The dust hasn’t quite settled, and it probably never will. A week after the tender beast of a festival that was the #WorldBeautifulBusinessForum, I still feel both utterly emptied and completely full. A brief few island days in the Aegean didn’t help. I’m only slowly catching my breath, only slowly finding my words again.
What did help, however, was Patti Smith. On my last night in Athens (for now), I saw her perform at the Mount Lycabettus open-air theater, where she reminded the audience and me of a simple truth we tend to forget amid the AI hype and general doomsaying: “people have the power.”
For me, the #WorldBeautifulBusinessForum — “the most human gathering for the more-than-human world” — embodied exactly that.
I must admit, I went into the gathering ready to march through the uncanny valley of AI and human co-flourishing with curiosity and a certain cheekiness, prepared to let go of nostalgic humanist attachments. I left instead with a renewed appreciation for humans — for beauty, love, imagination, and improvisation.
Much like our host city of Athens, the Forum was gloriously messy and chaotic: a place where philosophy and pleasure form a romantic pair, where friendship outweighs absolute truth or justice, and where everyone, including global brands and corporate leaders, shows up with humility and decency. It was a celebration of leadership as art, performance as theater, and thinking as something to feel strongly about.
It felt like an escape into a new kind of reality that is possible and in fact already emerging. For the first time really, I could see the looming collapse as a new beginning.
The
@houseofbeautifulbusiness Bcommunity is truly something else. It is growing — and unstoppable. We have the hearts, we have the ideas, we have the language (just read the many reflections and posts that followed the Forum), and we have each other. The rest is unfinished business.
We can make this place beautiful. We can make ANY place beautiful.
