Adventure week at Morning

A one-of-a-kind week devoted to adventure

From 1 to 4 October, we hosted a week of talks at Morning. The theme? Adventure, with a capital A. Micro-adventure, grand adventure, entrepreneurial and human adventure alike. The aim of the week was both to shine a light on members who work and spend their days at Morning, and to inspire the globetrotter or entrepreneur that lies dormant in each of us. Here is a brief look back, in words and pictures, at this week packed with talks, workshops and, above all, first-hand accounts of every kind!

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Launch evening "Pushing your limits" with Jean-Louis Etienne & We Demain

Adventure week got off to a flying start on Tuesday 1 October with an account from Jean-Louis Etienne, an extraordinary explorer and tireless champion of the planet. Among other feats, he was the first man to reach the North Pole solo, in 1986; he also completed the longest crossing of Antarctica by dog sled (6,300km is no small feat — that's the distance between Clermont-Ferrand and New Delhi); and he crossed the Atlantic by balloon. A CV rather fuller than that of your average mortal. The talk with We Demain can be watched again in full here.

Morning session "Fundraising: a little adventure within the bigger one" with Maddyness

On Wednesday 2 October, two events were held. The first, in the morning, was a breakfast around that major milestone of fundraising within the entrepreneurial adventure. For this, we invited Géraldine Russell, journalist at Maddyness, to lead a discussion with various companies that have faced this challenge: Nicolas Geugnier, CEO of Big Moustache, Olivier Vaury, CFO at ManoMano, and Clara Audry, investor at Cap Horn Invest. Find the full talk here.

Evening "Climb aboard the entrepreneurial adventure" with BigBlank

How do you build tomorrow's start-ups that will revolutionise transport, travel and mobility? That is the mission of BigBlank, the start-up studio of the Air France KLM group. The aim of the evening of 2 October, at Morning, Amsterdam, was to introduce their work. And what better way to do that than to present the projects under way, hosted within the start-up studio. Three companies, or fledgling businesses, therefore pitched their mission to the audience that evening: Wyg, Marty and Explora Project. How do you travel with children? How do you pay less for your flights than you do today? Or how do you set off on a micro-expedition for budding adventurers? These are the questions that these three companies are trying to answer.

Evening "Micro-adventure and grand escape" with Doc en Stock

Because an adventure isn't only a six-month epic across the Far North, we wanted to put on an equal footing the micro-adventure — the kind you can have in a single evening, for instance on your way out of work — and the grand escape as we picture it in the Far North. It was on Thursday 3 October, at Morning, Richelieu, that this fourth highlight of the week took place. Emmanuel Leconte, director at Doc en Stock, led the discussion between a very varied panel. First, on the micro-adventure side, Nicolas Sirot, a multi-hatted entrepreneur and micro-adventure enthusiast, and Nicolas Boudet, CEO and founder of Kaban Events, a company specialising in creating micro-adventures (such as street fishing, which some members from République got to enjoy the day before on the Canal Saint-Martin!).

On the other side, Edouard Golberry, an unconventional skipper and former financial-markets professional who reinvented himself overnight, having taken part in the Mini Transat and the Transat Anglaise and set himself a new challenge: the Vendée Globe 2020. Aviator and explorer Loïc Blaise rounded out the line-up. A former airline pilot, he had to give up the profession because of multiple sclerosis. But that didn't stop him from completing, aboard his seaplane, the last round-the-world journey never before achieved: the round-the-world trip via the Arctic Circle, or "the Round the World of Ice". Exchanges of views and first-hand accounts of every kind were therefore the order of the day. To watch the talk again, it's here.

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Closing evening "Another dance with wolves" with Jérémie Villet and Les Others

The final evening of adventure week took place at Morning, République. This time, Jérémie Villet, a 26-year-old wildlife photographer — who notably received the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award in 2013 — came to tell us about his various journeys in the Far North to encounter wolves and the other animals of the forest and the mountains, and to explain to us what it really means to be a wildlife photographer, with photos to back it up!

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