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 ☺️

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 …