If you like Stranger Things, you might like this YouTube video by Wired, where the Duffer brothers explain all the movie references included in the three existing seasons. (Spoilers possible)

Impressions from Campu Santu, a beautiful cemetery in Bonifacio on Corsica. Located on the Bosco plateau facing the sea.

A beautiful sunset in Bonifacio, Corsica

Last week I arrived back from Toronto, were we ran the second edition of Smashing Conference after starting in 2018. I brought a set of photos which hopefully transport the lovely vibe it had.

This year’s Toronto edition had a really calm and nice atmosphere. When asking someone onsite, everybody was very positive and liked what was going on. There is a mixed feeling about presentations without slides, but I guess it is with all the other things in the world: taste is different and level of execution as well. I myself like the setup running a presentation without a complete slide deck most of the times. The Smashing team in Toronto did a very great job, which you recognise, when you don’t see or feel anyone during the show. It was very well produced and ran smooth and slick.

I once more uploaded the set to Flickr, as there is not finished solution to host them here, on my own site, right now. I already cancelled my Flickr subscription and will soon host all my albums on my own site.

See the whole set of photos from SmashingConf Toronto 2019

My friends at Adobe, also long-time partners of beyond tellerrand, are organising half-day workshops with independent designers in a couple of cities in Germany. Next week Tuesday – July 9th – they are stopping by in Düsseldorf.

Topics are circling around prototyping for voice interfaces, animation and design systems with XD. Clive K. Lavery and Claire Lise Bengue are leading through those two workshops.

Good news is, that I still have the option for you to get the tickets for 50% off instead of the full price. Use this opportunity to attend the workshop, but also to meet like minded people, interested in topics mentioned above and more.

• Details about the workshops
• Registration with 50% discount

Earlier this year I met with Mozilla in San Francisco. They are wonderful supporters of my beyond tellerrand events and when we discussed the idea of co-operating for a series of free events for the web dev community in Germany and Austria, I was directly in.

So we came up with four stops for this:

• Nuremberg (Nürnberg), August 26th
• Munich (München), August 27th
• Linz, August 28th
• Vienna (Wien), August 29th

Registration for all cities are great, but of course I want it to be absolutely jam packed. Not because we want to make any money (it is a free event by Mozilla), but because we want to meet the community – YOU!

Details about content, idea and the four stops can be read in a blog post on my btconf blog or at the roadshow website, but I am writing this blog post here to ask for your support: if you’d spread the word, so we all can meet and listen to a view interesting and inspiring talks together, that would be fantastic.

And if you have questions after reading the details about the roadshow, don’t hesitate to send me an email. Happy to chat to you and answer your questions.

See you in one or many of the stops in August! Oh … and thank you for spreading the word ;)

Like many times already, I was nodding, reading the introduction to the latest Dense Discovery newsletter by Kai Brach. It is a completely different audience than people attending my events, yet there are so many things which are very similar in what and how we do things (also with Bastian Allgeier, running Kirby btw.)

Reading the introduction text of Kai’s newsletter, I agree 100% again when he writes:

[…] Invariably, I get asked the same question about Offscreen and Dense Discovery: ‘How did you build up your audience?’

I always feel like my answer to this question is insufficient: ‘Be consistent. Be patient. Have an opinion, but be kind. The word will spread eventually.’ It’s all pretty vague, boring, non-actionable stuff that certainly does not make for a compelling growth hacking listicle. In fact, I probably miss out on a lot of ‘growth opportunities’ by not even following the digital marketing 101. Heck, there is not even an analytics tool on my website, so I know nothing about my visitors.

Read into that what you will. Perhaps respecting your visitors’ privacy and attention, and not engaging in any pushy marketing techniques simply pays off over time? Or I just got lucky. […]

This is me trying to answer the same kind of question many times, when I get interviewed for example. I also am patient and consistent. And I also am not tracking anything on my websites. But somehow I trust the way I work and am happy that somehow people seem to trust me and the way I run my events.

Thanks Kai, for putting this into a nice text ;)

As I have written earlier, I have cancelled my Flickr Subscription today. Not only was it a bit strange, to double the price for the subscription without a real warning, but also I am not satisfied with Flickr for a long time now. Not to speak about the ongoing fear of Flickr being shut down.

Therefore I used Bulkr to download all my photos and have them archived. Now I am looking into options to host photos on my own page, which runs on Kirby. Suggestions welcome. ;)

Sitting here in a mix of hysterical laughter, astonishment and joy. Never gonna believe this and always have to pinch myself.

THANK YOU!

I was planning to write a longer blog post about this, maybe I am still going to do so, but I had to quickly get this out of my head.

After the overwhelming, lovely and tremendous feedback for the last Düsseldorf show of beyond tellerrand, I was caught in something like a vacuum chamber, or, better, a room without gravity. On the one hand the extremely positive feelings. Heartwarming and just wonderful. On the other hand the fear of disappointing people. The fear of not delivering. The fear of not keeping a promise.

I was searching for a new venue for the Berlin edition of beyond tellerrand for such a long time. For 5 years I have been using the Studio and the F101 in the Admiralspalast to run my event, but then suddenly I got the information that it would be closed. I knew it was going to be hard to find a new home for the event. Not because the size or the room layout only, but mostly because I had a picture in my head. I wanted something reflecting the ”beyond tellerrand style” of running events like this. I did not expect it to be that complicated.

I made many, many trips to Berlin to check 34 venues in total. Some simply ridiculously overpriced. Some simply too small, not from the size of the theatre, but from the breakout- and exhibition-space. I found a new home with a wonderful old church. And even if it wasn’t optimal from size and layout, I wanted to give it a go. Then the connected restaurant, which usually often give their room free for such events and doing the catering, for some reason did not like my idea and after an even quite positive conversation I got he news, that we’d only be able to use half the breakout space as planned with.

So, two weeks before I wanted to kick of ticket sales, I had to go and find a new home. That was 4 weeks before beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf was kicking off. So enough work on my desk already! Many people kept asking and I felt pressure on my inside, staying calm and positive on the outside – and also on my inside, really. I knew, only time would help and hard work, more trips to Berlin and many, many conversations in which people would recommend me new hidden treasures to possibly run my event in.

So now, I am proud and happy to say, that i found a new home. Who knows for how long, but it once more really taught me to not give up, if you believe in something and I am already very much looking forward to conversations before with you about the journey of finding a new home as well as conversations at the new Berlin theatre.

If you want to join me and the team on a new journey, please have a look at the next edition of beyond tellerrand and stay tuned!

Thank you!