Attending Europe’s Festival for Innovation and Creativity

From June 9 to 10, 2022, we attended the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz, Austria. Fifteen Seconds Festival is an international platform for innovation and creativity.

Every year since 2014, tens of thousands of people have exchanged ideas and pushed each other forward at their events. Their main goal is to “educate the other way”, which is to “grow your network and learn from the best in the world of innovation and creativity.” The festival is a gathering of curious minds who are eager to share their knowledge, drive positive change, and shape the future.

During the festival, we, the Luminousred founders, had the chance to listen to and learn from international top speakers from various professions.

Some notable speakers were: Maria Mileder (Global Head of Innovation, Paypal), Sebastian Tomich (SVP & Global Head Of Advertising, The New York Times), Tiffany Dockery (Director of Product, Visual Discovery, Etsy), Philip Inghelbrecht (Founder, Shazam), Ines Jaibi (Senior UX/UI Designer, DIOR), Michelle Morrison (Director of Strategy & Operations, Twitter), Lindita Xhaferi-Salihu (Decarbonisation Lead, United Nations), Josh Higgins (Global Chief Creative Officer, Meta), Kate Williams (CEO, 1% for the Planet), Isabelle Schnellbuegel (Chief Strategy Officer, Ogilvy), Andrew Haarsager (Head of Retail Innovation Lab, Cartier), Mark Adams (SVP & Head of Innovation, VICE), and Caroline Reid (Sustainability Director EMEA, Oatly).

A total of 150 speakers from all over the world came to Graz, Austria to share their visions of the future and their take on the festival’s ten main topics for 2022, which are:

1. Circular Economy – Solutions for a more sustainable future
2. Smart City – Design of urban spaces
3. Plant-based – Plant-based nutrition for a healthier life and climate protection
4. Female Leadership  – Remodelling today’s economic world
5. Green Tech – Fighting climate crisis
6. Universal Design – Approachable design systems
7. Mobility – Changes in society and organizations
8. Web3 – The next generation of the internet
9. Ungendered Lifestyle – The future without gender
10. Social Networks – Advantages and disadvantages of social media

The topic that was the most relevant to us was “Female Leadership” since Luminousred is a female-led company. We believe that having female leaders in positions of influence to serve as role models is critical to the career advancement of women. More importantly, it stands to generate broader societal impacts on pay equity, changing workplace policies in ways that benefit both men and women, and attracting a more diverse workforce. With our female CEO attending the festival, we felt honored to have the chance to represent female leaders everywhere. We also had a great opportunity to expand our network and make friends with people from all sorts of industries, who can be great contacts for us in the future.

From the talks on the stage to networking at the side events, we got to be exposed to a lot of incredible people and ideas. We also got to learn about and understand relevant trends that will shape our lives in the years to come.

The most exciting part was that we got to set up a Luminousred booth in the expo area. We decked the booth with our Model1 and Model2+2 Duo to create a light experience for visitors so that they could relax and enjoy the benefits of red-light therapy.

Fifteen Seconds Festival was such an insightful and inspiring two days, and we’re so excited to take our learnings from this and propel Luminousred to even greater heights.