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I often feel as if I have parallel professional lives: 360 days of the years there is the regular world, and 5 days of the year there is Frankfurt. So Frankfurt 2009 begins, effectively, the day after Frankfurt 2008!
There is, to be sure, a “plus ca change” quality to Frankfurt. After all, it began in part to try to create a sense of cultural continuity after the cataclysm of World War Two. My first Frankfurt was 2001, four weeks after 9/11, an edgyness very much in evidence, long lines in front of Hall 8.0 for checking bags, a moment of silence on the one month anniversary, 11 October. (On my flight to Frankfurt, the plane was so empty the passengers were outnumbered by the flight attendants.)
Yet, upon successive trips, I’ve learned to memorize booth locations, escalator shortcuts, S-bahn schedules, all unchanging form year to year, and derived comfort from it, comfort which gives you the freedom to do what is most important, which is to connect with your international partners-in-crime. Frankfurt is the perfect suit—you can focus on the meeting because you don’t have to worry about how you look.
Yet, as I mentioned above, Frankfurt in its modern incarnation grew out of the ashes of World War Two, has withstood the airplane hijackings of 1970’s and the terrorism of the 9/11 era, had witnessed the corporate consolidation of the publishing industry, and is now toiling with the radical changes in all media engendered by technological change, and throughout it all Frankfurt has not sought to deny these realities but instead has incorporated them into itself—Ehrengast controversies and all! So in 2001 there were bomb-sniffing dogs and in 2009 there is the Tools of Change Frankfurt preview conference. Frankfurt has represented continuity amidst change and its genius, to me, is that it does not pretend that change is not happening.
So while I am still here, in the regular world, I’m poised on its edge, ready to make the switch, and anticipating that giddy thrill of re-entering Frankfurt. I’m looking forward, both to the familiarity and to the new, strange yet critical ideas Frankfurt will present in this coming week.
Tags: change, history, tools of change
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