The Waving Cat

Tagend of year

Thanks and Happy Holidays: That was 2019

By Peter Bihr
In Smart Cities, work
6 Min read
T

This is end-of-year post #12 (all prior ones here).

What happened in 2019?

It was another intense year, but nothing compared to 2018. Just the new reality of having a kid combined with the old reality of two partners working in demanding and interesting jobs: There’s bound to be some friction, and so there is, and everyone in that boat knows how that can feel. That said, we’re lucky and privileged and so there’s really no reason to complain. If the world wasn’t literally burning right now there wouldn’t be any reason to worry.

The theme for 2019

Last year I wrote:

the theme was first and foremost impact. Impact through large partners, through policy work, through investments into research.

This essentially has stayed true for the third year in a row. I spent more time still on policy-related work — in fact I’d say my work has continued a pretty sharp turn upstream towards policy.

The space of emerging tech, responsible tech, and public policy has been maturing a lot, and those are all areas I’ve been working in for a long time. To see these three previously separate circles move closer together into a neat Venn diagram, so to speak, has been amazing. And it’s also given me a point of leverage for putting my expertise and experiencing to work, which I’m grateful for.

Friends & Family

A few close friends got married, some babies were born: In terms of friends and family it’s been a pretty good year. I’m ever grateful for the support of a handful of very close friends who’re there whenever I needed them; thank you, you know who you are.
Now if only there was a little more time to spend with friends and family. Making that extra time goes straight on the priority list for 2020.

Travel

For a few years now, I’ve been trying to cut down on travel, specifically on flights. It’s been working so-so: As best as I can figure out from Tripit and my calendar, I’ve gone on 17 trips for a total of 85 days of travel, which is about par for the course. Around 20 cities in 8 countries. It was still 20 flights. However — small victories! — only about 30,000 km total. Which sounds… a lot less? The year before it was more like 90,000 km. Either my accounting is way off, or it was the fact that I didn’t go to the West Coast a few times this year. Either way, I’ll take it.

(Not just 2019)

Speaking & Media

Punditry time! There was a bit of that. The website has lists of talks and media mentions; the top-level stats are: 12 talks & panels (including the occasional chairing/hosting) and 16 media mentions, contributions, or profiles about me. An interesting mix of publications, too, including Fast Company, a WEF publication, CHI, and Tagesspiegel.

What’s been interesting for me is that a lot of my talks and panels were at policy events. So that’s a bit of a new world for me, in a sense.

Health

Been trying to get back to a more healthy routing of regular workouts, with mixed success. Tried my hand at CrossFit, which I’ll revisit eventually but have shelved for now, and Pilates, which seems pretty promising to ease back into it. Otherwise all good. Especially, we’re back to eating healthier after the hectic & chaos that was 2018.

Work

Lots of reading and writing, lots of working at the intersection with the public policy work. I’ve been working with multiple foundations and think tanks on issues surrounding smart cities, AI, governance, tech policy. Some of this happens at the German level, much at the European or global level.

I’ve started my role as an industry supervisor in the OpenDoTT PhD program for responsible tech, and was a fellow at Edgeryders, where my research focused on smart city governance. Also, I went back on the jury for Prototype Fund.

ThingsCon is still going strong, we just had our 6th anniversary. As is my semi-personal newsletter Connection Problem, which I’ve been enjoying writing a lot.

Books read

29 books on my list, including some contemporary sci-fi (Kim Stanley Robinson, Eliot Pepper, Tim Maughan) but also classics like Vernor Vinge. Some fiction, like Ted Chiang’s Exhalations and John Hodgman’s Medallion Status. Some more random stuff like So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid, Lost Japan by Alex Kerr, A Pattern Language, Fewer better things by Glenn Adamson and some Dalai Lama; How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell, essay collections like McSweeny’s The End of Trust and — a bit surprising to me! — I found myself ripping through the full 8 book arch of The Expanse. Overall a quiet enjoyable mix.

Also, still lots of unfinished ones in the “ongoing” folder that might or might not ever be finished.

Firsts & some things I learned along the way

Firsts: Indoor Skydiving. Waterball (Water zorb?). Learned some Ukulele basics. Baked a bread. First time in Valencia. Took a boat to travel for business. Reconciled an old awkwardness. Applied for a job I was genuinely interested in. Looked at 20,000 year old cave paintings. Rode in two autonomous buses.

Learned: Prioritizing a lot more harshly. Identifying opportunities for leverage/impact better (I think).

So what’s next?

2020 will start with wrapping up a number of ongoing projects, and a new collaboration which feels pretty exciting. I look forward to continuing my work at the intersection of responsible tech & public policy, and finding the most effective points of leverage to really make sure my expertise can be meaningfully applied.

I also still would be pretty interested in helping a foundation partner set up an impact investment program at that intersection of emerging tech & public policy. Any leads would be highly welcome!

Otherwise it might be time again to spend a month or two working from abroad, but nothing’s set in stone yet.

Also, I’m always up for discussing interesting new projects. If you’re pondering one, get in touch.

For now, I hope you get to relax and enjoy the holidays.

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Thanks and Happy Holidays: That was 2018

By Peter Bihr
In Smart Cities, work
8 Min read
T

This is end-of-year post #11 (all prior ones here). That’s right, I’ve been writing this post every year for over a decade now. Who would have thought?

What happened in 2018? It was an intense year on many levels, so let’s dive right in.

The TL&DR; version of 2018 from my perspective: Experienced life with a baby, discovered the limits of doing so with two working parents and no family around. It’s been intense, in both good and less good ways. I pretty much lived with a constant feeling of not delivering adequately or up to my own standards, yet also extremely happy with a healthy little kid. From conversations with other parents I learned that this seems to be par for the course. To be honest, I feel a little ashamed of how ignorant I was of this seemingly widespread issue. That said, it was a really rewarding year as well.

Launched a trustmark, spent time in policy meetings, and had a year attached to a larger org as a fellow for the first time in quite some time. Read too little, but managed to write a fair bit. Felt a lot: exhausted, grateful, tired, happy—often all at the same time.

On a purely personal note, this might be the first time I’m not writing this in transit to my family or M’s, where we traditionally have taken turns spending the holidays. Having just come off a long series of travels both individually and with our now 1-year-old, we decided to host the first Christmas at home. But that doesn’t mean I’m not writing this in transit – I’m on a one day express return trip to Oslo for a workshop, the last trip before the holidays.

The theme for 2018

Last year I wrote:

the theme was first and foremost impact. Impact through large partners, through policy work, through investments into research.

For the first time since I can remember writing these, this has pretty much stayed the same. Working within the time constraints of having a baby at home and no daycare for the first year on one hand, and the opportunity afforded by a Mozilla Fellowship that allowed me to focus primarily on one project (the Trustable Technology Mark), the work on impact through partners and policy work has remained and seems to be working well.

In fact, since before we even publicly launched the Trustable Technology Mark in early Dec, I’ve been invited to a whole bunch of conversations that look like they’ll allow us to expand the underlying principles of the Trustmark beyond the consumer space — to larger societal issues, especially Smart City policy. This I find particularly exciting.

I hope to continue this work in 2019 and beyond, in whatever capacity seems most promising then.

Family & friends

After adding a new family member late last year, we lost another. Rest in peace, E. We miss you.

Among our friends, some new babies and some health issues. I guess it’s within the normal distribution at our age group. We’re lucky to have so many good friends around the globe, but also and especially nearby.

Travel

I set out to radically reduce my travel for the year and failed spectacularly. My travel stats: 14 trips, 36 flights, 9 countries (I think — this year has seen a lot more short term flight changes than any before, so the count might be a little out of whack). According to Tripit this added up to 91,625km of travel (likely more, since that only counts planes and trains, not driving etc.) and 104 days away from home. That’s almost a third of a year.

I am considering imposing a stricter travel ban on myself, or rather: a stricter limit on flights. The environmental impact is just too disastrous, plus life spent on planes is meh. Maybe I’ll start with trying not to fly (or at least flying as little as possible without losing my work) in Q1, and then see how that goes.

Conferences

I didn’t do a whole lot of conferences or events this year, but I did thoroughly enjoy the few I went to. It was mostly either ThingsCon events, or invite-only affairs, like the excellent Museum of the Future, some Aspen Institute events, and a handful more. Also, a bunch of workshops. And, of course, Dundee Design Festival and Mozfest.

Health

But of a mixed bag, this one. The big picture is, it’s all good, and I’m very healthy. Zoomed in, it was a terribly unhealthy year, or at least a year of terribly unhealthy habits. A good chunk came from having a baby while the two of us were both working, which put us in a constant extreme time crunch. Visits to the gym and slowly eaten meals both went right out the window, to be replaced with no breaks and inhaled food, sometimes while walking to the office. This has been changing again now that daycare started for little K; I can’t wait to get back to a regular gym routine. Back pain be gone!

Work

As mentioned above, there’s been a lot more focus this year, a lot less spread than the years before, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Between ThingsCon (where we just celebrated the fifth anniversary at Rotterdam and the Trustable Technology Mark, I’ve been heads down researching, designing, reaching out more than ever around these projects, and the number of presentations for anything else in between has been minimal.

I wrote a lot less, but am happy to say that—despite a somewhat less regular schedule—my newsletter Connection Problem is in Season 4.

I wouldn’t mind continuing along similar lines, with a strong focus, for a little longer.

Very Fun Side Projects

ThingsCon is still going strong, maybe stronger than ever. It’s well on its way to outgrow side project status.

Zephyr Berlin has been cooking on the slow burner for some time but still is up and running, even though we haven’t been able to give it as much attention in 2018 as I had hoped, for all the reasons above. However, our Ulimate Travel Pants are for the first time available in store (yes, physical retail!) as a test for us. Head on over to Kreuzberg’s 360 Outdoor to try them on, or jump to our website to order. Both at 360 and on our website we have a travel season sale on.

Speaking

As per usual, I gave a few talks. Many around ThingsCon, many around the Trustmark. Maybe more than ever in closed-door workshop settings.

Media

It was a pretty good year for media, especially once I could publicly talk about the Trustable Technology Mark. Some mentions I enjoyed: Stacey on IoT, Fast Company, BoingBoing, NET Magazine, WIRED.com, Brand Eins, Offscreen Magazine, Netzpiloten.de, Wall Street Journal, Internet Health Report, The Craftsman, and Brazil’s National IoT Plan.

Things started and discontinued

Started:

  • Being a parent
  • A Trustmark for IoT

Continued:

  • Zephyr Berlin, to make pants that travel well.
  • ThingsCon as an event platform, and growing it beyond that into other areas of engagement.

Discontinued:

  • My Facebook account has now been inactive for over a year and I trigged the full deletion at long last. Be gone!
  • Healthy routines. Those I hope to get back now that the situation at home relaxes with little K’s day care and a little more experience.

Books read

Depressingly few books I actually read. I kinda skimmed, kinda leafed through Vacation Land by John Hodgman, New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, Smarter Homes by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Future Ethics by Cennydd Bowles, and a handful others. So I fell way short on my reading.

Firsts & some things I learned along the way

Firsts: Flew with a baby. Applied for parental leave. Canceled parental leave. Booked and rebooked the same leg of a trip for a total of 3 (?) times. Merged two organizations, to a degree. (Will have) hosted Christmas eve at our home.

Learned: Shift work kills you. Lower your standards in the first year of having a kid. Make sure to take some time for yourself, even if it’s super hard.

So what’s next?

2019 is wide open at this point – I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to really plan much beyond the first couple of months. Some things I know: My Mozilla Fellowship is scheduled to run out in March. I’d like to do more work around policy and smart cities. I want to turn the Trustable Technology Mark into something more sustainable and with a strong governance model (read: where the bus factor isn’t 1). The same goes for ThingsCon: There’s a lot happening there, and we’re at a stage where we can “grow up” and make it sustainable, I think. So I’d like to work on making that happen. Also, lots of writing and research. That’s all I got at this point – lots of things I would like to do. Now on to making sure I get to actually do them! Also, if possible, I’d like to once more spend a month or two working from someplace else, if only to prove to myself that that’s doable with a kid.

I’m always up for discussing interesting new projects. If you’re pondering one, get in touch.

For now, I hope you get to relax and enjoy the holidays.

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Thanks and Happy Holidays: That was 2017

By Peter Bihr
In Digital Transformation, emerging technologies, IoT, personal, Research, Smart Cities, travel
8 Min read
T

This is end-of-year post #10 (all prior ones here). That’s right, I’ve been writing this post every year for ten years in a row!

So what happened in 2017? Let’s have a look back: Part work, part personal. Enjoy.

Globally speaking I’d file 2017 under shitty year. So much so that I’ll try not to go into anything global or all too political here. But in terms of work it’s been quite interesting and impactful, and personally it’s been a pretty damn great year.

So, right to it!

The theme for 2017

Last year I wrote (and I’m paraphrasing to keep it short):

“(…) even in hindsight 2016 didn’t have one theme as such, but rather a few in parallel: 1) Growth & stabilization, in the business generally speaking, but also and specifically in all things related to ThingsCon. 2) Lots and lots of collaborations with close friends, which I’m grateful for. 3) Also, 2016 was a year for a bit of overload, I may have spread myself a little thin at times.”

Again, lots of collaboration with old and new friends. But this year I was a lot more focused, with lots of research that allowed me to go deep. I’d say in 2017, the theme was first and foremost impact. Impact through large partners, through policy work, through investments into research.

My work was with some large partners with big picture themes, like our work with Mozilla on trustmarks for the internet of things.

I hope to continue this high-impact work in one way or another.

Friends and family

Overall a bit of a mixed bag.

The bad: Some family members had health issues. Some friends received some nasty diagnoses.

The good: Some of the health issues were solved, we got to spend lots of time with close friends and family. Also, lots of babies were born among our friends, including one of our own. Welcome, little K! To be honest, this alone would make me love 2017. So yay, personal 2017!

Travel

For years I had been trying to cut down a little on travel to a somewhat more sustainable level. It kinda-sorta worked in 2017, at least a little bit. Still ways to go, but it’s a start.

Looking at my Tripit, this is what comes up. Tripit stats are a little fuzzy. (Did I mention I still miss Dopplr?) As far as I can reconstruct it on the quick, including vacation time I traveled to 7 countries on just 9 trips, and spent about 89 days traveling. (As opposed to 21 trips to 12 countries for a total of 152 days the year before.) So that’s great, even if it sounds like I might have missed a couple short trips.

pyrenees

Work

There was a lot going on in 2017, so I had to consult my monthnotes to refresh my memory. The focus is still, and ever more so, at the intersection of strategy, emerging technologies, and ethics/governance.

Lots of work around trustmarks and consumer trust generally speaking around the internet of things. Increasingly, artificial intelligence has also solidly established itself as part of the emerging tech canon I’ve been watching closely.

I wrote a lot. I mean, a lot. And I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. Outside my blog and some project-related newsletters and Twitter I did some long and short form writing:

If the writing is part of my overall communications landscape, then so is my website. So I relaunched that completely and restructured it for much more clarity.

I also got to work more with foundations, which is always fun. From workshops with Boell Foundation to research for Mozilla Foundation, the non-commercial, impact-driven sector is certainly an area I’d like to spend more time in.

Very Fun Side Projects

Then there are two “side projects” that have been especially fun this year: ThingsCon and Zephyr.

ThingsCon, our global community on a mission to foster the creation of a responsible & human-centric IoT, has been growing steadily. Milestones in 2017 include:

  • Another research trip to Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of hardware.
  • We had a bunch of ThingsCon-labeled publications, including about Shenzhen and IoT trustmarks: View Source: Shenzhen, The State of Responsible IoT, A Trustmark for IoT.
  • We launched the ThingsCon Fellowship Program to recognize achievements and commitment that advance the ThingsCon mission of fostering the creation of a responsible and human-centric IoT generally, and support for the ThingsCon community specifically. Shout-out to our most excellent six initial fellows, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Ame Elliott, Dries de Roeck, Iohanna Nicenboim, Michelle Thorne and Ricardo Brito. I hope we’ll get the fellowship program into full swing in 2018!
  • New cities with salons or conferences around the world. Let me use stats from November: At that point ThingsCon events have happened in 20 cities across 12 countries, from Berlin to Brussels to Amsterdam and Milan to London and Shanghai to Austin and Copenhagen and Nairobi.

I can’t possibly tell you how awesome this is for me to watch and experience. Learn more at thingscon.com.

Zephyr Berlin, the trousers/pants project M and I launched on Kickstarter just over a year ago, continues to be a lot of fun. Just a few weeks back we produced another small batch of men’s trousers, this time with super deep pockets to make things like cycling with large phones super easy. So there’s a new batch of men’s, and a very small number of women’s available. Check out zephyrberlin.com to learn more.

Conferences

A lot less conference work this year. What I did in terms of conferences was mostly for ThingsCon. I always enjoyed conferences (both the curation and the planning, but the curation much more than the planning), but not having a conference to plan isn’t too bad either, to be honest. A lot of my other work, especially the writing, would not have been possible if I had committed to another conference.

As a directly related note, without the fantastic, lovable, smart and endlessly committed ThingsCon Amsterdam crew and their annual ThingsCon event (it just happened for the fourth time!), ThingsCon also wouldn’t be what it is today. My eternal thanks go to Iskander, Marcel & Monique and their team.

Speaking

As part of my cutting down on conference travel, I gave just a few talks in 2017. Most of them focused on IoT and consumer trust.

There were a few at ThingsCon events like in Berlin and Shenzhen, others were at Underexposed, TU Dresden, Netzpolitik conference, DevOpsCon, and Transatlantic Digital Debates. There were also a few (paid) in-house talks.

Media

It was a pretty good year for media and writing. Among others, my thoughts or projects were mentioned/quoted/referenced/etc on CNN, SPIEGEL, and WIRED. I had some interviews—the lovely conversation for Markus Andrezak’s Stories Connected Dots stands out to me.

Things started and discontinued

Started:

  • Writing more, if you’ll forgive me going so meta.

Continued:

  • Zephyr Berlin, producing pants that travel extremely well.
  • ThingsCon as an event platform, and growing it beyond that into other areas of engagement.

Discontinued:

  • My Facebook account, just now as I’m writing this. Bye bye Facebook. You feel like Old Social Media by now, not worth having around.

Books read

Read an okay, but not great amount. I think it was pretty much these: WTF, Tim O’Reilly. Control Shift, David Meyer. The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Seibald. Wiener Straße, Sven Regener. Go: Die Mitte des Himmels, Michael H. Koulen. Babyjahre, Remo H. Largo. American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Death’s End, Deep Forest, The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu. Goldene Unternehmerregeln, Bihr & Jahrmarkt. Schadenfreude, Rebecca Schuhman. Rapt, Winifred Gallagher. Shoe Dog, Phil Knight. The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli. Snuff, Terry Pratchett . Deep Work, Cal Newport. Bonk, Mary Roach. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene. The Industries of the the Future, Alec Ross.

Firsts & some things I learned along the way

Firsts: Wrote a ton of long form and launched it properly. Cut an umbilical cord. Diapered a newborn. Merged photo libraries.

Learned: How to communicate my work (focus, offering, structure) better (as the website will demonstrate). To make time for writing, thinking, processing input. Some Python. Some more about tech policy. These are all qualitative upgrades in my book.

So what’s next?

It looks like 2018 might bring a fantastic opportunity to continue some of my work from this year and before in a big-impact context; if this happens, I’ll be extremely happy. (If not, I’ll continue chipping away at the same issues with all the means available to me.) I hope to continue doing lots of research and writing. I’ll take some parental leave at some point, and otherwise spend as much time as I can with the baby. (They grow up so fast, as I’m learning even now, after not even a month.) Some travel, and hopefully once more a month or two spent working from a new place.

I’m always up for discussing interesting new projects. If you’re pondering one, get in touch!

But for now, I hope you get to relax and enjoy the holidays!

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Thanks and Happy Holidays: That was 2016

By Peter Bihr
In blogging, personal, Research, Smart Cities, Strategy, travel
12 Min read
T

This is end-of-year post #9 (all prior ones here).

So what happened in 2016? Let’s have a look back: Part work, part personal. Enjoy.

I’m not going to lie: Globally and politically, 2016 was a messy year: Not cool. Political institutions and alliances have been crumbling, there’s been upheaval around the world, and populists have gained ground. I don’t see any big utopian visions, and any larger narratives with a positive angle. Yet, we need shared visions and utopian models more than ever. Also, this isn’t a time to stay quiet, or passive. We’re all needed to make sense of the world, and to improve it in the ways we can.

That said, for me it was personally a very good, interesting, engaged year. I learned a lot, met plenty of old & new friends, got to see many fantastic and fascinating places. Things were happening, lots of them, continuously. Looking back at it now it was a crazy-productive year. (So much so that I had to go through my monthnotes not to forget anything.)

(more…)

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Thanks & Happy Holidays: That was 2015

By Peter Bihr
In blogging, personal, Smart Cities, travel
7 Min read
T

This is end-of-year post #8 (all prior ones here).

What happened in 2015? What a year, where to begin!

As is the tradition with this end-of-year post, it’s part work, part personal. Enjoy.

The theme for 2015

Last year I described 2014 as “a year of building foundations. Much more than ever before did I focus on creating a stable basis for future things rather than pushing ahead first.”

This couldn’t have held more true: 2015 was for building things on top of those foundations, for growth and new collaborations.

My work this year has also been totally and entirely dominated by the theme of connectedness: Internet of things, connected cities / homes / services.

The company has had a fantastic year, all the IoT & hardware efforts have led to another round of ThingsCon as well as a lot of work around IoT, connected services & smart cities – with engagements including corporate and government work, speaking, curating, R&D, business and product strategy work, and much more. Also, a rather large amount of self-initiated projects including an essay-collection-turned-ebook and more.

Personally I’ve very much enjoyed that I could focus my work a lot not just on #IoT, but particularly on the aspect of user rights and value: The ethical aspects of unconditionally putting users first and the positive impact this has on a business. Championing user rights is something I’ve always done where I could, and it’s slowly but surely become a core aspect of my work – needless to say I’m thrilled, and starting to put this front and center in the messaging of my service offerings, too.

(more…)

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Thanks & Happy Holidays: That was 2014

By Peter Bihr
In blogging, personal
4 Min read
T

This is end-of-year post #7 (all prior ones here). Slowly I’m getting into the habit.

What happened in 2014? A lot. Let’s dive in!

The theme for 2014

In hindsight, I’d describe 2014 as a year of building foundations. Much more than ever before did I focus on creating a stable basis for future things rather than pushing ahead first. This goes both for personal and professional life, like the way I set up my new company as an umbrella for all new projects and signing a long term office lease.

That, and strong presence of both Japan and Finland (in the form of trips, client work and collaborations) which I very much welcome.

(more…)

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Thanks & Happy Holidays: That was 2013

By Peter Bihr
In biographies 2.0, personal, travel
6 Min read
T

This is my sixth end-of-year post (all prior ones here). Stunned!

So what happened?

Friends & Family

 

In the spring, I married M, and couldn’t possibly be happier. This alone would have made my year perfect.

I’m very happy that more friends married, and that some had babies, and that my goddaughter is growing up nicely, and that my family is healthy & happy & overall very well. So that part’s all good.

That alone would make for a (very happy, but also) really boring post, so here goes.

Travel

Once more, I feel very lucky in that I got to travel a lot. Destinations include (in alphabetical order) Bad Herrenalb, Bad Kreuznach, Belgrade, Brighton, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, India, Karlsruhe, Kassel, London, Portugal, Rijeka and Scotland and Wales, spread out over about 15 trips and about 102 days total. Among other things, I got to spend about a month each in Buenos Aires and India, and got to hike in Scotland, Wales and England.

In this order: India, England, Buenos Aires.

A year of experimentation & learning

Even more than in many previous years I got to experiment and learn a lot. I got to dig into a whole slew of tech & business ideas, work with old and new collaborators, and generally just opened up the possibility space really wide before slowly starting to narrow it down again. Maybe the biggest change for me in terms of business thinking was to slowly adjust away from the mental model of client work (which is all about billable days) and into product/dev work (which is all about progress first and cashflow/billable time second). If, like me, you’ve worked almost always for clients (ie. sold services) this is a big change, and one that takes some getting used to. It does feel great, though, to invest time into building something new.

Along the way, I started and subsequently pulled the plug on one company and one service, started two conferences that are going strong (UIKonf, ThingsCon), and am in the early stages of launching another thing with a much-esteemed partner. Long-time collaborator and office mate Matt and I also built several prototypes of digital-to-physical print things, one of which hasn’t made it past the “print-out-a-test-dummy” phase, one of which is about to go into production. All of these also serve as an example for my previous point – it’s a mental shift from billing hours to investing into product development.

ThingsCon & UIKonf & Ignite Berlin & NEXT Berlin

If anything, chairing or programming (and sometimes initiating) conferences has taken on a whole new quality for me this year.

There’s NEXT Berlin of course, where like the last years I’m a curator and program director along with the fantastic Monique van Dusseldorp. (Disclosure: SinnerSchrader/NEXT Berlin are clients of mine.)

Then there’s Ignite Berlin, which has now been going strong since 2010 I believe – we just had #4 a few months ago.

UIKonf was such a resounding success that Chris, Matt and I aren’t just continuing it into 2014, but also incorporated to make it easier to run sustainably.

And then of course there’s Things, which started out with a harmless conversation with Max & Simon and then took on such a life of its own – my mind’s blown. We’re just getting started, and already we’ve been getting so much fantastic feedback on all the backchannels that I can’t wait for the day.

Wrote some stuff

I got to write a few things, and give some talks (actually, mostly panels this year).

Wrote the cover story for this issue on T3N.

Didn’t actually write for this second issue of The Alpine Review, but did manage to contribute at least some content, interviews & contacts. Here, the copy doubles as backdrop for a planning call for UIKonf.

Oh yeah, over at KANT, we also expermimented with a topic sprint, aka five people in a room for a day cranking out a report that will be published come night-time, no matter what. Super interested time constraints to work with. Curious to refine this process some more.

Firsts & some things I learned along the way

Along the way, I learned some things and did some things for the first time.

I take enough steps every day. I should sleep a little more. Standing desks are great, but improvised standing desks are only so-so. Getting funding for a product is both harder and easier than expected. Kindles break easily if you twist their display. Built a lamp, and poured something out of concrete. Well-made shoes are awesome. It’s worth locking the door all the way. Travel is good and productive. Went to Argentina, Croatia, India, Serbia, Wales for the first time.

Some things I’ll try to do (read: resolutions!)

Policy input. For quite a while I’ve been wondering how to best make a contribution to how we can get Berlin/Germany/Europe ready for the 21st century on a policy level, namely what a digital agenda for Europe should look like. It’s a super relevant issue (rather, a whole slew of issues) that I feel a certain obligation to contribute my part in. How? Not sure yet.

Learn more languages. In terms of actual languages, I was lucky to attend a school that gave me a very solid prep. And even though I lost most of my fluency due to inactivity in French and Latin and stuck mostly to English (and my native German of course), it gave me a broad base to build on. So, no more excuses not to learn Spanish. I’ve been training a bit via Duolingo, and want to intensify it. But also I feel like brushing up on my meager coding skills. Codecademy & Co to the rescue!

Figure out how to best consolidate all the roles and hats I wear professionally depending on context. Most likely, I’ll just roll them all into one company to make it easier for others to understand, and to minimize administration.

More family visits. Been getting better about this over the last year or two, and I’ll try to make a point of seeing both my parents and my sister more often. Neither of us is getting any younger, so there’s really no good reason not to make the effort.

So what’s next?

I’m typing this on my way to a brief holiday trip to my family and later to see some friends. Back in Berlin, I’m looking forward to a pretty intense 2014. Between three conferences more or less back-to-back in May that will need quite some preparation in the first months of the year, a talk in January in Amsterdam, client work, a new venture and quite a few upcoming work-related trips, I won’t be bored anytime soon.

Happy Holidays

On that note, I got nothing more to say than Happy Holidays. I hope you’ll have a great start in 2014. See you on the other side.

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The Waving Cat