IGNITION was an icy wake up call!
I am still not exactly clear on who Martijn van Rheenen is, but he and his team put on an amazing experience yesterday at the Paradiso club in Amsterdam. During the 12 hour event, which went on to 2am, Martijn dropped little clues as to his experience, such as raising 500 million investment portfolio. Based on the anecdotes and wisdom he shared throughout the experience, he has clearly been to hell and back in the business arenas. I am now a fan of Martijn, and looking forward to working with him at a follow-up event for the participants in March. Here's a little snippet of some of what happened at this Seminar + Festival called IGNITION.
Martijn provided the main storyline of the 'seminar' half of the experience by challenging us with very pointed and specific questions, and naturally there was a lot of sharing and discussing with people sitting near me. Some of the other curious interludes included the human interaction of photography by Jasper Zwaartjes, and some magic by Jan Reinder.
Fatima Moreira de Melo brought a few of the participants on stage and used the experience talk about bluffing - and Martijn facilitated a debate on lying.
There was three hours of break out sessions which were all based on stimulating the happy hormones. One room was a silent disco which had a lot of dancing, hugging and a massive rock-paper-scissers champsionship. Another rooms was a contest room with tons of games, all designed to stimulate happiness. I particularly liked the huge red bear guy walking around hugging everyone! The third - and very cold - experience will remain a secret. You will simply have to go to the next IGNITION to experience that!
I had no idea that Chess Boxing even existed. The message behind this show was that entrepreneurs need to quickly switch from fighting to thinking constantly, and Chess Boxing is the ultimate example of this. The two guys shown below played chess for three minutes and then boxed for three minutes. They go until the chess clock runs out or one of them is knocked out. It was nuts.
When I started the afternoon, I was honestly not sure if I would last to the closing party. Twelve hours, are you kidding me? Well, not only was I energised to dance past midnight at Paradiso, I was still enthusiastic this morning and motivated to share the story.
I hope they will do another one of these next year. It is the perfect way to ignite your energy for the new year!
https://www.facebook.com/semifest/
