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

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

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

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

So, coming up …

SmashingConf Antwerp

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

beyond tellerrand Berlin

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

Festival Eastern European Design

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

Skate-Aid Night

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

TYPO3 Conference 2024

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

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

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

See you!

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

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

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

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

Greetings from FRA and see you there!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yay!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh … and here is my new birthday-bike ☺️