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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More information about Craft + Work here …

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

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

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

Am happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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