Notes

Kirby 4 – New Look, New Features

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Visiting the release page of Kirby 4 (right now in Alpha 5 – version 4 is planned for October roughly) makes me excited to upgrade and use some of the new features and improvements.

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.

WoWirSindIstVorne Podcast No 58

Just a few days before I went on a longer trip to Switzerland and Italy, Constantin and Moritz of the #wwsiv Podcast published the episode in which I had the pleasure to be their guest. It was a lovely chat (in German) and we chattet about event stuff surely, but also about a lot of other things. It was great fun to be their guest and if you like to hear more about where beyond tellerrand has its roots and why I started all this, then check in.

Thanks to Moritz and Constantin for inviting me.

🎧 Listen to #WWSIV No 58 (German)

Bussana Vecchia – Liguria, Italy

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.

Quite Silent Here Once More

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!

Starting the New Week with a Gravel Ride

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.

Photos from SmashingConf San Francisco 2023

2023 edition of Smashing Conference in San Francisco is over. Here is a set of photos capturing the atmosphere and people at the event.

Working Draft Podcast #564

I was invited by the lovely people of the German, weekly Working Draft podcast once more. It is always a pleasure and good fun and surely we were also talking about organising events and beyond tellerrand, but also had a deeper look behind the scenes of an event organiser’s life in edition #564.

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!

Vodafone Digital Pacemaker Podcast

Also right before beyond tellerrand 2023 in Düsseldorf, I was invited to be part of the German Digital Pacemaker Podcast by Ulrich Irnich, CIO of Vodafone Germany and Markus Kuckertz, who is responsible for IT strategy und innovation at Vodafone Germany. This podcast had a totally different focus than others I had been invited to and we were chatting about the question, why I thin kit is important to be open minded when working in design and development and why schools and universities already should have a broader focus, teaching people a general interest and curiosity for other things than what they learn only.

You can listen to the whole episode here.

Ohne den Hype Podcast

Short before I ran beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf I was invited to be a guest in Ohne den Hype, a German podcast by Sven Saro about design related topics.

Good fun, lovely conversation with Sven and you can listen to it here.

Relief

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I am usually not a person complaining. Especially not about things in the past. But when being asked, I told how hard the pandemic has hit me personally and us as a family. Not only financially, but more importantly emotionally. Because I really love, what I am doing with beyond tellerrand.

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.