This article is part of 20in20, a series of 20 blog posts in 20 days to kick off the blogging year 2020. This is 20in20:09.
For years now — really, throughout my whole career — I’ve always had a whole range of side projects: Sometimes prototypes or experimental explorations, sometimes something akin to professional hobbies.
It’s fair to say that to a degree, I’ve kind of built my career from or around those extra curricular activities. The things I learned through these, the people I’ve had the opportunity to meet — this has been priceless. And mostly a joy, too!
Over the years, many things fell into this category. Some stayed, others emerged and evolved into more serious projects. To name just a few that come to mind:
- Events, like Atoms&Bits Festival, Cognitive Cities Conference, TEDxKreuzberg, UIKonf, Ignite Berlin, and ThingsCon.
- Written things, like The Indie Conference Organizer Handbook (with Max Krüger), Understanding the Connected Home (with Michelle Thorne), and View Source: Shenzhen.
- Research-y things, like The Good Home.
- Product-ish things, like Zephyr Berlin pants, The Alpine Review, and the Dearsouvenir magazine.
Some of these, I did by myself; others I got involved in after the fact. But really, most were true collaborations that I co-founded, and those are what I tend to enjoy the most. Over the years, I’ve also been on juries and in a number of unpaid advisory situations.
Together, that’s about a decade worth of extra curriculars: Yes, that was my version of the infamous 20% projects, though in reality, probably a much bigger chunk of my time.
I’ve enjoyed every minute of those, and benefitted greatly from most. Some of them are still thriving, with or without my involvement, which makes me very happy indeed.
But every now and then, it’s time for a culling because a day’s only that long. And especially now with a kid that takes up all slack really I prefer spending time with over yet another Slack channel, that time has come. (However rewarding those Slack channels and side projects might be, they don’t hold a candle to this kid of ours, obviously.)
So it’s with a tear and a smile that I’ll be stepping away from a few more extra curriculars. I’ll be stepping back from being involved in Ignite Berlin, our local chapter of Ignite lightning talks (the project had been sitting there idly for a while anyway by now). I’ll be stepping down from my jury duties. Probably more has to go, but what and how exactly I’m still trying to figure out.
Time to reclaim some slack in the system, lest it all break down.
Oh right, I should add that ThingsCon is explicitly not part of that culling: I’ll be as involved in ThingsCon as ever for the foreseeable future.
So onward and upward, light as a feather.
