Getting up at 5:30 is never a good thing, but when you’re excited about a couple of days away from work, excited by the weather conditions in Copenhagen (26° today) and excited just to be doing something different, it makes getting up easier.

A quick nap in the plane, a quick train to my friend’s place in the north of Copenhagen, dropped off my stuff. So far so good. Everywhere I’m reminded of what a high regard for design the Danes have—hell, even their throwaway newspapers are beautiful.

So, what do you do on a beautiful day in Denmark when you’ve got 30 minutes to get to the conference? Get on the wrong bloody train in the wrong bloody direction would be my suggestion. I’ll spare you the irritating details, but I’m now in the lunch break having missed one and a half talks. Caught a little Jon Husband and his thoughts on how communication changes are changing hierarchies—interesting, but technical problems (sound and projection died suddenly in the middle) and the shortness of the talk made it just enough to give me something to start thinking about later. Lasting image however: the generations of change chart showing how human communication has changed over the 1700 generations since modern man emerged.

Originally published at mattbalara.com