My friend Mike Kus release a lovely book a while ago and I can’t remember if I already pointed you to it. If I did, well, than this is the second time, but it is worth it.

The book comes with a mass of examples, but also:

[…] will arm you with a mountain of easily actionable tips that will elevate your photos to the next level. This book makes photography accessible to everyone.

Check it out!

Needed this. Still, and for a month now, ill. But riding is ok and especially if the sun comes out

Tracked this one on my Komoot and my Strava account

(German version of this article available here)

Just over a year ago, after more than 20 years, I decided to change my previous business bank. The reason was that the bank I was with seemed outdated and offered few good online services. Everything seemed outdated and was also quite expensive.

So I did some research and read up on several banks and N26 seemed to offer me what I wanted. Various portals gave the bank a decent and good rating. However, N26 did not come off well on review portals. I kept reading about poor to no support and “account freezes”. For this reason, I kept my old account until the end of 2024, just in case I also had a bad experience.

I wish I had listened to the bad reviews and kept my old account for longer.

How it all Started

It all started when I received a message from N26 with the following content.

To avoid restrictions, please submit the following documents by February 1, 2025 by clicking on the Reply button below. February 1, 2025 is the last possible day on which you can send us the requested documents.

Proof of address, such as: - your registration certificate or - a gas, water or electricity bill issued within the last 90 days

Proof of income, such as: - your employment contract or - pay slips or - statement of assets and income (e.g. rental income, cash gifts) etc.

Proof of your residence in Germany, such as: E.g.: - Visa documents - Proof of studies - Proof of refugee status - Proof of family reunification

Evidence of the origin of the funds, such as: - Contracts (e.g. purchase and sale agreements) - Information about the sale of assets or capital gains - Information about inheritances or other sources of income - etc.

Please also provide us with a rough estimate of your expected transaction volume per year (i.e. expected incoming and outgoing transfer amounts) for your N26 account - including the countries you expect to send these transactions to or receive them from.

We always ensure that your personal information is treated strictly confidentially and is only used for regulatory processes.

I could understand the first point and sent the current electricity bill.

The second point, not really. Employment contract? Pay slip? I have a “Business Metal” account, ”The premium business account with 0.5% cashback for the self-employed and freelancers.”. There are therefore no employment contracts. So I sent my 2022 tax assessment on this point.

By the third point I was already out. Visa documents? Proof of study? Refugee status? Family reunification? Excuse me?

And on the fourth point I didn’t really know what they wanted from me either. “Origin of funds”? I issue invoices and receive my money. A look at my account would certainly have helped. Everything was unremarkable.

No Answer and Blocked Incoming Payments

I received no answer to my questions and the sending of the above documents. Well, not directly at least. I was sent the same questions again. No answer to my questions.

Instead, six days ago (as of February 10th) my incoming payments to the account were blocked. The statement, again without answering my questions, says: “You cannot currently receive any incoming transfers, such as salary payments.”

No Contact Option Whatsoever

Although I have a “Business Metal” account where I pay for “Preferred Consent Service”, I have no way of reaching anyone who can help me.

It says...

Preferred Customer Service

If you have any questions or problems, we will be happy to help you. No matter whether you just have a quick question about your premium business account, want a function explained in more detail or urgently need technical support: Call the Metal phone number or contact us via the chat support in your N26 app - we are happy to help you.

What about “preferred customer service”. Yes, you can use the chat support. First via a bot, later via a human. But they can't help, just like the telephone support on the “Metal phone number”. Because nobody has access to anything. They can perhaps explain to you how the app works or how to find a function, etc. But they don't provide customer support there. Especially not if you have problems.

I then gave a negative review on Trustpilot, because nothing is more frustrating than not being able to reach anyone. Not privately and certainly not as a business customer who has to work with such an account every day.

They responded to the review promptly and ”[…]to write a private message on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter (X)[…]” and they would be ”[…]available there at any time.” That’s true in the sense that I could write there and they responded there, similar to chat or when I called. But they couldn’t help me there either:

Please excuse our delayed response. Due to data protection guidelines, we have no access to our customers’ accounts and data via “X”

So why tell me to contact them there?

In the end, it is and remains a mystery to me how you can offer a business customer service where no one is really available who can actually help. Apart from the actual problem, which I still don’t understand, that is actually the bigger problem and also the one that is currently making me look for a new bank only after a year.

It remains to be seen when and if someone will contact me and whether I will ever find out why exactly my money has been frozen. Today is February 10, 2025 and I will report how things develop.

This is a new hub with tutorials and tips on how to use iA Presenter (and presenting in general).

What is time actually? I got a little addicted recently and read a few interesting articles, watched documentaries and dug a little bit deeper into this topic. Those articles circled around questions like …

• Why do we measure time?
• Since when do we define our own time and don’t let nature define it through day and night anymore?
• How much value has time?
• Does time equal luck?

It quickly became quite interesting and complex, surely. But one thing that stuck with me is – even though it is, or might be obvious – how much value time really has.

When we are younger, we do not care much about time. We seem to have endless time and everything else seems more important, of more value, like money or traveling for example. But at some point we realise how precious time is.

Isn’t one of the best things in the world spending time with you granddad and grandmother? With your dad and your mum? You best friends during your time in school? Well, we often recognise this too late sadly. And where we might be able to earn money all our life, getting time back with people who are not here anymore is something we’ll never be able to achieve.

If you ask anyone, rich or poor, relationships – time with other – makes anyone happier than anything else. How much value time really has dawns on us sadly often only when we are old.

People of age never regret not having had more money or owned more valuable things and fancy cars. They regret not having had more time for certain things.

Time? Time is valuable.

Panos Semitekolos has written a nice summary with a few takeaways from my talk at T3CON24, end of November.

It was so beautifully sunny, that I went for the very first ride on my gravel bike. Just 2° Celsius meant, that for the last 2 years, since I got this bike, I wouldn’t have gone during the winter time. First of all I did not have the gear to do this and wasn’t sure what do get to be on the safe side in terms of low temperatures, but I also did not want to clean my bike after each of those muddy rides. Well, I have to say that I like riding the bike so much since I got it, that I will be ok cleaning it (I actually enjoy cleaning all of our bikes during the summer time).

But still, I wasn’t sure what do get to be safe when it is cold. I read a lot and finally was chatting to Hans about what he uses, since I have seen him riding quite a lot also in the cold days of the year. He gave me some insights in what he uses and it mirrored pretty much what I was reading. He also gave me some tips on what he usually buys and I looked into it. I liked what he recommended, but also had an eye on stuff by Ryzon, which usually is something I find a little too expensive.

It turned out that they had a winter sale running and I got a few essential bits. Still some money, but I have to say after the first ride: worth every Cent. I got a base layer, a mid layer, a thermal jacket and last but not least some thermal bib tights. I usually don’t really like tights and use mountain bike gear from Endura during the Summer, but for the cold time of the year it really makes sense to get something like this.

Oh, and did I enjoy the ride! ;)

Happy Birthday to my brother, who would have been 63 today. When he died in 2013 suddenly, he was as old as I am this year.

Since a longer time I interact less and less with social media. I think it started 2018 or so, that I thought it wasn’t feeling the same. As someone who was (is) dependent on social media channels, organising events and selling most tickets through Twitter in the past and as a multiplier to spread the word about my events in general, I still hung out there. Like many other people have written in the past months, it also was a channel where I kept in touch with many people I met during 20+ years of attending and running events.

Already before the pandemic, social media and specifically Twitter, but also Facebook and Instagram, felt different to me. Somehow the pandemic was a booster for those changes as it feels. The death of Twitter and the changes now, through that clown being elected again caused the “old” users to look for something new. Sadly that resulted not in one, but various platforms. Social media is so fragmented these days, that it felt hard to keep up.

• “Do I re-post everything I post on one platform to the others?”
• “Do I use each of the channels for a slightly different purpose? If so, which one?”
• …

Many questions how to deal with all those platforms popped up and I am confused to the day. Less about what I, as Marc Thiele post there or how to use it, but for my business, running events. I need to get the word out, but will people eventually get annoyed that follow me on multiple platforms? I mean, it is kind of advertising many of us do on those channels.

I could really write for hours on here, but actually I only wanted to say one thing, when I started this RSS Club post:

I am SO tired! The tough years after Covid are one thing, but social media adds to it and so I stopped reading any of it mostly these days. I open it, post my beyond tellerrand announcements and leave again. I can’t read most of it. It is tiring, depressing and sadly – like in many other media – often negative.

I want to focus on the positive. For months I have one tab opened in my browser holding a blog post by Kev Quirk titled “Things That Make Me Happy”.

That is what I want to do more again: make people happy. Inspire them positively.

Will you help me?

This is a lovely summary by my friend Brendan Dawes about last week’s Berlin premiere of “Eno”. Brings back memories and a smile.

During T3CON24 last end of last year, Kendall Litton invited my to be a guest in the “Inside TYPO3” Podcast. We had a lovely conversation about events and the differences between bigger, more corporate events and independent events.

You can listen to the episode in the embedded player above, their YouTube page or any other player that supports RSS like Pocketcast, which I use.

Furthermore I got this whole podcasts transcribed and you can read the full transcription here (opens in a new window in case you started listening here already).

Last Tuesday, January 14th, I had the delightful honour to co-host the premiere of Eno, the documentary together with director Gary Hustwit and director of production Brendan Dawes in Berlin.

My task was to welcome people after picking their seats and introducing Gary to the stage to say hi. Later after the film has been shown, and that was the real fun, I lead a 30-minute Q&A with Gary and Brendan, chatting about the creation process, the idea and the technology of how this film was made.

I absolutely enjoyed this and next to co-hosting this, meeting with friends like Keir, Tobi or Brendan and Gary was a great start to the event year.

On the way to Berlin for the Eno premiere with Gary Huswit, Brendan Dawes and also looking forward to seeing Keir Whitaker. 🙌 #firsttripin25

Note: This article was originally posted on 18 January 2020, but I updated it several times and last on 18 December 2024 again.

I collected these links to write a blog post at some point, but did not get to the point writing it, yet. Now, to make use of my list already, before getting to the point finally writing a blog post about public speaking, I have sorted my notes and list them here in no specific order. And I am going to let you know as soon as the actual blog post is done. Plus I am, of course, adding new resources any time I find something new.

Writing a Proposal

• Conference Proposals that Don’t Suck by Russ Unger for A List Apart
• How to Write a Compelling Proposal at the WAAA Blog
• Is Your Conference Proposal Good Enough? by Raquel Vélez
• An Addendum About Conference Proposals at Voodoo Tiki God
• What Your Conference Proposal Is Missing by Sarah Mei
• Sample Proposals by O'Reilly

Writing About Yourself aka Writing Your Bio

• A video by Danielle Barnes about Crafting Your Biography
• Writing a Personal Bio
• 11 tips on how to write your personal bio on BrandYourself
• How to Write a Short Professional Bio on TutsPlus

Writing and Preparing a Talk

• How To Give the Killer Tech Talk — A Pamphlet by Jan Lehnardt
• How to prepare and write a tech conference talk by Lena Reinhard
• A video by Saron Yitbarek about "Your Perfect Tech Talk"
• 7 best practices for giving a conference talk by Vicky Brasseur
• The Exhaustive Guide to Preparing Conference Presentations by Angie Arriesgad
• “How I write conference talks” by Ethan Marcotte.
• “Preparing a Conference Talk” by Jeremy Keith

Creating Slides

• The Art of Slide Design: Make Important Information Stand Out by Melinda Seckington
• The Art of Slide Design: Maximise Signal, Minimise Noise by Melinda Seckington
• A white-label slide deck by Alice Bartlett
• Preparing slides by Lale Byquist
• Top Ten Slide Tips by Garr Reynolds
• 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea on the TED blog

General Public Speaking Tips (covering the above often as well):

• Tips for giving talks online by Juha-Matti Santala
• Shy introvert's (short) guide to speaking in conferences by Juha-Matti Santala
• How to Discover Conferences To Speak At by Melinda Seckington
• The Importance of Using White Space... In Your Talks by Melinda Seckington on her blog
• 10 Tips for Improving Your Public Speaking Skills by Marjorie North on the Harvard website
• How To Become A Better Speaker At Conferences – an article by Andy Budd for Smashing Magazine
• How to Become a Public Speaker in 1 Year – a lovely 10-step guide, covering a lot of topics. By Catt Small
• Public speaking – no one likes it at first! a short video by Karen Catlin
• Seb Lee-Delisle created a blog post in 2014 in which he states his way of dealing with and asking for an honorarium for a talk.
• What I wish I knew when I first started speaking internationally – a Medium post by Amber Case
• 9 tips to help you rock your first (or next) conference presentation – a post on Inside Design by Jennifer Aldrich
• What You Need to Know About Speaking at Conferences – a pretty complete post by Ashe Dryden
• The Best Advice on Public Speaking – a podcast with a variety of guests giving tips on public speaking
• Public Speaking Articles on Ladies in Tech
• Public Speaking Podcast on Ladies in Tech
• A website dedicated to Thoughts on public speaking by Zach Holman
• Des Traynor on How to get started at conference speaking
• An article at the Guardian titled How to crush stage fright and become a master in public speaking
• Presentation Skills is a website with many tips by Lale Byquist
• Breaking into the speaker circuit is a blog post by Andy Budd
• The Rectangle Behind You is a series of posts by Marcin Wichary about public speaking and presentations
• Getting Started In Public Speaking: Global Diversity CFP Day – a post on Smashing Magazine by Rachel Andrew
• Rebecca Murphey has written down her Speaker Notes with a lot of insightful help about public speaking
• The Ultimate Guide To Memorable Tech Talk – a Medium post by Nina Zakharenko
• Dave Rupert writes about a bad experience with public speaking and how to deal with problem (he had) in When Public Speaking Goes Wrong
• Oliver Schöndorfer has written (in German) about what he can – and has to – do to get more female speakers on stage.
• In this two-part post in German, Oliver Schöndorfer writes about his experience of finding a topic and proposing this to an event. He writes about the process of asking himself why he has not and if he wants to get on stage, his first steps when he decided he wants to get on stage and common pitfalls. Spiced with a lot of General help and useful tips. This way, please: Part 1 and Part 2.
• It also is important to show the organiser that you did your homework and are prepared. Next to knowing the name of the person you are writing and at least having had a look at the event’s website this means to make up your mind what kind of event you want to speak at. Ethan Marcotte has written this blog post in which he lists his questions he asks any organiser when being contacted.

Books

• Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan (links to A Book Apart, no affiliate link)
• Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds by Carmine Gallo (links to German Amazon site, no affiliate link)
• Public Speaking for Success by Gale Carnegie (links to German Amazon site, no affiliate link)
• Medium post with 7 book recommendations
• Good article by Chris Heilmann about pitfalls and how to avoid them amongst many other good points

That's it for now, but I am pretty sure I gonna update it regularly. It would be wonderful, if you send me an email in case you have more links, books or anything that completes this list to learn about public speaking and presenting on stage.

When I got invited to the TYPO3 Conference 2024 to give a talk I thought “Why would my topic and what I have to say matter at a TYPO3 Conference?”. Well, I guess, my event is titled beyond tellerrand, so how could I say no, if someone running an event about topics not being my core topic? I mean, that is the idea of my event, right?

I have been asked if I’d like to stay in the hotel, but I said, that I live very close, so maybe I stay one day. When I told my wife, she instantly said, that I know how much I appreciate if speakers are there for the full event and actually also around the event to socialise with the other speakers, the team and attendees. Surely she was right, so I stayed in the hotel and that was a good decision, since I got to meet so many new and interesting people.

The closer the event came, the more I was looking forward to being on stage. The title or my talk was “Why Independent Community Events Matter” or “Why I do what I do and how I got do to it”. I spoke on day two after the lunch break on the main stage and really enjoyed speaking there. I have seen head nodding, people smiling and listening to me and Frank Schmidt, who was the MC for the whole event, not only did a great job during the three days, but also made me feel very welcome on stage.

When Daniel Fau asked me during the awards gala how I liked it and how my experience was, I stated that I was surprised how open and welcoming the TYPO3 community was and that they achieved to build a good community around the product TYPO3. I also had my organiser’s hat on and stated that everything was absolutely well organised during the event and especially at the awards gala on which, next to the talk during the main event, I was interviewed about the process of our job in the jury for the awards, which was great fun also as the moderators – Emily Whigham and Matt Beadle – did a fantastic job and made the whole 5-hour event feel snappy, fun and not boring at all.

As I said earlier, I had a fantastic time throughout the whole event and made many new connections. During the after show party after the awards gala, many people came to me and said they were happy to meet me, since a lot of employees of them would attend beyond tellerrand for many years and always came back inspired and happy – well, that makes me happy!

Thanks a lot to the organisers of the event: Luisa, Myrna, Daniel, Carsten and all the others involved. Well done.

Links to coverage:

• T3CON24 Recap by Panagiotis Semitekolos
• Wrap-up by Kendall Litton (who also interviewed me for a podcast that is going to be published soon) on Linkedin
• My talk description

I am invited to speak at the TYPO3 Conference this week and have also been part of the jury this year. Thanks for the kind invitation! I knew it is going to be tough as it is conference seasons right now and we ran SmashingConf New York and Antwerp, I ran beyond tellerrand Berlin and I have been part of a big organisers meeting in Vilnius.

Now it is two days until I speak at the TYPO3 Conference in Düsseldorf and all I have written down is the title of my talk. Well, yes, in my head I know what I gonna speak about, but I need to bring it into a certain structure. That means, if you expect an answer to your email this week: sorry – not happening. The next two days I am writing and then I am attending on Wednesday and Thursday.

What will I talk about, you ask? They said, they want to hear a bit about the story and background of why beyond tellerrand came alive and I said, it might be a bit exotic for the audience of a TYPO3 Conference, but well, I guess that is the idea of “beyond tellerrand”, right? I will also spice it up with a few bits about why I think that independent events, and there is not just mine, are important. For diversity, for an independent curation of talks (vs. sponsored or product talks) and for your net work and our community.

If you like, grab a ticket, drop in and spend a good time at the event together with me. Oh, and as it happens, I still have a couple of free passes. Simply email me to get one.

See you there!

This is the last episode of by appearance at the devslove.it podcast. Alex, Dominik and I were speaking – in German – about education, why events matter for this and about the IndieWeb movement.

With this third of three episodes all three episodes are live and I want to thank Alex Bürner and Dominik Laube once more for the invitation and the lovely conversation.

The work of Swiss graphic designer Anna Monika Jost for Olivetti from around 1966 is amazing!

A short note as maybe someone does not know, like I did not know. Did you know that you can hold down a key on your keyboard in MacOS for special characters, like you can on iOS? I never tried this and certain characters can’t be typed.

For example: if I want to type the name or my friend Tantek Çelik, for the Ç I can press the keys option+shift+c (⇧+⌥+c) gives you the special Ç in his last name. If you try this with the ć and think that typing ´+c like you’d do for an é it, for some reason does not work (does anyone know why, actually?). I was wondering if there would be a way of typing this anyways instead of copying it from the glyphs panel.

beyond tellerrand Berlin 2024 is over already again. I started this adventure in 2014 and much happened to the world since then. But the positive vibe at the event last week gave me a lot of hope.

Fact is that 2024 many things have been much, much harder for a lot of my event organising friends. Some had to cancel, some suffer from less attendees and most suffer from less sponsors. Companies and agencies focus on big events these days again or decide to set up and host their own events. Both often is harder and more expensive than supporting independent community events like beyond tellerrand.

Berlin 2024 turned out to be wonderful, though. The conversations I had with lovely attendees, the absolute stunning speakers who all gave their best and brought thought-provoking, inspiring, and motivating presentations and last but not least a team that excelled in being welcoming, helpful and friendly.

The wonderful two days flew by and while I thought I’d stop Berlin after this one for a while and would not run a Berlin edition in 2025 changed my mind. It changed my mind in a direction, where I now say “Now even more it is needed that I work hard on keeping this little island of friendliness and positivity”. And you, those who were there, made this with me. Your warm and wonderful feedback changed my mind and anyone to whom I mentioned that I might take a break in Berlin said “No, please not”.

But that needs your help. Spread the word about beyond tellerrand. Let other people know about it and tell them what it is and what it gave you while attending and when being back home.

I feel empty and exhausted, but my heart is full of lovely memories that will last. Thanks so much to anyone who was involved in creating a festival like this and made it what it was!

(Fotos by Florian Ziegler – complete set of photos here)

I have been guest of the devslove.it podcast and it was a lovely experience and a – as I think – fun conversation with Alex Bürner and Dominik Laube. This is part 2 of 3 titled “Speed Snack” in which we had “quick” Q&A session.

This was our second edition in Antwerp. At least for a while it will be our last one in Antwerp either. Well, at least in the wonderful Bourla Theatre as it will be restored for the next couple of years (the estimate is between 3 and 5 years). We are looking into other options for Antwerp, though, as we really like the city.

We run the complete show in Antwerp on my tech and therefore I am not able to take as many photos as usual, but here is at least a selection of photos from the days in Belgium.

I might have been slower during the last couple of weeks in replying to your emails. Well, the reason is, that I am on the road with the Smashing Team, running SmashingConf, been away with the family and am going to run and attend and speak at more events in the upcoming month.

In the last two weeks, I have been in New York, being part of the Smashing Team, running SmashingConf New York (← photos of the event), after a break of one year. Big success, great atmosphere, everybody was/is happy. After New York, arriving at 5am in Frankfurt, I went to a family birthday party and the night after, at 4am, we drove to Austria to spend a week with part of the family (as our oldest daughter is in Sydney and our son studying, they sadly have been missing) in the Austrian mountains with best weather – it was woooooonderful.

We were hiking in the mountains during the day and I was preparing beyond tellerrand during the night.

Now I had a week to work on beyond tellerrand things 24h and got a lot of stuff sorted (already also working on the Düsseldorf 25 edition – page and first speakers coming in a few days). When writing these lines I sit between boxes and tech already and still have to write a talk and prepare things for a conversation with other event organisers 🙈

So, coming up …

SmashingConf Antwerp

After last years success we are back in Antwerp in the lovely Bourla Theatre. A great venue and if you want to be part, better do this now, since the lovely theatre will be closed for the next years (see photos of last year, if you want to know what I am talking about). Right now I prepare the tech, as we use my gear to run the stage tech and also anything that is used to stream the show.

beyond tellerrand Berlin

After ten years of running beyond tellerrand in Berlin, I did not expect this one to be the toughest one in selling tickets. Never ever has a btconf sold less that this one. I think the reasons are many (Berlin changes, too many events at and around these dates with a clearer focus, death of social media etc. – happy to chat, if you want to hear my full thoughts), but one thing is very clear: anyone who comes will get the best show that’s possible. As usual. The team, the speakers and I will do out very best to make this a wonderful experience and, hey, look at this line-up. I am SO looking forward!

Festival Eastern European Design

The week after beyond tellerrand, I will be in Vilnius at the Festival Eastern European Design. Next to attending the event, I have been invited to be part of an organisers event, where we discuss problems that each of us (independent) event organisers has these days, trying to find solutions for some things, but also maybe building a network of events. I am always excited to learn about and from other events, to share knowledge and grow my network. Exciting to see what comes out of this.

Skate-Aid Night

Since a couple of years I am also (indirectly) involved in the Skate-Aid project. One of their yearly events I attend for a few years now is the Skate-Aid Night on which we raise money for new projects of Skate-Aid. This time my good friend Rob Draper made a great piece that will be auctioned and he will also be onsite doing his “Your Words, My Hands”, where he creates wonderful posters with copper or silver ink on black with your words and, well, his hands. He does this at beyond tellerrand for a while now and it is highly popular, raising quite a bit of meany each time for charity (100% of the money always goes into those charity projects).

TYPO3 Conference 2024

Marc? TYPO3 Conference. Why that, you might think. Well, I think that also people running events with a focus on certain topics understood that you need topics from beyond the tellerrand to attract people from outside their bubble. Next to TYPO3 being an excellent btconf Partner for 2024, not only talking about the people, but also about understanding an audience of an event, they invited me to be part of their T3CON24 as part of the Jury Panel and to give a talk (which I also still need to write 😱).

My talk is going to be something along the lines of “Why independent events matter for the event industry and where they come from”. If you like to come, just join us, I am happy to being able to give out a few free full conference passes for this event. Please email me to get one

If you are at any of these events, please find me and say hello. I love a conversation with other people at events and am super happy to meet you again or for the first time.

See you!

I have been guest of the devslove.it podcast and it was a joyful experience and a fun conversation with Alex Bürner and Dominik Laube. This is part 1 of 3 titled “Wie Flash die beyond tellerrand ins Leben rief”.

Here is my set of photos from this year’s Smashing Conference in New York.

We run this show since 10 years already. Always great to come back. Next stop Antwerp, then Berlin’s beyond tellerrand

I am off to New York to meet the SmashingConf team and run another edition after a break of a year.

Greetings from FRA and see you there!

What do events/conferences/design festivals/younameit mean to you? I'd be interested in a conversation.

Speaking to a lot of event organisers recently, one issue is one they all share these days: less and less people attend their in-person events. But why?

❓ Are people generally not seeing the benefit of attending in-person events anymore?

❓ Is going to events not affordable for individuals and/or companies anymore (travel, accommodation, food and ticket add up)?

❓ Do people think that virtual events and workshops are equally working for them as in-person conferences and workshops?

❓ Is the networking aspect these days unimportant (fostering the existing network as well as growing it and meeting new people)?

❓ Do people simply don’t know and hear of especially smaller, independent events anymore (since social media is scattered all over the place, building smaller bubbles of interest and most of the platform dictated by the algorithms to be seen)?

❓ Is Covid still something why you don’t attend events?

I am honestly interested in learning about this. Why? At any of the events I attend (or run myself) people are full of praise afterwards, absolutely happy that they have been there. So why are events these days so hard to sell to people?

It would be great to hear you. No matter if you still attend events or if you stopped or never actually went to events – let me know why and I post the outcome here (or if you prefer, also on Linkedin).

I am a Mac user since I am working with computers professionally. My first Macintosh I was working with had OS 7 running and ever since I am using Apple products myself at home professionally and for private use and so does my whole family. Once you are caught in an ecosystem, it is difficult or at least quite some work to use other operating systems as they are not making it easy with missing standards to sync between different operating systems and/or family members using a different OS than you. Nevertheless I am always curious and am excited to try new hard and software to see what is state of the art.

Sine the beginning of the year Asus is one of the main partners of my event series beyond tellerrand and I looked into what they are actually building. I got a Zenbook Duo and after I thought how the two screens in it could be of any use, I have to say, I love th two screens. But before I even started the computer and used it, I was impressed with the build quality of the laptop. The two screens are brilliant and the detachable keyboard is super thin, yet has a good and solid feeling when typing.

Well, yesterday it happened that I had been invited to a launch event of the new ProArt series, targeting creators and professionals. I really don’t have to say or write this, but the quality of those machines is really nice. They feel high quality, have good displays and hardware in general and as soon as I get one of the devices to test them for longer, I am happy to give you more insights.

So, even though Windows still feels kind of painful I have to say, if you are a Windows user or consider getting a Windows machine, go and check the hardware of Asus, like the ProArt series or their Zenbooks for example.

Next to this the event, being an in-person event, once more has proven, that there is a reason to attend an event in person. I made many interesting and nice people and really had a great day (thanks to Martin from Asus especially).

For years and years I am looking for a way to change the email address on my mac to not use the icloud email to send invites from out of my calendar.

Now finally I got it working. While I was looking for a way to change it on macOS, I now stumbled over a way where someone changed it for their iPad or iPhone. The option that you have on those iOS devices is not existing on your Mac, though. Therefore I simply tried to change it on my iPhone and … tada! … it is also changed on my Mac. Holy cow. It only took YEARS to finally being able to send invites to people from my beyond tellerrand email now and not from iCloud.com anymore.

You find the setting on your iPhone at:
Settings -> iCloud[User] -> iCloud -> “Show All” (under “Apps using iCloud) -> iCloud Calendar -> Send & Receive

On the top you find the field “Send From” and can change the email accordingly.

Yay!

If you, like me and many, often complain about websites being soulless these days, then check the new website of Nic Chan. I love it.

In this article Sophie Koonin encourages you to attend events. She summarises a lot of the things I talk and write about for a while, which are:

• Buy your tickets early
• Conferences need sponsors!

She also lists a few events and gives a short overview what they are about and what the price tag is.

That was our 2024 edition of Smashing Conference in Freiburg. 12 years at the place where it all started and here are some impressions.

Had a lovely meeting today with Marc Biebusch from Diesdas Digital today and chatted about a lot of things. Diesdas Digital are hosting the Warm-Up of this years beyond tellerrand in Berlin again and I'd love to say thanks again with this.

But I also remember a moment in our conversation where he said something about that people need to re-learn and understand again how important it is to go out, meet people in real or, in other words, attend events like meetups, conferences and alike. When we were talking about this, I remembered a moment after one of the stops with Storyblok on our “Stories on the Road” events in Brighton where afterwards someone approached me and said something that stuck with me:

Hey Marc, this was the first time after the pandemic that I attended and event again. Thanks for putting up this lovely event. It was great fun and I totally forgot about how great those events are.

He said he forgot about it during the pandemic and had to understand and experience this again. Well, this is what we invite you to. Join us for the Warm-Up at Diesdas (even if you don't attend beyond tellerrand), join us for beyond tellerrand and grab a ticket or join the next "Stories on the Road" stops (for example next week in London and Frankfurt).

Go out and reconnect to the community again, meet people you know, make new connections and learn from and inspire each other!

You find loads of videos about whether chain oil or chain wax is better. Since I have got my gravel bike (roughly 3 years now), I used wax on its chain. I never really had any comparison, as I only have this one bike and am using wax.

Yesterday I got my new daily bike, a Rose Sneak 2 and typically chains of new bicycles come with an oiled chain. So did this one and I thought “Well, give it a try and drive this one with oil”. I drove about 8km yesterday, from the store to where I live and today about 6km with the dog and now have a look how this oiled chain already looks like and how the sand and dirt sticks to the oil.

If you imagine that on the image above, the chain of my Specialized Diverge is roughly 3500km old and I re-waxed it about 150km ago. The chain might be a bit old and could be replaced, yes, but no dirt or sand sticks to it.

I definitely will degrease the chain of my new bike as soon as I have a quick link and will also use wax on that one. The wax I am using is from Optimize. So far I never used hot wax, but only the fluid wax and am super happy.

Oh … and here is my new birthday-bike ☺️

If you know me, you know that my heart beats for hand crafted, human curated community events, where you can see and feel that people who care and want to run this event, actually are behind those events. I might be biased, as I myself run an event like this with beyond tellerrand and started another one together with Vitaly back in 2012 with Smashing Conference, where the community spirit also is important for the whole team.

Actually my roots in terms of my events life are based on this. I always loved the personal experience at events, the random things that happen in the breaks and getting to know and meet other people where sometimes those serendipitous meetings turned into friendships and long-term relationships. Yet sometimes even into projects and jobs, which never was planned in the first place.

The things I describe can surely also happen at big, corporate events and those events have their reason to take place. If I would have to pick and choose, I think I’d always go for the smaller, more community driven events, but that surely is a matter of my own taste. I only really wonder and want to understand, why more and more of the smaller events don’t survive and/or need to be cancelled. Many conversations with my friend Keir and also with other event organisers rise the same questions over and over again:

• Why are less companies interested in supporting those smaller events financially (aka sponsoring)? And how can those events make it more attractive or emphasise the benefits of supporting them again?
• Why are attendees buying their tickets so late, which adds to the organisers uncertainty of whether an event will make profit or even only break even?
• Which channels can be used to advertise an event with a smaller budget without paying lots to bypass the algorithms of social media platforms?

Often times it comes down to measuring the success of a sponsorship for companies to decide whether they would sponsor an event again next time. But how do you actually measure success these days? Generating leads like you did back ten or fifteen years ago, where you’d run a raffle and people throw their business cards into a glass bowl, is surely not the way to go anymore. In my opinion it is the conversations you have at events. Especially if you run a booth. The quality of a conversation is tough to measure and evaluate and how would you even report this to the one who decides about the budget for events?

When it comes to getting the tickets early, how can you convince someone to get their ticket early again and with this, support the organisers to plan and run this event with the knowledge that the cost is covered? Even if the actual attendee understands this, they need to report this to their boss paying the ticket in the end and make the boss understand why this is important. If I would not trust in the reputation of beyond tellerrand and it would be a newer event for me, I would cancel the Berlin edition in November due to not enough tickets being sold and not enough partners, aka sponsors, being on board. I am feeling a bit unsure about a recent project Karl Groves and I want to start next year in Washington DC with a new event called Better by Design for obvious reasons and it is so sad for me to see events like Front Conference being cancelled due to exactly this! I know the people running it and if you look at the line-up you see that they made an effort to get new names onto their list.

Conversations with many other event organisers underline the difficulties of selling enough tickets and everybody is talking about the same phenomenon. Are community events maybe something from the past? A relict that the new generation does not need anymore? Well, you know my opinion here. On the other hand my friend Keir sent me the link to this post on Linkedin, where Julius Solaris tries to predict the future of events. I get some of his points (especially those related to environmental aspects), but massively disagree to a lot of other predictions he makes.

Anything AI driven in the curation process for example won’t help towards a better event experience in my opinion. I also surely shiver, when I read his point 17 in which he says that algorithms are going to decide which events you’ll attend! Or no. 18 – “no more fixed agendas, opening keynotes or parties” – who the fuck wants this? Is the shared event experience not why we actually attend events and what we want? Memories we leave an event with and which are the result of someone who deeply cares and who organised and planned this experience for you?

I don’t say that online events or communities as he describes them in no. 19 of his points will have their reason to exist also, but why not in combination or alongside event as we know them. In my opinion, and I think the pandemic and the efforts made during that time to find something that is like the in-person experience have shown also, the dedication and commitment of people who travel to an event and are ready to spend a day, two days or even more including travel is so much bigger than of someone who is in front of their screen, attending an event, where distractions are waiting to ruin the event experience: the dog needs a walk, dinner needs to be made and the actual talk is boring anyways, sun is shining and I can watch the videos later anyways …

In short: I disagree to most points Julius makes about he event experience itself and how AI will help us for better events or a better event experience – “AI will attend on our behalf if there is no one to meet at an event”. I mean, really? You are the one people want to meet.

Concerning the last of the three bullet points, I think it needs us as attendees to broadcast the message. If we attended a good event, we need to speak about it. Even short messages with a few positives aspects that underline why you liked attending do help a lot. Social Media as a tool for event organisers does not really work like it used to be, but is still needed in addition to us attendees. Reposting, quoting and posting from us as attendees helps spreading the information to possible new delegates. Blog posts for longer write-ups in addition also help of course! Photos that capture the joy of being at an event. If you are working for a company or agency, why not having an after-event meeting with your colleagues in which you describe the experience, what you have learned and who the exciting people were, which you have meet? Make it a team experience next time!

I could go on forever, but I think you got my point. Why do you think in-person events are important? Or do you agree to Julius’ view of how future events will look like? What do you think how issues I addressed and other existing problems can be solved? Let me know via email or join our Discord to discuss this or, if you are totally fancy, here is a new Whatsapp channel, I created ;). I am honestly excited to hear you thought.

I won’t get tired of telling you about why events like Berlin Letters and in-person events in general are worth attending. Next to the talks – which where excellent – this one has proven once more, that the human interaction at this kind of events is the actual reason to attend. Well, at least for me it is.

It was lovely to meet people again, like Elliot, Eva-Lotta, Norman, Jürgen, Martina, Francis or Ivo and Georg, plus the organisers of the event, of course, just to mention a few.

But surely it always is great to also get to know new people. I got to meet a few people that made this trip especially exciting, like Jamie, Emma who I had the pleasure to hang out with during this event or Gustavo Ferrari, who opened the third day of the event with a lovely talk about Fileteado, in which he was not only talking about his work, but also about the history of Fileteado.

Overall I hope that events like Berlin Letters will survive and grow. They are important for human connections, but also for your business. But most importantly they fuel your creative batteries and inspire you to explore new fields or motivate you to keep on doing what you do.

Spending some days in London at “Craft and Work”, an event by my friend Keir Whitaker.

There ist my friend Keir Whitaker, who joined the beyond tellerrand boat roughly a year ago. The reason for this post: This time he is not helping me with my stuff, no, he is organising an event also. An event that is targeting people who want to know more about building better digital, and creative businesses and who are focusing on better e-commerce for example.

So, if you are a founder or entrepreneur, or someone running their business as a singe person, this event is for you. I myself am going to be there as well and am extremely looking forward to it! And as I heard, there are a very few tickets left. So better be quick to not miss out.

More information about Craft + Work here …

Running events like beyond tellerrand is wonderful and even more that I can call something like this “my job”. But it’s also exhausting. You might think, once the festival is over I can relax, but usually there is a lot of work post-event to be done. Easily two more weeks full of stuff to say thanks, pay the bills and collect material and coverage etc. And yes, there is Berlin also, where I need to focus on to make it as good as the last one in Düsseldorf.

Therefore it is the best to have my lovely wife Tanja to remind me to actually take a break and just calm down, doing nothing but spending time in the sun, trying to process what has been experienced. We had a fantastic weekend and relaxed at the Dutch sea. Thank you Tanja! ❤️

Had a lovely breakfast prepared by my children for father’s day today. Sitting in my studio now, sun is shining outside, am listening to Jane’s Addiction and writing welcome letters for the speakers of the sold out beyond tellerrand festival in Düsseldorf 2024.

Am happy.

On May 13th and 14th, I organise my annual stop of beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf. If you are from Düsseldorf or arrive in Düsseldorf before you maybe want to attend “Literatur & Livemusik 2024” by my friend Lars Terlinden, taking place from May 9th to 12th.

It offer a book market with more than 12.000 books, concerts and much more. Next to this you can attend a reading of Marcus Bensmann who reads parts of [“Der AfD-Komplex”](https://shop.correctiv.org/Der-AfD-Komplex/SW10118 ?ref=marcthiele).

All readings and concerts are free to attend, but surely a donation is more than welcome! Any profit made is going into charity projects. Find all details here.

Dirk Hesse collects photos of creatives – and who isn’t creative – for his website “Le Bureau”. Mine was recently published and I wanted to point you to this lovely little project of Dirk.

He also invites to a short interview, for those of you who speak German. I like projects like this and it reminds me of those, where people show they favourite menu bar helpers, tools or what’s in their bag.

Thanks, dear Dirk, for having me at Le Bureau!

A generated film that never is played in the same way, you ask? For whom could this work out and isn't that too chaotic to watch? Well, if your subject is Brian Eno and his life, it is absolutely fitting.

At least the version I have seen on Saturday in the Barbican in London was an absolute watchable and great experience. So proud of what my friend Brendan Dawes is part of here. Gary Hustwit, Bren and their team did a wonderful job here and if you have a chance to watch it, you should not miss out.

Next to this I used the chance to meet a couple of more people in London. Like the tow chaps on the photo and Keir Whitaker on Sunday morning. Go and meet the people you know if you are in a city they live in or are close to. Always great and new experiences.

Last week I had the honour of being the guest of Silke in her live streamed radio show Radio Roggermann. It was great fun and you can listen back to it here (including the music). Show is in German, though.

Despite some personal problems within the family during my trip to Brighton, which made me worry, I had a wonderful time at this year’s Patterns Day. It was the third time this event took place and once more it was great to meet old friends and make new friends during the day.

Took me a while, also because it is only 8 weeks until beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf, but here are a few impressions of how it was …

A longer time ago (11 years to be exact) I started to shoot what’s in my backpack bevor I took off to event adventures. I did not shoot many of them, but always liked the idea and brought this back now.

This time: Patterns Day in Brighton.

Packing my Bag

I stumbled over the artwork by Andrew Scott on Instagram. I like that he uses the whole thing, you attach to your wall as an art piece and not just what is in the frame ;)

Like this one, in which “the artwork” cracks the frame with a hammer. Or this one where the glass of the frame is hit with a baseball bat (he has more of this kind, with smashed glass).

Well, simply check all of his work ;) Oh, and of course: visit his website!

I got many of their publications in my bookshelves or in my digital library. It feels like I bought the first one last month and now they are closing their doors.

This is a farewell and thanks for all the wonderful publications. 🥂 to Jason Santa Maria, Katel LeDu (always a pleasure working with you also on partnerships!), Jeffrey Zeldman and anyone else involved of course!

Sad to see you leaving the publishing stage!

Steph Eckles says “Sometimes, improving your application CSS just takes a one-line upgrade or enhancement” and released 12 useful modern CSS one-line upgrades.

I really, really enjoyed watching this. Not just because of the content. Those two guys get along well and you can feel the atmosphere in the room. Copeland surely respects Beato and I think Copeland is a funny guy also. Interesting, fun conversation to follow, I think. Not only if you are into music or like The Police.

Because Moritz Gießmann liked Lea Verou’s color contrast checker so much before it was sold and found out that it was published under the MIT license, he created the original version again and published it for your use at contrast-ratio.org.

A few days ago a new podcast with the title “The Gatekeepers” was published on BBC Radio 4. A podcast with and by author and journalist Jamie Bartlett in which he traces the story of how and why social media have become the new information gatekeepers.

I have been in touch with Jamie a couple of times, as well as now again, to get him to Berlin’s edition of my event, and know of him through his published books such as The Dark Net (2014), Radicals [< affiliate link] (2017), The People Vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (2018) or last but not least The Missing Cryptoqueen [< affiliate link] (2022). All well worth reading. Next to this, I am subscribed to his newsletter “How to survive the Internet” on Substack.

Yesterday I got notice, that he started a new podcast titled The Gatekeepers and so far I have listened to the first two episodes. The description of the introduction episode reads as follows:

It all started with a crazy idea to realise a hippie dream of building a “global consciousness”. The plan was to build a connected world, where everyone could access everyone and everything all the time; to overthrow the old gatekeepers and set information free.

But social media didn’t turn out that way. Instead of setting information free – a new digital elite conquered the world and turned themselves into the most powerful people on the planet.

Now, they get to decide what billions of us see every day. They can amplify you. They can delete you. Their platforms can be used to coordinate social movements and insurrections. A content moderator thousands of miles away can change your life. What does this mean for democracy – and our shared reality?

Jamie Bartlett traces the story of how and why social media have become the new information gatekeepers, and what the decisions they make mean for all of us.

Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? And so far, first two episodes in, I find it an exciting podcast with a very interesting topic.

But listen yourself: The Gatekeepers with Jamie Bartlett on BBC (or on any podcasting platform of your choice) …

I don’t know if you are subscribed to the “History of the Web” newsletter by Jay Hoffmann. A good read anyways, but I wanted to point you to the latest edition in particular.

But the blogging of today won’t look like the blogging of 2002. There are too many things that have changed. The web is bigger, It is more divisive and more complicated and the need for moderated discussion is great. As the blogging revolution is reflected through this new cycle, it will look like something different.

I think, but am not sure, I heard of Shift Happens, the book project of Marcin Wichary, when he spoke at beyond tellerrand in 2018, where he gave a brilliant talk about “The Abridged History Of Having Fun \/\/ith Keyboards” (watch the talk here on YouTube). Back then he already started working on it, but I think it was in the pretty early days.

Marcin’s book project is the best selling tech book on Kickstarter ever with over $750,000 pledged. Even though I said, I never gonna back anything on Kickstarter anymore, I supported Marcin’s project of course.

This morning I got my edition of “Shift Happens” and could not help, but make a few photos that you can find here to get a first impression of the books, their case and how it looks and feels.

Massive congrats to Marcin. Can’t wait to meet hi next time and ask him all the questions about the book, the process of everything and more.

See the photos I took here

In 2020 I have been interviewed for the Lexware magazine titled “Tell your Story”. I now found out, that [the article by itself is also online in their online archive](https://tellyourstory.lexware.de/story/beyond-tellerrand/?ref=marcthiele.

It was such a wonderful day over here yesterday. We took it as a chance to take a long walk along the Rhine.

It was such a great feeling to have the sun back. I knew it before, but I am really dependent on the weather and my mood is heavily influenced by how light or dark a day is. OK for a day, but if it is dark and grey over a period of weeks, I can’t help, but am tired and unmotivated.

On another note, today is the birthday of my brother, who died 2013 surprisingly. I think of him and send him a massive hug. Happy birthday, Kurti!

Like I said before, I was shitting my pants before I had seen the film. Andreas Brüggemann and Stefan Nitzsche were working on this since beginning on 2019 and many things happened during this time. Many things that those two might see different to how I see it and in general they have a different view on things than I do. That is perfectly fine, especially as I would never think any either of them would have any intention to harm beyond tellerrand or me. But surely they also did not want to create and advertisement film about my event and needed a certain distance to the event and also me. Difficult situation for them. Now, last Friday was the day, when they were finally and proudly presenting the first film of this kind they ever did together.

In the following I won’t give any feedback on how the film is. I think it is not on me to decide how well made, good or needed the film is. I am too close to the subject of the film and can’t judge about this or whether a film about what I do and who I am is needed on this planet 😁, but I have to say I had a wonderful evening.

At 7:30pm doors opened for 200+ invited guests. A variety of drinks and a few nibbles were offered and I was surprisingly recognising that the people showing up were a wonderful mix of my past and present. People I haven seen for more than ten year mixed with family, people I regularly see these days and people from my web and design bubble. That was lovely to see.

8:15pm we went into the cinema and the film was shown. After roughly 1,5 hours, people applauded and stood up and it seems they had liked what Andreas and Stefan made here. The two, Elliot, who was the MC for the night, Nicolas Schuele, who created the music for the film and I had been asked to come on stage for a round of questions. When it came to me and the question what I had to say, I said something like “I am very happy and humble about all the lovely things that had been said about me and beyond tellerrand in this film. Thank you. But surely for me all this feels a bit awkward and crinchy, as it must be for my family and especially my children, right?” – I looked to where our three children were sitting, but thy all were shaking their heads and said they massively enjoyed and liked the film and later on said they are proud … wow. If not anything else, but THIS really made my evening!

Now this chapter is closed and I can say “There is a documentary, a film, about beyond tellerrand and me, Marc Thiele”. I am not sure if Andreas and Stefan plan to publish it somewhere online. Right now, I think, they have plans to leave it unpublished to have the chance of being part of some film festivals. I keep you posted about their plans of which one is to show the film again around beyond tellerrand in May.

Thanks to Andreas, Stefan and Nicolas for all their work on this project.

A statement upfront: by the time writing these lines, I haven’t seen anything from the documentary apart of the three trailers on YouTube

It must have been end of 2018 or maybe beginning 2019 that Stefan Nitzsche approached me with the idea of creating a documentary about beyond tellerrand and, well, me. He and his friend Andreas Brüggemann wanted to create a film about the event, the people coming and my input to make it what it is. I wasn’t sure, if someone really needs this, but I liked the idea for some reason and we met for a first chat about a theme and reason to create this documentary.

If you know me, I am not a person who likes to point the camera into my face and tell you how great I am or how cool it is that I make. I like what I do, I learned in 23+ years of doing what I do, to be kind of proud of what I do and especially of what I have achieved over the years. But I would not – for a single moment – think about creating a movie about myself or my work.

That was also one thing I wanted to make very clear to Andy and Stefan. It is their work, their project and I have no saying in the final outcome. I also wanted to make sure that anyone who gets notice about the film clearly understands, that I have nothing to do with it. I did not plan anything, I had no saying on how this film would be created, what it contains or what the overall story would be. So we needed to sit down in the beginning, so that I would get an impression about their overall storyline and idea of why they want to create such a documentary.

Their first idea beginning 2019 was to take the three cities beyond tellerrand took place in by then as the hooks: Düsseldorf, Berlin and Munich. Later that shifted to the idea of showing the three “main groups” at such an event: the attendees, the speakers, the organiser. Once more, I need to emphasise, that I don’t think what I do is special, but I do understand, that the fact that a single person runs everything (even the tech on stage) sounds crazy – well, and it sometimes is.

I do also see, that the people attending create the atmosphere, many people talk about. The friendliness, the warm, welcoming vibe. And yes, maybe it is because I set the tone for this. But would this make me create a film about it?

So the question for me at this point, two weeks before the premiere of this film takes place: Why does someone want to create a film about me and what I do?

As said above, I have no decision in what they gonna show and I am pretty sure, many of the things told and show will be “too much”, too bold for me and my taste.

At this point right now, I am afraid. Afraid that I don’t like what they have done. Afraid of the reactions of others. Afraid of the idea that someone thinks I told them to create this film about beyond tellerrand and me. Would you be afraid? But I guess, there is no return now? People have been invited and I can’t not show up. That would be rude to Stefan and Andreas who put in so much time and work and also to the people they invited. But I’d love to hide or be there dressed up at someone else. 🙈

I remember what Seb Lester said once on stage, when he showed a still of a YouTube video by Casey Neistat, in which he was a guest:

Can you imagine, how a trapped rabbit feels? That was me in this situation.

I first said, I don’t want to see the movie, but a few things that happened along the way made me change my decision here and I asked the two to please send me a preview, which I will watch in the next das. You know, I bet it will be a nice evening, where I hopefully see a lot of nice people. And maybe the whole situation isn’t as bad as I imagine it right now. Let’s find out. It is simply not my nature to be in the spotlight like this.

I often get asked “What is the secret to a successful event?” and surely you first have to define what “success” means in this context. Mostly, when asking me, the asking person means the fact that past attendees speak about my event as a friendly event with a special atmosphere that is way more than a usual conference. That surely is a huge compliment for me and what I do, but honestly, the actual answer would be “I don’t know”.

I can only look back at what I did and try to find the things that make it feel different and which people are talking about, when they say this. It is my nature to welcome people and see myself as their host, wanting them to have a great time while they are at my event for those two or more days.

With 20+ years of running events, I certainly have an idea, what people refer to and I want to focus on and refine those bits each and every time I host an event.

In his Podcast, Christoph Luchs and I speak about those parameters and the history of how I came to do what I do. If you understand German, head over to his website and listen to the podcast episode titled “Wie verwandelst Du eine Konferenz in ein Festival, Marc Thiele?”

Thanks for the lovely conversation, Christoph.

A few weeks ago Keir Whitaker, good friend of mine and also part of beyond tellerrand since a couple of months (well he always has been somehow), threw 9 questions my way. I like to answer these kinds of questions, as I mostly learn something about myself while answering them.

He says:

“9 Questions For…” is an interview series in which I ask founders and solo entrepreneurs to share their experiences of doing “their thing, their way”. The questions might be the same but the insights certainly aren’t!

Well, and here are my answers to those 9 questions…

This afternoon I upgraded three of my sites using Kirby to the new version Kirby 4. It was super easy and nothing that bugged me really actually had to do with Kirby itself, but upgrading to a newer version of PHP here on my local machines.

I, for example, use Mamp on my Macs and older versions of PHP were installed locally. When I recognised that auto upgrading did not work, I tried to install Mamp manually by clicking on the upgrade function inside of Mamp. It threw an error stating “MAMP (PRO) can not be installed yet” and some details, that I followed, which did not help in the beginning. I then downloaded the Mamp installer, but it gave me the same error when starting the installation. For one of my Macs I had to rename the Mamp folder to get the installation started even, then rename it back to the original name and continue installing. Then I got the error “The installation cannot be continued”. After a bit of research I found out, that I had to kill all processes with the names “httpd” (there were around 20–30 running) and “mysqld” (also quite a few of them running). After killing those, I was finally able to install a newer version of Mamp with more options for new PHP versions also.

My first recommendation for the actual Kirby upgrade is to definitely check the Migration Guide for upgrading to v4. It has a lot of valuable information and if you read it before upgrading you avoid a few smaller pitfalls maybe and get smaller issues sorted easily.

Then I do recommend you to install new versions of PHP before upgrading Kirby. This makes sure you get rid of all problems that this PHP upgrade might cause, without you thinking that the Kirby upgrade has caused this error. I myself was running Kirby 3.9.8 and upgraded PHP to 8.2, which caused some minor issues that I needed to fix. After that, the Kirby Upgrade went extremely smooth on my neu•gierig website, as well as on the website for Karl’s and my new event Better by Design. For my blog here, I had to add PHP type hints, that have been added, but that was it.

I had issues to perform the upgrade directly from the Kirby 4 Panel, but removing the old .license file made it possible for me to add the new license in the Panel.

I am a massive fanboy of Kirby anyways, but this new upgrade feels so good already. Excited to work with it, especially using the panel a bit more.

If you want a demo of some of the new features, next to reading the Release Notes, you can watch the recording of the little release show that Bastian and I streamed last Thursday. Enjoy!

Exciting news: Kirby 4 is here. Upgrade now to save 20% on each license. Super happy for Bastian and the Kirby team to see the release as I know how much work it has been for them. And sooo many promising new features and enhancements. Have a look yourself.

Excited to see if my pages are easy to upgrade. A few other things to be done before I can have a look, but already looking forward to this.

On that note: there are a couple of Kirby meetups planned in Munich, Hamburg and Düsseldorf, in case you want to hear more about the latest version. I gonna be at the Düsseldorf edition and Basti also. We are planning to do an episode of Stay Curious for the new release also, like we did for the last version as well.

Skate Aid Night 2023 just happened on Saturday. I went again and it is great to see how many people supported Skate Aid again to make kids strong through skateboarding and giving them a purpose. This time my daughter Luca joined me, which made me really happy. ☺️

Skate Aid and beyond tellerrand are partners for many years now and part of the ticket money always directly goes to Skate Aid to support their projects.

To my mother who’d have birthday today!

ffconf is an event in Brighton founded and organised by Remy Sharp and his wife Julie Sharp. I know both for a long time and we share a lot of common things when it comes to running events. We run events, because we love running those and bringing people together for which we curate a set of speakers for a certain amount of time. In their case for one day at beginning of November. Julie and Remy, as well as I, come out of a very tough time for event organisers that don’t take their budgets out of a companies yearly marketing budget. We rely on people buying tickets and partnerships with companies who like what we do, who see a sense in sponsoring as they might have a benefit and who keep our events alive with their money.

What makes events like ffconf so important for me is not only the personal curation and with this often much more interesting talks, but also the personal connection people have with those events and the kind of people you meet and are able to exchange with.

Last week Friday, at ffconf, I had so many lovely conversations before, during and after the event that are fantastic input, motivation and thoughts that are different to mine and give me other perspectives. For me personally that is so much value and I hope that events like ffconf stay for a long, long time. What you can do to make sure that this is the case? Well, if you attend events like ffconf, Patterns Day, or mine, beyond tellerrand you can:

• Get your tickets early – organisers need to plan and work with the incoming money
• Check their sponsorship prospectus – often times sponsorship starts at a lower cost than you think and even the smallest packages help big times
• Tell other people about it – there is no big marketing budget, so you, spreading the word, means the world

Especially the last part is an investment in the future of these events.

Thanks a lot to Julie, Remy and their team for this years joyful event and in my case also to Andy Davies, who made it possible that I could be part.

Before 2019 I visited Brighton every year for 13 years. Often more than just once a year. Events happening in Brighton are only a few these days. One of them is ffconf and I am looking forward to it!

Vasilis van Gemert has been one of the speakers last week at border:none. He has written about the gist of his talk, with which he was closing the event. He closes his write-up with the following paragraph …

In ten years I would love to do another talk at the next border:none conference. And I would love to do a very happy talk then. About the incredible tools that we’ve been using in the previous ten years that truly let you design all layers of the web: the visible, the invisible, the UX layers. I want to talk about all the people with disabilities who’ve joined our design teams and started designing for truly accessible UX. And I would love to show all the incredibly beautiful and fantastic websites you’ve all been making on our wonderfully weird web. Please make it so. I don’t want to switch to a different industry.

That is a great wish and idea. I support this and am looking forward to his talk in October 2033!

Tom Arnold, who was attending border:none 10 years ago also, has written a nice recap of his experience last week at border:none in Nuremberg. Thank you Tom!

Jeremy Keith, one of the speakers at last weeks border:none, has written about the event Joschi and I organised. Thanks for that and thanks for being part of this little adventure.

At the end of the event there was some joking about returning in 2033. I love the idea of a conference that happens once every ten years. Count me in!

Well … see you in 2033! ;)

Matthias Ott has written about our boder:none Event on his blog. Thanks a lot. Joschi and I had a great time running it!

Last week Joschi Kuphal and I rand another edition of border:none, after we ran the very first edition in 2023. It was great fun, a really pleasure and absolutely wonderful. When I say “it”, I mean everything! Organising it with Joschi (and the team from tollwerk), listening to the mostly unexpected and very personal talks by all the speakers and chatting to and exchanging with the attendees. Thanks a lot for those days!

Florian Ziegler, who also always is part of beyond tellerrand, took some wonderful photos of the event.

This way, if you want to see impressions of how and what those two days in Nuremberg were

In February Vitaly Friedman and I went on a one-day road trip to explore a few venues in Belgium in Ghent and Antwerp. Some of them were recommended to me, others I had found on the web. During the car ride we had lovely conversations about what we want for SmashingConf and how we think, a venue should be. We felt like back in 2012, when being out to find a venue for the very first SmashingConf in Freiburg.

We found the wonderful Bourla theatre in Antwerp, which directly stuck with us (and a similar beautiful theatre in Ghent – longer story why we decided against Ghent). We could imagine the people in this theatre and how an event, having its roots in a more technical sector, would fit in this lovely space.

It all worked out and close to 600 people came to the very first SmashingConf in Antwerp. The team did a fantastic job and everybody was happy and relaxed at the event.

Next to providing all the video tech for on stage and the live stream and co-running this with Amanda from our team, I took a few photos which might give you an impression on how it was.

This way to check the photos, please

I remember what some people “advised” when I started to run my Berlin edition for the very first time back in 2014, instead of growing the one in Düsseldorf.

I received feedback from perhaps much smarter business people than myself, who suggested that I should expand my original event, the Düsseldorf one, into a larger one with more attendees and sell more tickets for that one, which was already popular. They argued that it would involve roughly the same amount of effort as now and not be twice as labor-intensive as starting another edition in Berlin.

Well, that might be correct. Maybe. However, I trusted my instincts and considered what I truly envisioned for the event. I wasn’t pursuing it solely for monetary gain, but for the people. I wanted to create something where I could personally greet every single attendee, and more importantly, where people felt they would enjoy the diverse talks and topics and have the opportunity to meet interesting, kind, and lovely individuals over the two days of the event.

My aim was to encourage them to look beyond their own “edge of the plate” (which in German is referred to as “tellerrand”) and inspire them to be open-minded, exploring the many exciting things that can be uncovered through conversations and interactions with others – mostly unplanned and randomly.

When this became impossible during the pandemic, it was a truly disheartening period for me. I understand that everyone undoubtedly faced challenging times. For many, their experiences might have been far more difficult than what my family and I had to endure. Yet, for me, the one thing I had discovered and was passionate about was suddenly taken away.

Now, I am able to pursue “this” once again. I can host my events and extend invitations for people – you? – to attend. I believe that such events and face-to-face interactions hold more value than one might initially think and cannot be replaced by online events and meetings. While it is not easy these days to spread the word – also as social media is more or less dead – and organise these events, if you are curious and wish to join me on this adventure to explore the true worth of these gatherings, please do so! You never know whom you gonna meet maybe and what your next thing is going to be, you get excited about ;)

Tabler Icons is a library of over 4500 open source icons. You can download 4200 for free or use their pay what you want option for the full set (please do!)

Found in Veerle’s Mastodon stream

If you, like me, use Strava to record your runs and rides, it might have happened to you also, that you sync the device you use to track a run or ride with at home and recognise that the GPX data is wrong or broken.

Well, I could just live with this and don’t care, but somehow stuff like this bothers me. So I looked into something to correct the GPX data. Sadly, as far as I know and my research showed, there is now way to upload a GPX file to override the existing one. There is a function to try and repair smaller issues with time and distance using the option under the three dots that is called “Correct Distance”, as you can see on the left, but that won’t fix corrupted GPX data. I use this sometimes, when I feel like the run was actually faster or I know that the distance was slightly off. As said, overwriting the existing data does not exist yet in Strava. But you can use the broken data as a staring point to correct it and keep time and everything else and create a new activity with this. On the map above you can see a little button to download the GPX data in the upper right corner. User the middle button to download it.

To repair a map like shown above I use an online tool called GPX Studio. I upload the incorrect data, use the tool “Edit Track Points” in GPX Studio and create a new activity on Strava using the little red plus sign in the circle on the upper right of your dashboard. I am sure the single km are not perfectly correct maybe, but at least total distance and time match the GPX data now.

Visiting the release page of Kirby 4 (right now in Alpha 5 – version 4 is planned for October roughly) makes me excited to upgrade and use some of the new features and improvements.

They write about the upgrades:

Kirby 4 will be built upon the healthy code base we established for Kirby 3. Upgrades will be comparable to a 3.x release. While we stay on the same architecture, this new version will bring many long-awaited features and is going to move your projects forward.

The new version will bring a new design with improvements for editors and developers, a new link field that can be used to create links to external URLs, internal pages, files, email addresses and telephone numbers and much much more.

Check the release page and the detailed list with information to everything that is announced yet.

Just a few days before I went on a longer trip to Switzerland and Italy, Constantin and Moritz of the #wwsiv Podcast published the episode in which I had the pleasure to be their guest. It was a lovely chat (in German) and we chattet about event stuff surely, but also about a lot of other things. It was great fun to be their guest and if you like to hear more about where beyond tellerrand has its roots and why I started all this, then check in.

Thanks to Moritz and Constantin for inviting me.

🎧 Listen to #WWSIV No 58 (German)

Andy Budd has a long experience as speaker and also as curator or organiser of events. Here is an article he has written for Smashing Magazine, that helps you to become a better speaker.

I also added it to my list with tips and advice for public speaking

Bussana Vecchia is a little village in the mountains close to the Ligurian coast in Italy. Well worth a visit with its little cafes and restaurants and galleries to visit and buy art.

Due to an earthquake in 1887 this little village was abandoned. Around 1960 an international group of artists used this village as their residence and until now it is home for a few local inhabitants as well as a group of international artists. My family and I have been here 11 years ago and it was lovely to be back this year to see that it still exists.

If you drive up, make sure to park early enough to not hit the actual village as you will have issues turning your car up there in the very narrow roads.

Yes. Once more it is silence here and this time it would be easy to state that this is because of so many things I do – as I do, really. But really it is because I am away with my family in a small village in Liguria in Italy called Candeasco, where we have been 11 years ago, when our youngest daughter Mali, was in Tanja’s inside before she was born in that year in December. We had a wonderful time back then and when we decided to go back this year it felt strange as our other two kids – back then 6 and 8 years old – could not make it. University and celebrating end of school with friends in Spain was in the way. Now we are here again. Eleven years after we have been here last time and it is wonderful how memories of places and experiences come back as soon as you trigger them. Before this Tanja and I often said somethings like “Was the walk to the little river like xyz or abc?” and as soon as you are back at this place you remember. Your brain is a great tool, isn’t it?

Well, often it is. Sometimes it is not and does not help either. I have been lazy over the last couple of months. With many things. And therefore, being a single person doing what they do, I am getting the bill now. Many things for beyond tellerrand Berlin are still not done, border:none needs more attention and last, but not least, Karl is waiting for Marc’s energy for Better by Design in Washington in March 2024. But somehow my brain (and with this my body) is locked. Since the pandemic all the tasks to run an event feel so hard. They payout, when the event takes place, is still wonderful, but everything upfront is so hard. Harder than all the years before.

I am sure I can still pull it off. And I want to.

See you in Berlin, Nuremberg and/or Washington!

Would be nice to have company on those rides, to be honest. But on the other hand, I do get my head clean during these rides, which never happened with running for me. Maybe just because you need to keep track of the ride to not fall of the bike.

Wonderful weather. Fantastic start into the new week. I hope yours is great as well.

2023 edition of Smashing Conference in San Francisco is over. Here is a set of photos capturing the atmosphere and people at the event.

I was invited by the lovely people of the German, weekly Working Draft podcast once more. It is always a pleasure and good fun and surely we were also talking about organising events and beyond tellerrand, but also had a deeper look behind the scenes of an event organiser’s life in edition #564.

I was hugely enjoying this conversation, as much as I always enjoy being a guest in Working Draft and/or chatting about all things events ;) Full episode here!

Also right before beyond tellerrand 2023 in Düsseldorf, I was invited to be part of the German Digital Pacemaker Podcast by Ulrich Irnich, CIO of Vodafone Germany and Markus Kuckertz, who is responsible for IT strategy und innovation at Vodafone Germany. This podcast had a totally different focus than others I had been invited to and we were chatting about the question, why I thin kit is important to be open minded when working in design and development and why schools and universities already should have a broader focus, teaching people a general interest and curiosity for other things than what they learn only.

You can listen to the whole episode here.

Short before I ran beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf I was invited to be a guest in Ohne den Hype, a German podcast by Sven Saro about design related topics.

Good fun, lovely conversation with Sven and you can listen to it here.

Opening up my RSS reader, a cup of coffee in hand, […] The act of spending that time in those feeds still feels like a very deliberate, intentional act.

Yes! I agree, Tim.

I am usually not a person complaining. Especially not about things in the past. But when being asked, I told how hard the pandemic has hit me personally and us as a family. Not only financially, but more importantly emotionally. Because I really love, what I am doing with beyond tellerrand.

Not everybody really knows, that it is a single person organising the events completely. Up to the point, when we set up the events with the lovely team around Guido, Tanja, Patrick, Lulu and many other supporting those gigs, it is only me planning, coordinating and organising everything. Speakers, topics, travel for speakers, partners, venue, side events, workshops, schedule and so on … and I bloody love it! The way those events build up month by months until everything ends in the final piece: the event itself.

Now the pandemic has shown me, that setting all your money on one horse is not ideal. I haven’t created any other revenue stream like a YouTube channel or even a podcast. I did not write books about “my success” or how to run event or alike. I simply have been happy running those events. That lead to the fact, that from one day to the other, all my income I generate through those events for 4 other people in my family and me, was gone. In my positivity, call it naivety, when the lockdown was announced, I thought, that I would run my events soon again. Little did I know and 2,5 years later the small amount of savings in my business bank account, that slowly grew over 8 years of running the event and which would save me, when one event might fail financially and help me planning and ordering swag early, was gone.

When I started running beyond tellerrand again last year, I quickly had to realise that it wasn’t a “let’s continue”, but more a “let’s restart”. And yes it was. A restart from zero. Financially. Getting the word out. Everything. The only real benefit I still ad was a good reputation. It was tough getting the word spread, that beyond tellerrand happens again. Social media these days is more or less dead. Algorithms have broken the natural stream of all platforms and the content people see is not the content of people they follow, but of people who pay to be seen.

Furthermore 3 years are a long time. People’s interests and their jobs chance. Kids were born, people focused on their families (as they should) and many of those who always came to my events simply had a different life and would not come anymore. That led to two events in Düsseldorf and Berlin in 2022 that weren’t sold out. Luckily I did not loose any money, but I also did not make any. I, like in the beginning, needed to plan each event with the money that came from the same event’s ticket sales.

In the past that was not a big problem since people really bought their tickets early and beyond tellerrand sold out sometimes two months or earlier in advance. That gave me the base of ordering swag early and knowing the numbers to plan with. Especially being a single person running this, it is more difficult the later I have those final numbers. The manner how people right now buy their tickets changed. They are not early, but really late and I do understand why. Not only because we don’t know surely if another wave of Covid related shit is hitting us, but also big companies letting go multiple thousand people does not create a save perspective in our industry. And I don’t blame anyone for being late, honestly.

Up until 6 weeks ago I did not even sell 50% of the tickets I have for beyond tellerrand. I was not sure, if that would work out. Not only financially, but a half full room is not the best for the overall atmosphere, for the speakers on stage and also for my partners expecting a certain amount of people to be there. It never has been easy to advertise my event. It is an event without a focus on a specific things. Neither just design or typography, nor just tech or web design/development. It is a broad mix.

I, though, love how one of the teachers, who always brought around 30 to 40 students from Belgium to beyond tellerrand puts it, when asked what the benefit for him and his students is to be at the event:

[…] the joy to create such great inspiring moments in the lives of the students. You know, all the students I had who came to btconf turned out to be better professionals and to have more interesting careers than those who did not. That’s the impact of such an experience. They turned out to become more opinionated, more passionate, more demanding to themselves, more international too. This sort of trip gives lifelong memories for them. I was glad to be an enabler of that, and you made it very easy for me.

That is so lovely! ☺️

Thanks to so many people spreading the word, re-posting my posts on social media, telling others about the event I feel such aa massive relief now as I am proud to say that only about 30 tickets are left for beyond tellerrand 2023 by the time writing these lines. It is late and gives me some hard tasks to get things sorted, but the great excitement that I have will make it possible somehow.

I am so relieved and happy and am extremely looking forward to kick off another beyond tellerrand show in Düsseldorf in about 4 weeks from now.

Thanks so much for those who support me and beyond tellerrand with anything. Financially, with reposting bist I post, with telling other people about the event … with everything!

See you in Düsseldorf.

Like Gruber says:

Long story short: If you’re a subscriber to either Tweetbot or Twitterrific, you can help them out with three simple steps:

1. Reinstall the app if you’ve already deleted it; otherwise, make sure you’re running the latest version.
2. Tap the “I Don’t Need a Refund” button.
3. Feel good and go buy yourself a treat, knowing you helped the good folks at a small company whose work you’ve appreciated (and will continue to).

👍

It’s January 31st. I stop my car in front of a Japanese shop in the area of Düsseldorf’s central station. It is a grey day and the person I am picking up is my friend Vitaly Friedman. He took the train from Berlin to Düsseldorf to meet me there. From Düsseldorf we drove over to Belgium to explore and check a few venues for a possible new adventure. When entering my car Vitaly says:

Ahh. Marc, that feels like in the old days, when we were checking venues for our very first event in Freiburg. Do you remember?

Indeed it had a similar feeling. The event business is on some kind of re-start. Especially when I hear from web related events, a lot of them struggle to sell tickets these days and not because their line-up is bad or their marketing. Many reasons exist – too many to go into details here – why this is the case and those who don’t stop running their events wonder what they could do to get the word out and sell tickets. And selling tickets, plus getting financial support by companies who team up with events like mine, is crucial for those events to survive, as they are mostly community based or community driven events. Maybe even only by a very small team or single person.

But back to where we were … so Vitaly and I ended up in my car for 3 hours chatting about all things events and Smashing Magazine. About the difficulties mentioned above, but also about the curiosity and excitement of running those events. We both share this passion to bring people together on those days and create something that is valuable and wonderful. Time was flying and we arrived in Antwerp, where we wanted to check two possible venues.

The first venue we arrived at was the Bourla Schouwburg. Two very nice people welcomed us and showed us the venue. What a lovely, old theatre. Vitaly and I directly loved it and were giggling about ideas we had for different areas in the venue, imagining where what could happen during the days of the event and felt that this one had the right atmosphere and spirit.

Our next stop was the Zuiderpershuis. Again a very lovely person welcomed us and showed us around. This one is not a real theatre, but more like an event venue. Very nice and authentic also and we could directly see the kind of events that would take place here. Festivals that would be containing of more hands-on experiences than talks. Smaller workshops, shorter presentations and hands-on in depth sessions. But for what we were thinking of there would be too much we would need to get done and many details missing and to be added, so that we decided not to go with this one.

For our next stop we had to drive roughly another hour to arrive in the wonderful city of Gent, after we had some tasty fries iN Antwerp. I have never been in Gent before, but the city centre is just amazing. So were the two people waiting for us, when we arrived at the NTGent. An what a lovely venue was waiting for us again. Similar to the Bourla in Antwerp it has wonderful balconies and both of us, Vitaly and I, were directly in love with the theatre, the opportunities the rooms next to the theatre offered us and the wonderful view from the balcony of one of the rooms at the theatre.

We left this theatre impressed, but with a sour taste in our mouths. A sour taste not because all those venues were nice, but because we did not know which one would be best of our two favourites.

On our 3-hours ride back to Düsseldorf we spoke a lot about pro and con of Bourla vs NTGent, we left voice messages for Charis, Amanda and the rest of the Smashing Team to describe those benefits and possible negative bits.

In the end we did not decide against the NTGent as a venue, but for Antwerp as the city. It is better known, better reachable from most places and offers more of what we need, in the summary, compared to Gent and the NTGent.

Well and now? Now we are on to a new adventure in Belgium. Today we announced Smashing Conference Antwerp, a conference focusing on Design and UX topics. Early birds tickets are online (48 left by the time writing these lines!) and we are all extremely looking forward to exploring the options we have in Antwerp. New lessons learned at a new city in a new venue and you can be part of this and help us to make this a memorable experience for everybody coming!

See you at October 9–11 in Antwerp for a new Smashing Conference and thanks for reading this little memorable story about how Vitaly and I visited the venues in Belgium!

For a longer time my friends of Storyblok and I are working on the idea of bringing free meetup-like community events to you. What was cooking for a while finally is starting now with our first two stops in Brighton and Leeds, in the UK.

“Oh come on Marc! Advertising events of a company that you sell us as community events. Not interested in getting promotional talks about a headless CMS…”

This or similar is maybe what you think, when hearing about a roadshow like this. But …

1. … you don’t know Storyblok then and
2. … you don’t seem to know me either.

Storyblok is doing so many things for the web community, that it feels needless for me to actually write this, but: they don’t need this and love the Web.

I myself would never sell my soul or attendees to anything I don’t believe in and think it would be great fun. Plus: did you have a look at the people joining us? I think that speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Stories on the Road – The Kick-Off

Therefore I am super happy to let you know that this is a start of a journey for 2023, where we visit a couple of cities in Europe with various speakers from the community to create inspiring evening events for you, where you can meet other people that work for, in, on and with the Web.

For the first stops in the UK, we are super happy to be joined by Cassie Evans, Jeremy Keith, Arisa Fukuzaki, Harry Roberts, James Hall (who also kindly offered their offices to be our venue for the Leeds stop) and Phil Hawksworth.

Keep an eye on the beyond tellerrand website or on the Storyblok website for updates on the planned stops. Whatever fits your needs better.

The Value of Attending Events Like This

I feel like repeating myself here, but for me events have a value far beyond seeing the talks. In my 24 years of being freelancer/self-employed I took most of what I am today from attending events. New projects, ideas, energy, new contacts, even new long-time friends! I believe there is so much that this provides, but I guess you heard this from me already, right? ;)

Well, I am very much looking forward to get back on the road and meet you!

In general we all live roughly 4000 weeks on this planet. I have used up most of mine – 2531, to be exact – already and reading this makes me think of course.

Concerning that I already used up so many weeks, I am in a certain time of my life and the website states:

That’s likely a majority of the weeks you’ll see. The psychologist Erik Erikson suggests that at this phase of life you focus on the virtue of care. Spend your weeks “making your mark” by intentionally nurturing things that will outlast you, raising children, mentoring others, becoming involved in your community and organizations, and creating positive change that benefits others.

Well, I can state that I, at least in my opinion, already am doing this. I have three wonderful children, something I call my job, I have a true passion for – even though it is in a tough situation at the moment with what the pandemic caused – and I think with this, I also am making a mark, I am mentoring others and am creating positive change that benefits others.

I feel ok now.

I read this on a website by Lee Byron, which is a tribute to the book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman, in case you also want to read it.

I recently watched a YouTube video on the channel of “Kurzgesagt” which addresses a similar topic. You can watch it (English or German) below.

English version: What are you doing with your life? The Tail End.

German version: Was machst du mit deinem Leben? Eine Perspektive.

I am not posting this to demotivate anyone or tell them that more than half of their life is over 🤣 … no, I mean it in a more positive way and to get motivated to use the time you have in a way that makes sense to you (and maybe even to others like your beloved ones).

Links:

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman (Amazon affiliate link)
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman (Thalia)
• Four Thousand Weeks – website as a tribute to the book above
• YouTube video “What are you doing with your life? The Tail End.” (English version)
• YouTube video “Was machst du mit deinem Leben? Eine Perspektive.” (German version)

I just recognised that the last post I had written before mentioning the video of Danny is from a week ago. I directly thought ”Nah … can’t be true. It was three days ago max. when I had written about Marcin’s book”, but it wasn’t. Right now times feels as if it really flies and is never enough to get all the things in my head, on my to do list and which I really want to and have to do done. I always feel as if I never achieve what I was planning to achieve during a day. And that makes me unhappy and unrelaxed and thinking I am not working enough to get my stuff done and that again is the reason why tickets sales for beyond tellerrand are not as good as before the pandemic.

This on the other hand creates some sort of spiral which creates enormous pressure and me caused by no one else, but me. What can I do to eliminate this? I do have a to-do list which I create with Things, but that is more like a general to do list. Does it make sense to sit down each morning and realistically think about what I can do and am able to get done today? Maybe. But what about the emails, social media and other distractions that usually get in the ways of really getting those things done? Am too easy to distract, but not only this. I also think I have to answer all the questions people have about beyond tellerrand – like the “support” stuff – when they buy tickets or want to know something about the schedule or so, directly. In my head only this is good support. I am also an “inbox zero” person and hate it to have unanswered email in my mailbox.

And you know what: instead of getting better at those things, I get worse.

Or is time just running faster these days?

When Danny Gregory spoke at my beyond tellerrand event in Berlin in 2016, he was telling me about his idea to start Sketchbook Skool. Lovely to see it growing and lovely to se their videos.

This one is about why you should “Love your sketchbook lettering”.

You changed your mind? You lettering can show how your mind has changed.

Today the Kickstarter for Marcin’s book “Shift Happens: A Book about Keyboards” started and I was looking forward to it. And even though I swore to myself never again to back anything on that shitty platform, I did. Mostly, because I know Marcin, but surely not to give any more to Kickstarter.

Back in 2012 I invited Marcin to come and speak at one of my events for the first time. I had seen him speaking and was blown away by the passion he had for what he was doing. Ever since we stayed in touch and in 2018 I invited him back to beyond tellerrand in Berlin, where he gave his talk “The Abridged History Of Having Fun \/\/ith Keyboards”. Not only was it a great talk, but he also chatted to me before the event to [ask me to get a few old typewriters, as he wanted to prepare a few games for the attendees in the exhibition space](https://newsletter.shifthappens.site/archive/to-walk-among-keyboard-magicians/. And if you think, that this was enough: No, of course not. He also remote controlled the presentation with his shoes!! (He has written about it on Revue, but that platform closed. But I’ll ask him if he published it somewhere else and add it.) Here is the article about his talk and all the things about the shoes and around the talk.

Anyways, he started the Kickstarter for the book today and I backed. While writing these lines, it just hit the $200.000 mark. Wow. Congrats Marcin and I hope it gets even more!

If you like to find out, why someone wants to write a book about keyboards from 2017 to 2022, then you can read about this on Marcin’s website to the book

You can also subscribe to his newsletter, if you are not already.

Those who follow me on Instagram might have seen pictures and I already also told you about the Wonderwalls Exhibition in Düsseldorf. This week it is the last chance to visit the exhibition – and you should do so.

After this week the exhibition of Selim Varol, who was a guest in my German Podcast neu•gierig, is closing its doors. I have been there a couple of times and it always takes me back into my childhood and youth.

I myself am taking my kids to Wonderwalls in the NRW Forum Düsseldorf today (sadly my oldest daughter isn’t here today) and visit it one last time, before it comes to an end on Saturday. If you go, maybe you are lucky and Selim is doing one of his tours, which makes it even more special.

Information about Wonderwalls

When I joined Mastodon in 2018, I liked the concept and am always excited and curious to try new things. But like others described already, it somehow did not feel right. Maybe I wasn’t ready for the concept, maybe I was comparing it too much with Twitter – I don’t know. In the end it was something it did not bother to communicate through too much.

A couple of months ago, yes I think Musk has played a role here, Twitter, which somehow lost more and more attraction for me anyways, but the reason why would bee another blog post, Mastodon gained traction again and people started registering and – which is the more important part – using it. it felt different, but still I was asking myself a lot of questions and was sceptical. I tried different apps, Mastodon in the browser, but I wasn’t getting the “Yes, let’s go with it” moment. I did not feel it ;) I was using Mastodon, reading what other people said and also posting myself.

A couple of days ago, when I opened Tweetbot, I got an authentication error message telling me, I need to log in again. On my phone and my Mac. I checked the web if something was not working with in general, but Twitter seemed to be up and running. Just the apps I was using weren’t working anymore. It turned out that Twitterrific users had the same problem and actually any 3rd party app using the Twitter API. No one had information and an update on the Twitterrific blog stated:

Updated January 17th, 2023: We still have not received any clear communication as to why Twitter deactivated Twitterrific on January 13th. We have been respectful of their API rules, as published, for the past 16 years. We have no knowledge that these rules have changed recently or what those changes might be.

On the same day, Twitter stated, that they were intentionally blocking 3rd party apps like Echofon, Tweetbot and Twitterrific and wrote that Twitter is “enforcing its long-standing API rules” and that this “may result in some apps not working” on Twitter … well … that’s it with any 3rd party app.

Tapbots reacted and quickly used their knowledge (and party of the code base?) for their new app Ivory, which is an app for Mastodon and which was released in an early state yesterday (for anyone who wants to read a review about that version, here is a nice and complete one by Federico Viticci on MacStories)

Now, why am I writing all this and started with my feeling and experience of using Mastodon? Actually I can quote a Mastodon post of Marco Arment from yesterday, as it exactly expresses how I felt and how I feel about the release of Ivory:

Before @ivory, Mastodon felt like a Twitter clone that I wasn’t really “getting”, bouncing between apps and not finding any that fit me.
With Ivory, Mastodon became not only a drop-in replacement for Twitter for me, but an upgrade that’s actually so much better than Twitter that I don’t think about it at all anymore.

Language connects us. Language connects one heart and mind to another mind and heart. Through space and time. Language transports meaning between minds, sense between bodies, it can make us understand each other and ourselves. It can make us feel what others feel. Language is a bridge.

Tweetbot was the app of my choice for Twitter for most of the time since I started using Twitter in March 2007. I think it always was a reason that I still use Twitter nowadays, as I was able to see a chronological timeline and could filter the content the way I wanted it. Event though some features of Twitter have not been allowed on 3rd-party apps, I preferred using Tweetbot over the Twitter website or any official app that ever existed.

Now, like Twitterrific, Tweetbot was announced dead by Tapbots:

We’ve invested over 10 years building Tweetbot for Twitter and it was shut down in a blink of an eye. We are very sorry to all of our customers who chose Tweetbot as their way to interact with Twitter’s service and we thank you so much for the many years of support and feedback.

It might just be an app, but I find this very sad, as with this I can’t see myself using Twitter as before anymore. Maybe it is time to move on, like many others did already. And maybe the loss of those 3rd party apps only shortens my time of still being kind-of active on Twitter.

Let’s not look back, but forward and be excited by what is coming. Like using Mastodon instead and Tapbots Ivory – even though I can’t tell you anything about it yet as I never had a chance to get on the early access program.

See you there …