Digital Life Design


Digital Life Design is a global conference network, organized by the Munich based DLD Media, a company of Burda Digital. DLD acts as a platform for an exchange of future visions and experiences, driven by the mission to create a network of innovation, digital prospects, science and culture.
In 2005, Stephanie Czerny founded DLD as an annual conference scheme. Its main purpose is to connect business, creative and social leaders, opinion formers and investors for crossover conversation and inspiration. Since its first gathering, DLD hosted events in New York City, Beijing, San Francisco, London, Moscow, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv and Munich.
Moreover, DLD initiated a female themed conference DLDwomen. The DLD Conference is referred to by the Economist as one of Europe's leading conferences on innovation.
Chaired by Hubert Burda and Yossi Vardi the DLD conference held in Munich hosts over 800 creative international leaders, disruptors and thinkers from digital and consumer markets, media, technology, design, science, politics, social, arts and culture from around the globe. The three-day event always takes place in late January before the WEF. At this time, DLD also offers live streaming and blogging.
Speakers present their ideas in thematically assembled panels or in key speeches. Alongside DLD guests, speakers shed light on the developments in our markets, society and lifestyles through central innovation paradigms.

Background

Since 2005 the conference is held in Munich, Germany, where the DLD headquarters are located. Each year the slogan of the conference accordingly changes to the dominant theme.
ConferenceTheme
DLD 2006No specific theme
DLD 2007No specific theme
DLD 2008Uploading the 21st century
DLD 2009New Realities
DLD 2010Map your Future
DLD 2011Update your Reality
DLD 2012All you need is... Data?
DLD 2013Patterns That Connect
DLD 2014Content & Context
DLD 2015It's Only the Beginning
DLD 2016The Next Next
DLD 2017...what's the plan?
DLD 2018Reconquer
DLD 2019Optimism & Courage
DLD 2020What are you adding?

The conference is an invitation-only event. DLD provides a limited number of free conference tickets for creative students, scientists and NGOs. The 2014 conference took place in Munich on 19-21 January.
Previous conference speakers have included Mark Zuckerberg, Arianna Huffington, and Viviane Reding.

Events

DLDwomen (Conference)

The first DLDwomen Conference in 2010 launched under the slogan The Female Decade, has become an annual outlet conference, also held in Munich, Germany. It is chaired by Maria Furtwängler and is focusing on the gender debate.
DLDwomen is a platform for discussions, case studies and lectures and brings together a group of over 100 international high-profile speakers and more than 800 opinion-forming participants. They are both women and men from business, media, technology, society, health, education, politics, and science.

DLD Global (Conference)

DLD Global is an irregular series of events devoted to expand the network throughout the world. In 2011 these special gatherings took place in Beijing, China; in Palo Alto, United States of America and São Paulo, Brazil.

DLD Tel Aviv (Summit/Festival)

The summit took place the very first time on 1–3 November 2011 as part of the Tel Aviv Festival. It targets to bring together Israel's digital media representatives and internationally renowned industry figures.

Aenne Burda Award

Since 2006 the prize, inspired by the achievements and life of Aenne Burda, has been awarded at the DLD Conference. The prize aims to inspire women to realize their dreams.
YearWinner
2006Marissa Mayer
2007Caterina Fake
2008Martha Stewart
2009Esther Dyson
2010Mitchell Baker
2011Natalie Massenet
2012Arianna Huffington
2013Zaha Hadid
2014Viviane Reding
2015Edit Schlaffer
2017Auguste von Bayern
2018Rose McGowan
2019Fatoumata Ba
2020Maja Hoffmann

Internal publications

DLD is widely distributed via its own website, blog and video network.

Media coverage

DLD is covered and attended every year by over 180 international journalists from opinion forming media such as The New York Times, Economist, Guardian, Fast Company, Fortune, Financial Times, FAZ, FOCUS, Spiegel, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Thomson Reuters, Getty, Deutsche Welle, AllThingsD, Huffington Post and TechCrunch.