In 2013 I tried to get Dieter Rams to my little beyond tellerrand event. Sadly he does not really enjoy traveling anymore, which I can understand, taking in consideration that he is 83 now. I – of course – would have loved to get him over to speak, but he is not speaking a lot these days anymore.

What I am especially bothered by today is that […] design is being used as a 'lifestyle asset.

Last year he was interviewed by the filmmaker Gary Hustwit for Fast Company’s Co.Design. A good 7-minute read, as I think.

Straight to the interview.

A very nice read about typesetting for the Web. Guidelines, typographic rules and much, much more. Read on …

⇾ Visit: The New Web Typography

What a great day I had in London. I am not the biggest fan of one day events, as I love the evening of the first day being a chance to connect with the rest of the attendees and then have a second day with new friends. But the format John is running here is nice, because – as I said earlier – it starts around noon and runs into the evening. With this you can work and have a great way to end the week. And it would even be possible to attend this event withot having to stay in London. Fly in, attend, fly out. Maybe you should check to attend next years Reasons:London or Reasons in Brighton beginning of September.

I uploaded a small set of impressions to flickr so that you can see who spoke and how it was.

This looks like a promising workflow for prototyping, using Sketch and Silver.

⇾ Visit: Sketch prototyping workflow

I've written a short blog post about, why I have started "yet another job board".

⇾ Visit: The beyond tellerrand Job Board

Mr. @jaffathecake on “The future of loading CSS”. Good read, Mr. Archibald.

⇾ Visit: The future of loading CSS

A little video series with Gwilym Davies, World Barista Champion 2009, giving you the basics for a good coffee. Does not seem to difficult, does it? ;)

⇾ Visit: Videos about how to make good coffee

A very well written article by Joschi Kuphal (in German) about what the IndieWeb is all about. How to start, where to start and where to find help with this.

Don’t forget to also check the two IndieWebCamps taking place in Germany this year so far:

• IndieWebCamp Nürnberg, April 16 and 17
• IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf, May 7 and 8 (during beyond tellerrand)

⇾ Visit: What is the IndieWeb (German)

I don’t know about you, but did you ever experience that you have written an email, no bounce back arrives in your inbox and you can be quite sure that the email you’ve written arrives in the inbox of the recipient – if it did not end up in the spam folder having been filtered out by the spam filter.

Assuming it didn’t end up in the spam folder, what are you doing if someone does not reply to you after a while? I myself am trying a polite second email, asking if all is ok and if my email arrived as I’d otherwise be happy to send it again. I think nothing wrong with this, is it? Maybe I try a third time, but then I usually give up, just being sad again asking myself, why people don’t have a few seconds to let me know that they have no interest in speaking to me. Which is totally fine. And in the end it would only help as I’d know the email arrived, I don’t have to bug this person again and I know that this person has no interest to speak at my event for example. Not answering an email is just rude in my eyes. It is like if you meet someone, want to say hello and the one in front of you just turns around without reacting or saying anything. How would you react to this and think of this person? Exactly!

I think it is even worse if you had an ongoing conversation with back an forth emails and then all of a sudden, without you knowing why, the one you had been talking to stops replying to your emails. I mean, yes, you might have written something that upsets the person or maybe something that the recipient did not like. In terms of business, for example, an offer that the one who got it finds unacceptable. But how easy is it to simply write back, say no, or even to say fuck off? I could live with this. I’d know where I am at then and it would help more than simply not replying anymore. Makes me angry sad, that we think we can simply forget about politeness and manners, just because we are hiding behind computers and emails.

I myself reply to every email that is addressed to me personally. Sometimes only really short to say that I do not have interest in what was offered, but at least the one who has written, knows that I got it and read it. Even though he/she might not give a fuck about it. But I replied.

I think, how you treat someone shows your character as well and how you treat someone with your emails – not with what or how you write, but writing at all – is equally showing the character. I see this like you know this for many other things in life: treat everybody the way you want to be treated.

Today I got this email from a German magazine in my inbox:

[…] gerne möchten wir Ihnen heute unser Magazin whatevername zur
kostenlosen und unverbindlichen Auslage auf Ihrer Veranstaltung “beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf” von 09. - 11. Mai 2016 anbieten. Wir sind sicher, dass der Service bei Ihren Teilnehmern gut ankommt.

Which translates into something like:

[…] we’d like to offer you our magazine whatevername to display and give out for free at your event “beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf” from May 9 to 11. We are sure that the service is well received by your attendees.

Nothing bad at this, you know. I always try to get got deals and nice stuff for my attendees. But I also always try to have something that helps all groups involved. So this means, the publisher, the attendees and – of course – me, or better said my event. So I wasn’t expecting to get any money, but thought some kind of countertrade would be fair, when asking:

Thanks for your interest in my event. How could a possible countertrade look like? Is it possible that you do an article about the event before or after the conference for example?

You see, that I’m not expecting much, but somehow I think, when you offer someone or something a platform to get known to more people, even though the magazine in this case costs something and it is for free to my attendees, you should get something back. At least a little bit. And even if it would only be something to get the dates of your event spread or tweeted about or anything. The more disappointed and sad was I, when I got this reply:

[…] da wir unser Angebot eher als Anreicherung Ihrer Veranstaltung, denn als Werbung verstehen, muss ich Ihnen leider mitteilen, dass wir keine Gegengeschäfte eingehen.

… which is in English …

[…] as we see our offer as an enrichment of your event, more than advertising for us, I have do let you know, that we are not going to do a countertrade.

I mean, yes, it is maybe good value for the attendees of beyond tellerrand, but am I wrong, if I say that it definitely is advertising for them, when they have the chance to offer their mag to 500 attendees? And I also can’t get rid of the feeling that somehow this email sounds condescend to me, doesn’t it.

Anyways. I hope that you’ll evaluate anything, no mater how small you think your business (newsletter, blog, website, community, event … whatever) is, it has a certain value. To you, to the people who read or attend it and therefore it should be worth being treated like it has. Maybe sometimes it is worth thinking about if you do something like this more than once, before saying yes too quick. Don’t forget: as if you do agree to things like this once, you’ll be asked for things like this more often. It’s a little bit like working for free … (thanks to Joshua Davis and also to Yuko Shimizu, who both – amongst others – reminded me about this in their talks)