Notes

I Have Been Guest of Presentable Podcast #82 by Jeff Veen

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Last Thursday I had the honour of being the guest in episode number 82 of the Presentable podcast by Jeff Veen. It was great fun to chat with him (as usual when meeting him in person). We spoke about how events and the reason to be at events might have changed over the last 20 years. In my opinion it is less about learning and getting to know how to do things, but more to broader topics, motivation and inspiration nowadays. At least when it comes how I see me running events.

I love running my events. It is just great to see all those different people with so many different interests and backgrounds coming together for two days to exchange, enlighten and inspire each other. I could have gone on forever to chat about all this, but I guess, you have to meet me at one of the events in 2020 to chat face to face ;)

But this way, please, to have a listen yourself. If you like, join the beyond tellerrand Slack and let me know about your opinion and reason, why you attend events/conferences?

Impressions From A Morning Run

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Collage of two images - on the left the map of the run I made, one the right a photo of the sun rising above a frosty field

I'm usually not a tomorrow person, especially not when it comes to running. But today I have been out with the dog at about 6am and thought, I go for a run, when I walked my youngest daughter to school. Also as I want to celebrate five years of Creative Mornings in Düsseldorf this evening and can’t go for my usual Friday run with my friend Andy.

Well, I took the wrong exit somewhere on the field and had to go a bit further 🙄 … 😂 also the field roads were covered with ice still and I had to be very careful where to run. ❄️

Where else:

Letter & Co. – Intensive Ten Day Workshop About Display Type

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This image is an animation showing ABCDEFONT in various letters animated

If I’d have more time around those dates, this would be the absolute great workshop for me to attend. Not, because I am particularly good in or with type and type design, but I am curious to learn more and the ten instructors are already promising by their names and what they do and known for. So, this is a ten day workshop with:

How does this sound? And then this is not only a workshop, but a ten day course with days from 9.30am to 6.00pm every day.

Content

The whole course is split in roughly 30% theoretical and 70% practical hands-on time. Everyone who attends is going to work on their project, mixed with group conversations and discussions encouraged. You can read more about the program on their website and the planned content listing looks like:

Analog techniques

  • Letter Design Basics
  • Sketching techniques
  • Lettering Design insights
  • Creation of an alphabet
  • Optical adjustments

Digital techniques

  • Drawing letter shapes in vectors
  • Styles and layered type
  • Introduction to fontself software
  • Introduction to Glyphs App
  • Font editing
  • Spacing and Kerning
  • Programing and open type features
  • Fine tuning of your font
  • Publishing your font

Font Publishing

  • Marketing your font
  • Font naming
  • Designing your specimen
  • Presenting your font

When, Where and How To Apply?

This ten day workshop is taking place from July 24th to August 2nd. If you want to attend, you need to apply until April 26th. The fee for the ten days is €1980 (plus 19% VAT), which is €198 for each of the workshop days.

More information on how to apply and what information is needed in order to apply can be found on their website.

If you want to stay up to date and get updated information for the course, you can subscribe to their newsletter.

Events I Attend In 2020

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I have been at New Adventures in January already and this is a simple list of events I am attending in 2020. More events might be added, but those are the ones to the day, I already arranged travel and/or know 100% I am going and which are not single day meetups or alike (which come on top of the ones below):

Next week FITC Amsterdam is taking place and I’d love to go to meet a few of the people that are going to be there. Sadly this year’s edition coincides with Karneval over here in my area. My kids will be all out on the streets and even though – no – because they are 14 and 16 now (next to the 7 year old one), I don’t want to leave them alone during that time ;)

I’d furthermore love to go to the 20th OFFF in Barcelona, as well as to Smashing Conference in San Francisco, but both are in the week before my tenth beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf and there is no chance I can do this.

An event I have planned to go, but need to sort my stuff out for is Material in Iceland, March 20th. 99,9% sure that I am going, but need to arrange travel and a few other bits.

This on the other hand means, I can’t be at the very first Kirby Konf, taking place at around the same time as Material sadly.

UX London is taking place during the 18th birthday of my nephew and right before I leave for Berlin to attend Berlin Letters. Otherwise I’d love to go as I plan this for many years now.

Pictoplasma and Web Rebels are two events I always wanted to go as well, but they overlap with the 25th anniversary of finishing school, where I do not want to miss meeting all those people from back in the days ;)

Next to those above I have penciled in the following events, where I nee to look into time and family stuff:

Again, those are the ones I know of by February. And only the ones I am sure to go or where I penciled in dates.

If you want to get a more general overview of events and not only the ones I have in my closer choice right now: there are plenty of places to have a look at, depending on what you are looking for. Here are a few resources:

Of course there are more lists to visit as well, but those are the ones, that jumped into my eye repeatedly, when I searched for events.

As you can see, I attend a couple of events and whenever there is the chance to meet and chat with people, especially at other events than the ones I organise, I am totally happy to do so. So, let me know which events I gonna meet you at. Happy to meet you ;)

Noma Bar – Bittersweet

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I am a huge fan of Noma Bar and his work. Noma is an amazing illustrator who’s work is known for the playful and intelligent use of negative space. A lot of his illustrations reveal their messages only if you look twice and closely.

A set of photos from Bittersweet, a series of books by Noma Bar in a slidecase.
Beautifully done – 5 books plus a poster in a slide case

Bittersweet comes with 5 books: Rough Smooth, Less More, Pretty Ugly, In Out and Life Death. In addition to those, a signed, limited screen print is included.

In each book, he covers a different theme:

  • Less More = daily life
  • Pretty Ugly = portraits
  • In Out = sex
  • Life Death = conflict

In Rough Smooth you get a lovely view into his sketchbooks and a few background stories to his work. I know what I am going to do during the next evenings on my couch with a gin and tonic. ;)

And the best part is (at least for me) is, that Noma Bar is coming to speak at beyond tellerrand in Berlin this year!

Mena Trott About What A Blog Is

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In 2006 Mena Trott, co-founder of Movable Type, during a talk said about, what a blog is:

[…] it’s this record of who you are, your persona […]

I like this a lot and I think this is still right and relevant.

I Think I am Done with Nike Run Club

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For many months I am having issues with syncing my Apple Watch’s Nike Run Club app with my iPhone. Every once in a while – sometime more regularly sometimes after two months again – when I am back home after a run an my watch states ”synced” and I open my NRC on the iPhone I can’t see my run. But not only this: when I then go back to my watch it has disappeared there as well. I often thought I simply switch to Strava, but then, I like keeping my history of my runs in one place.

In December 16, Nike released an update to the app. It happened now, that my NRC did update, but after one day I would see ”Update” with Dec. 16 again. While their support on Twitter was brilliant and super fast, trying to help, which seemed to have worked in the beginning, their support via email is pretty slow sadly. Also they just repeat what I went though with their Twitter support already and which did not help in the end.

Now today I went for another run with a friend and once again my run disappeared from both devices. I started taking photos of my watch with my phone to then add the run manually, but this is actually not the way it should work. I know, this is definitely a first world problem, but simply annoying, especially as I report this behaviour for about two years or longer.

I will now, from February on start start using Strava and give it a try. Maybe I event use one of those syncing tool to take my old runs with me. At least those from January, so I have a clean cut with 2020.

Which app are you using to track your runs and can you recommend it? (I am just using my Apple Watch. I know, there is better hardware out there to track runs ;) … )

Update: Well, just trying to re-activate my Strava account. It shows me, that my email is registered already. Hit ”Forgot Password” three times already. Nothing happens in my inbox (not even in spam). Not a good start, eh 😂

Links with Tips and Advice for Public Speaking

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I collected these links to write a blog post at some point, but did not get to the point writing it, yet. Now, to make use of my list already, before getting to the point finally writing a blog post about public speaking, I have sorted my notes and list them here in no specific order. And I am going to let you know as soon as the actual blog post is done. Plus I am, of course, adding new resources any time I find something new.

Writing a Proposal

Writing About Yourself aka Writing Your Bio

Writing and Preparing a Talk

Creating Slides

General Public Speaking Tips (covering the above often as well):

Books

That's it for now, but I am pretty sure I gonna update it regularly. It would be wonderful, if you send me an email in case you have more links, books or anything that completes this list to learn about public speaking and presenting on stage.

Starting the Year of Events with New Adventures again

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Like last year, I am going to kick off the year of events with New Adventures in Nottingham. I am already looking forward to the event, as I know that Simon and Colly put their heart into it and always make it a special event. Not only because they work hard on finding interesting and different people and topics, but also because I know hat always lovely people come to this event, which means great conversations and a good time next to the core values of their New Adventures Conference.

I know that tickets are still available and if you like to kick off the year in a creative and lovely way, join in and come to Nottingham!

Portafilter Rack

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For a longer time I was looking into a solution to get rid of the mess around my espresso machine. I have three portafilters: one with a filter basket for one shot and one spout, one with a filter basket for a double shot or two espresso and a double spout and last but not least one with no spout, or, a bottomless portafilter.

As i am only always using one of the above portafilters, the other two are somewhere next to my machine and I don’t have the most space around my machine. I thought of building a little rack out of wood to hang the portafilters I don’t need onto the wall. Then I thought, I do a little bit of research as other people might have the same issue and already solved it.

I found a couple of nice looking solutions, like this one, by someone calling himself chuckcoffee or this one, which comes even with a magnet for the blind filter basket. There are even solutions from companies like ECM, made of metal, but sadly also quite pricey.

I then looked on Etsy and found something called Portakeeper, which does not waste a lot of space on your wall, is easy to mount (you can use 3M sticking pads to mount them) and does not cost too much. Maybe not as beautiful as wooden versions, but you don’t really see them behind the portafilter either. I took a couple of photos of how they look and how I mounted the two I bought.

A collage of photos showing how I mounted my Portakeeper onto the wall to hold my portafilters.
I bought this “Portakeeper” on Etsy

Of course, those are “only” 3D printed and you can find similar versions on Thingiverse (e. g. this one or this one), but I like that the one behind the Etsy solution provided a great service, helping me with questions and I was happy to buy from him (plus, I don’t have a 3D printer anyways).