NATO Summit 2026: Day 1

Day one as a content creator at the NATO Summit: done.

Yesterday we met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska, we sat down, made short videos, and asked questions one on one.

A lot of the answers were political. Rehearsed, careful, exactly what you’d expect from people who’ve spent decades in rooms like this. But the format still did something traditional press conferences don’t: it let us ask questions our audiences actually want answered, in a language they’ll actually sit through.

We had a dedicated Content Creators Briefing Room, it’s bigger than some of the traditional press rooms at this Summit. That’s not a small detail. That’s an organization deciding creators aren’t a sideshow to the real coverage. We are the coverage, for an audience that was never going to read the transcript.

The numbers back it up. Clips and stories I posted from yesterday have already pulled hundreds of thousands of views in under 24 hours. That’s a Gen Z and millennial audience getting a look behind the curtain at an event they’d otherwise scroll past entirely.

Here’s my overall day one takeaway: politicians will always give you the calculated answer. That’s not going away, and honestly… whatever. What’s changing is who’s asking the question and how. Creators aren’t playing by the press conference script, we’re mixing up the format, and that pressure alone pushes the narrative somewhere new.

Today I’m at the NATO Defence Industry Forum, I’ll update y’all tomorrow!