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 ;)

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)

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.