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) …

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.

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

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!

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.

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 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.

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…

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!

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 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.

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.

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!

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! ;)

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

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 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 ;)

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.

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.

Thanks to Moritz and Constantin for inviting me.

🎧 Listen to #WWSIV No 58 (German)

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 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!

You can listen to the whole episode here.

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.

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.

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).

👍

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!

“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!

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 …

There’s no sense in clinging to the personal whims of a clown leading a shit show. Especially when his circus will end up being a $44 billion version of MySpace.

As I have written earlier last week, I can’t imagine how the people behind Twitterrific or Tweetbot must feel, after Twitter, without notice, cut off everything – well, a little bit as the pandemic was for me and beyond tellerrand, what Musk is for them.

This, plus the massive amount of layoffs makes me think a lot these days. And I am sorry for all the people who are affected.

I like to think of CSS as a conditional design language. Over the years, CSS was known as a way to style web pages. Now, however, CSS has evolved a lot to the point you can see conditional rules. The interesting bit is that those CSS rules aren’t direct (i.e: there is still no if/else in CSS), but the way features in CSS work is conditional.[…]

More a note to myself than to anyone else, but I was planning to bring back my little podcast, I run in German, that I enjoy back for a while now. The biggest issue I had was, that I was using parts of my equipment I use for my events and I had to gather everything from various places and boxes whenever I thought, I spontaneously gonna interview someone. Now I bought a small Peli case that holds everything I either need to run out of the house and record an interview or use it at one of my events.

On Wednesday I recorded three interviews already:

• Selim Varol – one of the biggest street and toy art collectors I ever met. Interesting to chat with him about why he collects and if the passion of collecting at some point turned into his business of also selling art. Also it was interesting to find out many parallels between Selim and me as we both started buying and selling stuff on flea markets being younger than ten years or we both have a massive problem with the German school system.
• Lisa Maria Kunst – she runs a design and advertising studio in Düsseldorf together wither her husband and also runs the Düsseldorf chapter of Creative Mornings. I was wondering what her benefit of running free events is (surely I know for myself, but it is interesting to hear other opinions). Also I wondered if she and her husband argue a lot, working, liviing and rising kids together.
• Tobias “Toxik” Kargoll – he runs the biggest German website about HipHop with hiphop.de since a couple of years. Next to the fact that I designed and coded the very first version of the website for the founder in 1999 and until 2002 or so, Tox is a clever person who understood the value of hiphop as a marketing tool and how brands want to use this. He founded The Ambition together with a friend where they consult big brand how they can use hiphop for their brands, but still being credible.

I am split between writing about this here, since the outcome is mainly in German, but I write about this here as this little podcast is something that distracts from a lot of things going through my head in 2022.

Description: In the video you see a part of the Paypal web interface and me trying to click a link in a flyout-menu to verify my phone number, but before I am able to click it, the menu disappears.

Bastian Allgeier has written a longer post with his opinion about and his experience with Mastodon:

Suddenly there was this old Twitter vibe. Real conversations. Real people. Interesting content. A feeling of a warm welcoming group. No algorithm to mess around with our timelines.

Also Jon Hicks has written down his personal view on how he experiences the first couple of days over there on Mastodon:

After the initial learning curve, I'm finding a community much like the early days of Twitter, and feeling more relaxed about posting.

In his article “The IndieWeb for Everyone” Max Böck writes:

Maybe its time to rethink some of these expectations. Maybe we need some of that early internet vibe back and be ok with smaller, closer communities. Maybe we can even get some of the fun back and start exploring again, instead of expecting everything to be automatically delivered to us in real time.

I think, if you take all the posts written – and I guess many more will be written – you find the truth somewhere in the mix of it. Yes, Twitter is broken for a long time, but I can’t just kill my accounts. I made most of my business via Twitter and grew my network with the help of Twitter massively.

I don’t expect Mastodon to be the new Twitter or a replacement and here I am with Max: we need to stop replacing things and trying to change old things to hopefully make them better. Maybe it is time to think about if it is time to stop something, to start something new.

Oh, and like I said in August 2018, you can find me on Mastodon also…

Learn to structure presentations and other content as well as take expressive meeting notes in real time by combining text and sketches

The course is on pre-sale right now for €19,90 instead of €59,50 and worth every cent. If you are into sketching and visualising your thoughts, you should get it. If not, you should also get it to get into sketching. Structure your thoughts, communicate with visual notes and learn new techniques, if you already use sketching.

Now iA is working on a text based presentation tool. Of course I had a look at it and so far I really like what I am seeing. The approach of iA Presenter is a completely different one than as for known tools like Powerpoint or Keynote. As iA Presenter is text based, the focus is on your written text. It is easy to then create your slides based on your paragraphs, after you have written what you want to say. Regularly written text is only visible to you, a little bit like presenter notes are in known presentation tools. Headlines that you define will be automatically shown on your slide. Split and join slides easily afterwards to create you structure. Integrated images are easy to configure to create interesting layouts that are full responsive, which means you don’t need to worry about fixed resolutions of your presentation or the resolution a projector has at an event you are presenting at. 16:9? 4:3? Landscape or portrait? All done with just the single version of your presentation, which – I think – is super handy. I also really like how easy you can define on which screen your presentation will be shown and where to see your notes.

In addition iA Presenter comes with a couple of really nice templates you can use. Whether you like color or more minimal use of colour, you pick and choose and surely you can also add your own templates to be used in your presentation.

It certainly feels very different to any presentation tool that I have used before, which mostly is Keynote these days, but I really like this approach and will give it a try for my next presentations.

If you want to give it a try, let me know. I have a couple of beta invites.

The whole set contains 1270 characters and includes many decorative elements as well as swash variations. I really like the warm look and feel and can’t wait to give it a play for the right purpose. Maybe already for next beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf ;)

But have a look yourself and see how nicely Sirenia looks and feels.

How that all started? Well, there are those two guys. Their names are Andreas Brüggemann and Stefan Nitzsche. They both are lovely people. And they decided to make a documentary about what I do – beyond tellerrand. I think that is crazy 😳. But also nice and I am humbled. And excited.

See Trailer 3 of the film here:

So, I am on Vero to post photos. Let’s connect!

The event takes place on September 22nd and even though it is the 17th birthday of my son at this day, I will find a couple of hours to co-host the show. I am looking forward to a full day of interesting talks from people like John Allsopp, who is speaking about inclusive online events or talks like “Power and Participation in Research” by Catherine Collins. You can find all so far announced presentations in the schedule of #id24. Looks great, doesn’t it?

The whole event is completely free to attend and runs for 24 hours (hence the name). You can also already subscribe to the playlist of the event on YouTube. And if you have a question to any of the presenters, then follow @id24conf on Twitter and ask your questions here.

Thats’ it. See you on September 22nd!

You can watch the short clip in the ZDF Mediathek and maybe you spot yourself in the film ;)

For beyond tellerrand I often team up with other events and we help to promote each other. The reasons are as easy as follows:

• There are a lot of other interesting and good conferences taking place all around the world
• Topics are covered that we don’t cover or don’t cover in such detail and depth
• Nice people run and attend those events
• Attending other events widens your horizon

This time I’d love to introduce you to an event taking place 15 and 16 September 2022. It is called Working Products, exists since 2016 and topics are agile product development, product management and product culture amongst others.

If you are someone who is responsible for digital products, like a product manager for example or a product owners, then this event is something you should have a closer look at.

👉 Information and registration

In 2011, on the very first beyond tellerrand conference I ran, Vitaly Friedman was part of the line-up. We had just got to know each other and met for the first time, when we did a road trip to the New Adventures Conference in January 2011. Together with Stefan Nitzsche, Andreas Dantz and Bastian Allgeier we hit the road in a van and drove from Essen to Nottingham. I remember interesting conversations, great fun and only have vivid memories of this adventure and caught a few of these memories in photos.

I was planning my first beyond tellerrand event also during this time, which was about to happen in November 2011. Vitaly was planned to be one of the speakers. He came and spoke and we became good friends. During beyond tellerrand in 2011, towards the end of the show, Vitaly took me aside and told me how much he loved the atmosphere and energy and asked if we two should start an event together under the umbrella of Smashing Magazine. And so we did.

In September 2012, we kicked of the very first Smashing Conference in Freiburg and I am happy that we continue this each and every year. Happy to be part of this adventure and to have met Vitaly.

Thanks Vitaly, for all the years of friendship, fun and the excitement we share! On to more adventures …

From time to time I get invited to an interview or asked to speak or, like this time again, to be a guest in a podcast. Often times the inviting people ask me to speak about what I do and how it all started with beyond tellerrand and I usually think ”Why should anyone be interested in this and what could I possibly talk about, that wouldn’t bore people to death?”

For some reason it seems to be interesting, though, and the feedback usually is really nice. Same counts for the last podcast I have been invited to, which is the Why We Create Podcast. I really enjoyed the conversation and could not stop speaking about events, community and why in-person events are important.

One reason, why it was such a great fun and so easy to chat about the things I do is, that Megan Davis (who runs the Wacom Experience Center in Portland) and Chris Diego made it so easy. They made me feel welcome and the best part was, that it was an in-person interview. Megan and Chris were in Düsseldorf and at the Wacom Experience Center Düsseldorf that opened not too long ago and where we held the beyond tellerrand Warm-Up before the Düsseldorf shows for the last times. It was wonderful meeting them face to face and recording this podcast while having a coffee with them.

If you want to listen to the podcast, do it here or at any other platform where it is listed

About Why We Create

Why we Create is a podcast brought to you by the team at the Wacom Experience in Portland, Oregon. In this podcast we'll be exploring the behind-the-scenes stories from artists, inventors and the daringly creative. Join us on this conversational adventure while we share stories with artists and creators from every corner of the world.

I was watching a couple of bikes on ebay Kleinanzeigen (something like a marketplace for used things). Those were: Rose Backroad, Benotti Fuoco Gravel or Specialized Diverge Comp Carbon (the 2021 model).

In the end I shot the last one, the Specialized, for a good price and only 6 months old. I can tell you, that I love it. I love riding it, the flexibility I have got with a gravel bike where I live, to use it in the forest, fields and alongside the small rivers on the gravel paths.

We also already did a three-day tour with friends already which was great fun. For this and future bike trips, I got the Tailfin rack system which is not cheap, but great. Super light, easy to attach and detach while you don’t need it and with Tailfin being super quick and nice with their support, if you have questions.

So, if you wonder where I am, when writing less these days and I am not on events like beyond tellerrand or Smashing Conference: I am outside, riding my bike ;)

Two weeks later I ran a one day spin-off in Hamburg that was titled axbt. It was a cooperation with one of the partners – awork – who support the rest of my beyond tellerrand events also. Date wasn’t picked wisely, a few other mistakes had been done and I once more learned that listening to my guts is important for what I do as many of the things that weren’t turning out as wished were things I wasn’t sure about in the beginning. Well, lesson learned again …

When I came back from Hamburg on the Friday, we had to finish organising the Kommunion of our youngest daughter. 40 people of our family came and we were hoping for good weather as we planned to host a garden party. Weather turned out nicely and it was good fun.

Next to the above I was working on post event stuff for Düsseldorf and Hamburg and am still working on it. I also took a few days to be there for the family and spent time with them at Toverland and in Rotterdam later.

And now? Now I am back, have more time to write down things here again, but also am planning Berlin’s 2022 edition with a stunning line-up as well as traveling to San Francisco on the 18th to run Smashing Conf SF together with the rest of the Smashing Team.

Which events are you thinking to attend in 2022?

I hope you are going to like the edition of Workingdraft … well, if you understand German that is.

Unsubscribed from all RSS Feeds which only deliver headlines or headline and a very small excerpt or like “This post appeared first on xyz” without any other content besides the headline. Really like the idea of reading the whole post in the feed actually and being forced to visit the website and leave my reader. In my opinion, if you offer a feed, why don’t you use it for people so that they are able to read? Only teasing them and trying to get them to your website is annoying.

Part of the beyond tellerrand documentary “This Is What I Want to Do”, which Stefan and Andreas are filming and producing since a couple of years now (thanks once more to Covid), are conversations. And since I enjoy those, plus am happy to make fun of myself to get a smile on your face, I want to share the many faces of me while answering the questions of Stefan in Essen. (All of those stupid face are real. I mean, I did not pretend any of them, but Stefan just took some stills out of the interview.)

I had such a lot of fun (and a lot of Döner) during this day in Essen. It was great to switch off for a while. And even if we were obviously speaking about beyond tellerrand and Covid and all this stuff, it was enjoyable and also made me think about a few things. Stefan showed me a few of the interview they made throughout the years and it just was so heart-warming to hear all those stories and nice things about my little event and me. I am as scared of it as I am looking forward to seeing the finished film already!

_Edit: If you want to stay up to date about the process of the film or want to support Andreas and Stefan and learn how you are able to do so, I recommend to get on the mailing list for the documentary. It is not a film by me, but I am massively humbled and proud that people seem to like beyond tellerrand so much, that they make a film about the event and the wonderful people at the event and I would love to support Stefan and Andreas as much as possible with this, since they put so much time and effort into this. Thanks in advance for YOUR support. ;)_

_In short: subscribe to the mailing list of “This Is What I Want To Do”_

Well … I am the worst person when it comes to doing this to myself. I started a podcast in German language a while ago and got stuck, re-branded the whole thing, since the original name was somehow always something that bothered me (plus the new name just follows the theme I started with beyond tellerrand, Stay Curious and so forth). Now I was motivated to continue, but then I thought “Who is interested in this?” and did not get going until yet. Even though I really want to and am enjoying all the process. It is my head that is in my way.

For the time we are stuck in this damn time with Covid, I am trying to start a membership program. Some way where people could help keeping beyond tellerrand alive even in financial critical times – that never really appeared to me until a world wide pandemic hit us. I had a look at various platforms and decided that I like Steady by the sound of it. I was thinking about tiers and how people could benefit from becoming a member or supporting beyond tellerrand in general. Then it got me thinking again: who is interested in this? Is it more work I add to my plate where the plate never is near a situation where it is empty enough to be stuffed again? Would people actually really benefit from anything in those paid tiers? What if people don’t like subscriptions and continuous payments and would prefer a one time payment? Where I usually was really good at, starting things in the first place and then start thinking, I am bad at now. Thinking too much. Too much self-doubt and self critique and maybe underestimating the “wealth” of what I have created during the last 20 years. I think, my head is in my way.

I had a conversation with Basti recently and we spoke about things I can do, things I have on a list to be started and how to use the time and things I do in between the events usefully. He said something about a YouTube idea, where he could see me and what I do. I loved the idea, but did I start it until now? My head is in my way again.

And these are just a few examples where my head is in may way. Where I think too much, before actually starting something. For a while I thought I started to become lazy, but no, I am not. I am restless and want to do stuff, but I think too much about it and get angry with myself not getting anything done. The rare times, when I meet people these days and speak about any of the ideas I have, they are encouraging me to do this, since they like the sound of it and the times I speak about it, I think to myself ”Yes, it really sounds nice and I should start.” – the moment I am back at home, sit down and think about, the spark of positive energy and motivation is gone again.

So where is my gut feeling that usually was my driving force behind most of my decisions and always had been stronger than my head? I don’t know. I know that the last two years made my gut feeling weak and my head always arguing that we need to make money, before I can start something that would not make money in the first place. But that is stupid. Nothing I have done was ever about the money in the first place. The last two years have taken away parts of the child in me. The easiness of getting things started, done and out of the way. The lightheartedness of starting something without any fear to fail, since if it fails, I would have just learned another lesson and move on with other stuff.

So, yes, the head is in my way these days, but to end on a positive note, I really also recognised one thing and I am sure I said this before: I love running events and also attending events. I miss it and I miss meeting a lot of people. Speaking to them, listening to them, encouraging them to start things and giving advice, if they ask for it. To learn from their stories and getting advice for myself. I miss it. And therefore I have to fight those darker moments, where I tell myself everything is crap and won’t return to the times pre Covid. I will fight. Definitely. But it costs so much energy that I’d rather use for other things.

Hugs!

Not only do I love the product and use and advertise it wherever I can, I also know the person who started all this quite well and am happy and honoured to share a lot of memories with Bastian Allgeier. During the last 10 years Bastian and I went to and met at a lot of events, he is a steady guest at my little beyond tellerrand events and whenever I can and it makes sense, I am happy to host, organise or help in any other way with workshops, online and offline events for Bastian and Kirby.

During countless nights in my kitchen, hotel bars, his dining room or similar meeting places, we shared a ton of stories. Me about beyond tellerrand related things like fear, the way I see and run my business and many pieces that usually no one takes notice of. And Bastian about the same kind of things. We quickly noticed, that – event though our “products” are different – we share a lot of common approaches, problems and stories and it is great to have someone likeminded to share those stories and experiences with.

For this reason and because I love Bastian and what he does, I rise my glass and say: on to the next 10 years!

Happy Birthday, Kirby.

Bastian has written a lovely story about the ride of the last ten years with the Kirby rollercoaster. Well worth your reading time.

Oh, and thanks Andy. For listen to and running with me 3 times a week!

For roughly one year I struggle to start my Steady page now. Steady is something similar to Patreon, but based in Germany. I have a couple of things, where I struggle, but mainly my issue is to define tiers and to add additional value to the tiers.

I look at my drafted tiers and ask myself:

• Do those three tiers make sense?
• Is the amount I ask for legitimate?
• What, if someone does not want to subscribe, but give a fixed amount once or once in a while?
• What do I add to the tiers to make the worth while?

If I speak to other people, I often hear, that I am running fantastic events for so many years that are valuable to so many people and I believe this, to be honest. After all those years, I am slowly understanding, that the things I do are maybe valuable to some people. People say i should not add anything in addition to the tiers, since the things I do are worth being supported anyways. Some even say, I should rise my ticket prices (i don’t want to, though – it already is a lot of money).

Now, for a couple of weeks, I am staring onto this drafted Steady page again. Asking me all those questions again.

I am stuck.

I need to make a decision soon. One reason is that Covid ruined my business. I don’t have any money on the business account anymore. I cancelled the planned Munich edition for 2022 already, since this is the newest kid in the event series and not as established as the other cities, more expensive and in November, where I risk running it in another Covid wave.

I have written a lot of long time supporters who will support the other two cities already and I am close to being able to pay the base cost for venue rental and tech in Düsseldorf and Berlin through them – and I owe them so much (they get my love already!)

But I am still stuck with setting up this Steady page. I feel like asking for money without giving anything back. Then, I can’t add much more to the tiers, since I am already not finding enough time for all the things I need to do to keep beyond tellerrand alive.

Right now, I think, I should do these things:

• Set up two tiers with monthly or yearly options to subscribe
  • First tier is for base support, people who want to give a small amount that hopefully adds up to pay for parts of the base cost.
  • Second tier is a higher amount and will be listed as partners on the website. That could target individuals as well as smaller companies who can’t afford teaming up as an event partner.
• No additional benefits – for now – apart from keeping beyond tellerrand alive. I might add benefits later or surprise people from time to time.
• For those who don’t want to or can’t subscribe to something like this, I want to offer one-time payments via invoice or credit card.

But I am not sure. I am still stuck …

It first appeared a bit exclusive and elitist to be part of something called “RSS Club”, but I like the idea of making some content visible to RSS readers only. Not sure, where I will differentiate and what exactly I gonna post, but let’s find out.

Dave Rupert, when initiating this, said he was fed up with Twitter and/or Social Media and wanted get away from it. I myself have the same feeling, though I have to say, I found a good way to filter out most of the negativeness on social media through following only people who don’t moan the whole time etc. and I use Social Media for beyond tellerrand as channels to broadcast news, updates and following comments to my posts. I rarely – not for personal reasons, nor for beyond tellerrand – read anything apart from this anymore as it simply feels to exhausting. And that not only since Covid started, but even more since that.

So let’s see where this is leading to. Right now it an idea I have is to make it a more personal part with notes about feelings, unwritten things and plans. Not sure yet. But if you read it: welcome, happy to have you here!

But it also showed that my business financials are close to zero now on my bank account after two years of not being able to run proper event, but online events, which just cover the cost of itself. After paying all the bills for Düsseldorf 2021, I have been happy to having been able to finally run the event so many people were still holding tickets for. Now I am in the situation to decide what to do next. Since I do not have any money that protects me from any unsuccessful event left over – all the savings I was able to make during the last ten years are gone – I needed to decide whether I let beyond tellerrand come to an end or how I could try to get it on track again.

It is still very uncertain when Covid is finally coming to an end. So I have written all the long time supporters to see how they would commit for 2022. They are unbelievable and wonderful and I am happy to confirm that so far beyond tellerrand is safe for 2022 at least for now. Nevertheless I needed to make a plan about which event is safe to being organised since the money that came in so far only covers about 50% of the rental cost on its own. Not to speak about all the other things that add to the bill.

Düsseldorf and Berlin are long established events and safer to run than any other location. So sadly I needed to make a decision about Munich, which I love to establish as a third hub as well. But three points were critical to decide against running a 2022 Munich edition:

1. Munich is the newest location and I need to work on making beyond tellerrand more known in this area. It was hard to sell out the 2018 event and with 600 people for the new venue, I would have to make some more noise even. Right now there is no chance to travel to Munich to attend other events and acquire sponsors.
2. The venue and also the city are the most expensive of all three. With venue rental and base cost of €40.000 on its own, this is a huge risk in times, where I don’t have any money on my bank.
3. Covid – yes, still Covid. Even if people say we are out of the fourth wave over here in Spring – and I think I am safe with May and September for DUS and BER – what about a possible fifth wave and corresponding restrictions coming with this? November in Munich … who knows what the restrictions are going to be, or, if people are in for an event with 600 attendees, just to mention these two points.

It was a tough decision, but yesterday I cancelled the Munich venue as I would have to sign the contract otherwise.

The plan is to run Düsseldorf and Berlin, tough. I signed both contracts for the venues and already have some wonderful long time partners on board with financial support. Next to this I will start a Steady account soon (similar to Patreon) to ask for support as well. I am still sorting out what to give back in return apart from the fact that it helps keeping beyond tellerrand alive, but one thing is to make Stay Curious online events free for example. More about this soon. Also have a look out what is going to happen in Hamburg ;) Not saying more right now, but smaller spin-off events might help to survive as well.

I also made a list of ongoing payments for micro-things and subscriptions and cancelled any paid subscription (software, magazines …) that I do not urgently need for business right now and might subscribe a later point again. It was tough to do this as I see this as some kind of support of wonderful things other people do. It was heart breaking to think of the people behind it, but I simply can’t afford it right now.

Anyways, I am grateful for having been able to do, what I did the last 20 years. And even though I am very down right now and really thought that beyond tellerrand might end, the last 4 days have given me hope and trust that things will be better again.

Love! /marc

So far they released a trailer and their first episode titled “The myths of happiness” with Bill Burnett, author of “Designing Your Life”, which is already very promising and gives you a direction of what is coming.

Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) is a free 24-hour online event for the global community. It celebrates inclusive design and shares knowledge and ideas from analogue to digital, from design to development, from planners to practitioners, and everything and everyone in between.

Join the free event(s) here

Recycling is what you do, when you fail to re-use

A quote by Mark Adams I could not agree more to. And I bet you do as well, if you think about it.

For context watch his lovely talk titled Recycling is a Defeat – The Value of Eternity

Next to the links I posted in January 2020 with many resources about public speaking, you should definitely set a bookmark for Lara’s now freely available book.

Read online: Demystifying Public Speaking

Now, this article is about why hyperlinks are actually blue and it is interesting to read what Elise Blanchard has found out for us …

Atkinson Hyperlegible font is named after Braille Institute founder, J. Robert Atkinson. What makes it different from traditional typography design is that it focuses on letterform distinction to increase character recognition, ultimately improving readability. We are making it free for anyone to use!

Make sure to read the really interesting insights that come with the article about the font.

Pimp My Type

Oliver Schöndorfer has started Pimp My Type not too long ago, but already built a good resource when it comes to useful and handy tipps and tricks for your work with fonts and typography. Next to the website, he has started a YouTube channel with short, entertaining and educating videos.

In this article and this video Oliver gives you three tipps to get your font pairing right.

Webflow Blog

This article Jeff Cardello also gives you a good number of tipps to find the right combination for your website. Next to writing about how to experiment with different weights and tones or playing with the contrast between fonts, he gives you visual examples as an inspiration.

Creative Bloq

Ruth Hamilton has written a long article about font pairing for the Creative Bloq with many examples for different use cases.

Frank Bueltge

Frank has collected a good amount of examples for font combinations he likes. A good visual resource either.

In general I can only recommend to not necessarily stick with your first choice of fonts, but compare your choices side by side. Not only consider how they harmonise, but first of all, what you use them for! If you have you favourite pairing, then maybe put is aside and have a new and fresh look when you had a night of sleep. Also consider testing them on different devices and screens of different formats and resolutions – if you use them on a website and not in print. Whether you use a free font or one that you have to buy does not really matter. There are many high quality free fonts available these days. But if you decide to use a font you need to buy, then please DO BUY the font and don’t ask friends if they have a copy of that font!

We've got some really exciting news we'd like to share with you - Pocket Casts is joining Automattic, the incredible company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and other fantastic products.

Last night I got an email from Pocket Casts about that they’re excited to be acquired by Automattic. I remember the one blog post by Jeremy Keith about “how excited companies are about getting bought” (I can’t find it right now). And I have to admit, the second I read about Pocket Casts acquisition, I somehow had a bad feeling. Not because Automattic is a _bad company, but too often I have companies, apps and services dying or at least having worse service or none at all anymore. I could mention many examples here. But as Moritz Gießman stated on Twitter, last time when Automattic bought Gravatar the service stayed more or less as it was before.

What is your experience with this? Join the conversation here.