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!

⇾ Visit: Let’s Reinvent the Wheel – Vasilis van Gemert

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!

⇾ Visit: border:none 2023 – Tom Arnold

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! ;)

⇾ Visit: border:none 2023 – Jeremy Keith

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

⇾ Visit: No Borders – Matthias Ott

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

⇾ Visit: 4600 Pixel Perfect Open Source Icons

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.