like a cattle drive and more like a true symposium—messy, alive, unpredictable. Where a concert can leave you breathless with shock and not just comforted by the familiar. Where audiences are not just consumers, but co-creators.
This won’t happen by accident. It will take risk, refusal, and a new kind of leadership. It will require us to reward failure when it comes from honest risk-taking, to cherish surprise, to put quality of experience above quantity of metrics.
So next time you’re invited to the innovation event, or the big-name concert, or any “can’t-miss” experience—pause. Ask yourself: what am I really hoping for? Am I just ticking a box, or am I genuinely ready to be moved, to be challenged, to be surprised?
And if you find yourself unmoved—if you find yourself, like me, longing for the wild, unpredictable pulse of the real—don’t just complain. Build something better. Demand more. Be willing to risk your own discomfort for the possibility of awe.
Wonder isn’t dead, but it’s under siege. It needs its defenders, its rebels, its stubborn lovers of the real.
Perhaps my biggest lesson from the bad concert and the soulless keynote is this: sometimes the most important thing you can do is walk out. To refuse, gently but firmly, the commodified version of what should be sacred. To insist on meaning, on engagement, on being changed.
History is built not by those who settle, but by those who demand more. And in a world of covers and copies, the original is always an act of revolution.