July | 2009 | Peter Bihr

Likemind Berlin featured on taz.de

30-07-2009

berlin, cyberculture, likemind, media coverage

Kicking off Likemind Berlin at St Oberholz. Left: David Noël (featured in the taz.de article), right: Thomas Praus, Likemind Berlin co-organizer.

At the most recent Likemind Berlin, freelance journalist Johannes Gernert dropped in to talk to freelancers and startups about the state of affairs, what with the economic crisis and so forth. Today on taz.de his article is online and features Likemind prominently: Neustart in Zeiten der Krise (German original version) / Restarting In Times Of Crisis (English version via Google Translate).

An excerpt (first the original German version):

[Markus Pohl] passt damit an diesem Morgen ganz gut ins Café St. Oberholz, wo an jedem dritten Freitag eine Veranstaltung namens Likemind stattfindet. Die Internet-Kreativen aus Mitte treffen sich zum Kaffeetrinken. Es sind viele Freiberufler, Programmierer, Marketingmenschen, Strategieberater. Leute, die es sich leisten können, um 9.30 Uhr erst mal ein bisschen zu smalltalken, bevor sie mit der Arbeit anfangen. Likemind ist eine gute Gelegenheit, etwas darüber herauszufinden, wie die Krise Berlins IT-Mitte trifft. Als vor fast zehn Jahren die New-Economy-Blase geplatzt ist, hat es viele Start-ups in den Straßen, um den Rosenthaler Platz herum richtiggehend zerbröselt. Das war zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Im Jahre 2009 scheint das anders auszusehen. Zwischen 2006 und 2008 sind 128 Start-ups in Berlin gegründet worden. So viele wie in keiner anderen deutschen Stadt. Danach folgt München, mit 118 Gründungen, Platz drei belegt Frankfurt. Die “spektakulären Ausfälle”, bei denen vermeintlich viel versprechende Projekte insolvent gegangen sind, seien nicht in der Hauptstadt verzeichnet worden, sagt Alexander Hüsing, der als Betreiber des Portals deutsche-startups.de regelmäßig Statistiken herausgibt. Man hat gelernt. So richtig schlimm, sagen viele im Erdgeschoss des St. Oberholz, trifft es vor allem große Werbeagenturen, die für Autofirmen arbeiten oder für andere Großkonzerne. Die würden aber gar nicht so sehr in Berlin-Mitte sitzen, sondern eher in Düsseldorf. Die Start-up-Kultur dagegen, das beobachten auch viele, habe sich geändert. Dass es für eine gute Idee von einem Investor einfach mal ein paar Millionen Euro gibt, um zu sehen, was daraus wird, sei ohnehin längst nicht mehr der Fall. “Es wird weiterhin gegründet, wenn auch seit 2008 etwas weniger”, sagt Hüsing. “Dafür sind die Konzepte durchdachter.”

Google translation, slightly fixed by me:

[Markus Pohl] fits in well at this very good morning to the Café St. Oberholz, where every third Friday at an event called Likemind place. Internet creatives from Mitte meet up for coffee. The Internet creatives from mid meet for coffee drinking. There are lots of freelancers, programmers, marketing folks, strategy consultants. People who can afford to have smalltalk at 9.30 before they begin working. Likemind is a good opportunity to find out something about how the crisis in Berlin-Mitte meets IT. As nearly a decade before the New Economy bubble burst, many start-ups in the streets around Rosenthaler Platz downright crumbled. That was the beginning of the 21st Century. In the year 2009 it seems different. Between 2006 and 2008, 128 start-ups have been founded in Berlin. More than in any other German city. This is followed by Munich with 118 founded, Frankfurt comes in third. The “spectacular failures” in which supposedly promising projects have gone bankrupt, were not in the capital, says Alexander Hüsing, who as the operator of the portal German-startups.de regularly published statistics. People have learned. Many on the ground floor of the St. Oberholz say it is bad rather for large advertising agencies, who work for car companies, banks or other large corporations. But those aren’t so much in Berlin, but rather in Düsseldorf. The start-up culture on the other hand has changed. The idea that it might be good for an investor to just throw in a few million to see what will happen is no longer the case anyway. “Companies are still being founded, even if slightly less in 2008″, says Hüsing. “But the concepts are more though-out.”

Join us at a Likemind near you. They take place every third Friday of the month all around the world. The next one will be 21 August. In Berlin, we kick off at 9am at Cafe St Oberholz, Rosenthaler Platz.

Photo (Creative Commons) by Henrik Berggren, who founded Likemind Berlin

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German Young Voter Campaign Copies U.S. Don’t Vote Video

By: Peter Bihr

29-07-2009

campaigns, politics

identical storm troopers All of them are looking the same. In the Imperial Army that’s probably good. In political campaigning, not so much.

Now here I’m in a bit of a dilemma. Check out this German ~~knock-off~~ version of the Don’t Vote video. (Both versions at the end of this post.)

On one hand, I’m always glad about anything that encourages folks to vote. I’m very politically interested, I supported a much-talked about recent online petition (see my blog posts), signed a class-action lawsuit against data retention, interned at – and later briefly worked as an editor for – German online politics magazine and think tank politik-digital.de, did all kinds of stuff, mostly outside party politics. These days (disclaimer!) I’m an adviser to the youth online campaign of the SPD, more concretely Jusos.

All that to say: I really appreciate any effort whatsoever that individuals, and organizations of any kind take to get more people to vote, because I think political action in general and voting in particular is incredibly important.

But. And it’s a big but. But on the other hand, the German internet scene has long since gotten the reputation of just copying U.S. web services. (I’m looking at you, StudiVZ, but not only at you, there’s many more cases just as blatant as that.) And in this sense, there’s this video here, called “geh nicht hin”, which translates into “don’t go there”, referring to the federal elections on 27 Sept.

The video is done, I’m sure, with the best of intentions. Produced, as far as I can tell, by probono.tv, a well-respected TV production company, and politik-digital.de, the very online politics magazine I used to work for and that I highly respect. The whole thing was done, in other words, by the good guys.

Now here I am, as I said, in a bit of a dilemma. It’s a good video, it’s a great idea, it’s smart, and it supports a cause I also support. But it’s a direct, 1:1 copy, a total knock-off. And to make matters worse, it’s a direct knock-off of the U.S. elections. Campaigners Germany-wide have talked for a long time about how Obama campaign blueprints can be adapted to the German elections. (I don’t think they can.) It’s become almost a joke: “Well, let’s do it like Obama!” But here we are, different country, different political system, different parties, candidates, issues. Different campaigning system even.

Still, this video just copies this American video (which I found pretty good), and just translates it. Which makes it look rather sad. And sure, you could argue that people here haven’t seen it and that a good adaption of an idea can still be valid, and that’s true. But this left me with a bit of a bitter taste.

~~(The website gehnichthin.de is showing a technical error message while I’m writing this, but the video is visible there.)~~ Update (29 July): gehnichthin.de is live and working now.

So here’s the two videos. Top: German version “geh nicht hin”. Bottom: U.S. version “don’t vote”.

Much more funny, by the way, is this video response by German bloggers. It translates to: “don’t go outside!”, poking fun at the cliché of geeks hiding behind their computers and avoiding the outside world:

Photo by Jeremy Mates (Creative Commons)

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Freelancers, be picky about your agency clients!

By: Peter Bihr

28-07-2009

reputation, social media

Are you a freelancer, and do you work with agencies regularly? To get a feeling for some issues, I have a few questions for you. Discussion is strongly encouraged. Here’s the question: How do you choose which agencies you work with? How do you pick your clients?

At first glance it can be hard to tell good from bad apples, to see which potential client rocks and which would suck.

To put this all in perspective: I work both directly with companies/non-profits/other organizations, and with agencies of all sorts (ad/PR/web/communication agencies etc). Mostly my experiences there have been good, I’ve been lucky with the choices I made, and I’d do most of that all over again any time. Sometimes I was approached by agencies that seemed very inexperienced, or just not fit for the social media world. In very few cases, the contacts seemed slightly sketchy. (Obviously I won’t tell any names. And I can promise you, all the clients listed in my client list are cool, otherwise I wouldn’t have worked with them.)

Just to give a few examples that I’ve encountered over the years: deadlines that changed constantly, both ways. Agencies approaching me, then never reacting to my replies. Bad payment morale. Agencies not getting social media and trying to buy their clients good comments and blogposts. Of course, where I encountered such issues I blew off any cooperation. And never regretted it.

Sometimes I’m told that freelancers can’t be picky about who they work for; that freelancers are service providers who need to do whatever is asked from them. I beg to differ. In my opinion, freelancers need to be particularly picky about their clients. Let me explain.

Every time you, as a freelancer, agree to work with a client, your name is on the line. That goes particularly for social media, where clients sometimes ask you to act in their clients’ stead under your real name. (Which in most cases is a bad idea in my opinion, but that’s also up for discussion.) So the choice of your clients is a pretty important one. After all, you don’t want to show up to the next meeting with colleagues and friends and be ashamed of what you did; or even worse, show up to a meeting with potential clients where they confront you with some embarrassing thing you did for another client and expect you to do the same thing or worse for them. (“Of course we expect you to use your private Facebook account and your blog to push our product, it’s the least you can do!”) Know what I mean?

What I’m interested in – and I guess some of you, too – is what’s a No Go? What’s ok and what isn’t; what makes you say no to a client? Is it certain demands, too little autonomy in how you do your part of the job, people not returning your calls, changing deadlines, unreliability? How do you pick your clients? How do you tell the bad apples from the rockstar clients you love to work with?

I’ll ask you to stick to one ground rule for your reply: Strictly no names. (I mean it: any agency name here as a negative example and I’ll delete the comment. ’cause that’s be bad style and you can do better.)

So let’s hear it!

Photo by 7-how-7 (Creative Commons)

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Hamburg Declaration: Google Embarrasses Whiny Euro Publishers

By: Peter Bihr

16-07-2009

connected world, digital divide, digital rights, How to work the internets (not), media

Publishers are throwing a tantrum

International publishers [list of names, PDF] recently signed the Hamburg Declaration (full text PDF, summary), a ridiculous, whiny document stating that content may not be freely available on the internet through the likes of Google News.

It’s rather sad, really, as it shows so clearly just how badly prepared these publishers are for the migration to the digital world. Frankly, reading it, I initially had the creeping suspicion that most supporters hadn’t really read the declaration before signing it. It’s a prime example of self-pity and group think.

An excerpt:

Universal access to websites does not necessarily mean access at no cost. We disagree with those who maintain that freedom of information is only established when everything is available at no cost. Universal access to our services should be available, but going forward we no longer wish to be forced to give away property without having granted permission. We therefore welcome the growing resolve of federal and state governments all over the world to continue to support the protection of the rights of authors, publishers and broadcasters on the Internet.

In other words: We want to sell our stuff, or rather ads, to eyeballs. But only on our turf, not out there on the mean wide web where we can’t monetize directly. And everybody else who might also profit, should be sued. Furthermore, the bullies over at Google can’t just take it, they’re mean, too.

Never mind that search engines are the one bringing them the very eyeballs they need to sell ads in the first place. I wonder how many people go directly to their newspaper’s website? Not all that many, I bet.

Now, slapping them in the face, comes Google with the very simple, yet powerful answer: The publishers are free not to share their stuff online. In fact, excluding their website from being spidered by search engines is a matter of a few lines of code, as Google explains in their European Public Policy blog.

It’s really as simple as that: Don’t want to share your stuff online? Stop search engines indexing your website, or put your content behind a paywall, or at least a registration. But don’t come crying when in six months you realize that nobody reads your paper anymore.

This shows so clearly how badly publishers here handle the ongoing transitions. It’s not easy, that’s clear for everybody. Clay Shirky speculates if newspapers are even important for the future of journalism:

For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.

And guess what: He’s right. No complaining and no law suit will save newspapers or publishers. Go out there, embrace the web and experiment. Say goodbye to old habits. Is it going to be painful? Sure. But not as embarrassing as having to have lectures on basic web technology read out to you by the companies who are your only hope, while you’re trying to chase them away.

Update 23 July 2009: This text (in German) by Stefan Niggemeier is a must-read follow up: Hamburger Bankrott-Erklärung.

Photo by roxycraft (Creative Commons)

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Save the date: 26/27 Sept Barcamp “Atoms & Bits”

By: Peter Bihr

15-07-2009

conference

Update (26.August): We’re getting there! Official announcements both on my blog and (so far in German only) on the atoms&bits website.

~~Note: We’re still in a very early planning stage, so please take this with some caution, it’s all very much in flow at this point.~~

Update (18. August):

Locations are confirmed: A&B Camp will be held at IMA Design Village, Betahaus will be the central hub for A&B Festival Berlin. Both are right next to each other for your convenience.
Sponsorship info is ready to be mailed out the next couple of days. We have very good sponsorship conditions and are looking for sponsors who fit the event. Sounds like you fit that description? Please drop me a line (peter@thewavingcat.com)!
Theme tracks: While A&B Camp sticks with the topics outlined below, A&B Festival will have five consistent theme tracks: Coworking, DIY/Maker, OpenEverything, Politics, Production of Art. Of course we’ll be weaving some kind of online component into many of the events.
Plenty of events are confirmed and being planned. Not giving any of that away yet because the website and program will be online in the next couple of days, but trust me, there’s some wicked stuff.

Updates (5. August):

Name: It’s official, the name will be “Atoms & Bits”. This will be the theme for both the larger festival and the concrete camp.
Twitter: updates via @atomsandbits
Hashtag: #atomsandbits or short: #anb.
Festival: Want to run your own event as part of the festival? Drop us a line to tell us about it and to learn about our next planning meetup: contact@atomsandbits.net
Camp: Won’t be called Barcamp since we’re going to tweak the format a little, but will be run on the same principles; difference: we’ll have sort-of curated dedicated rooms/tracks for some key topics (Coworking, DIY and Open Everything).
Topics: At the A&B Camp pretty much as outlined in the first draft. At the A&B Festival there are going to be additional events around art&culture as well as politics.
Party: Yes. (Details TBA.)
Photos/Who Are You?: A complete list of everybody involved will be on the website (see below). Until then, you can get an impression through these A&B photos on Flickr.
How to get involved: See below. For participants, we’ll announce the registration process soon. For sponsors, we’re putting together very decent sponsor packages. Until we have the website up and running, feel free to get in touch with me (peter@thewavingcat.com) and I’ll hook you up with the right info or right people. Please let me know if you’re interested in sponsoring primarily the camp or the whole festival.
Website: ~~Yes. Very, very soon. Promise.~~ www.atomsandbits.net
Logo, claim, press contacts & more info: Yes. Very, very soon. Promise.

Conference Season

The divide between online and offline world doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to most of us; neither does the divide between private and professional lives make a whole lot of sense to mobile laptop workers and coworkers; designers, scientists, musicians and other creatives are discovering and (in the best sense) exploiting the advantages of open source principles; and with open source hardware, even the barriers between the hardcore techie world and the rest of us out here are falling. (Arduino, anyone?)

All this, plus our love of the Barcamp unconference format made us want to run a really neat event. And now we found the perfect excuse to do so. So here goes what we’re thinking about – again, we’re in a very early stage, and none of this is confirmed yet – and how we’d like to combine all these aspects in one event. As an overarching theme, we picked the working title Atoms & Bits, referring to the blurring boundaries of online and offline world; not sure yet what it’ll be called in the end.

So, hopefully, on the last September weekend (26/27 Sept 2009) the following will be happening in Berlin (and at connected events all over Germany, Europe and worldwide):

Barcamp
A classic barcamp, no topical limits. This will be the frame, or rather umbrella, for the event. Let’s see if we can use the name barcamp with all the modifications to the format, or if we’ll call it some-or-another camp; details to be discussed. The important part is, The Rules Of Barcamp apply.
Maker/DIY/Tinker Track
a room (or track, or bunch of sessions) full of exploring the tinker and bausteln sphere, Arduinos, MAKEZINE-style stuff, maybe a 3d printer or two. This could also include some power stitching or guerilla knitting, of course. No limits.
Open Everything Global
Open Everything will have a global event on Sept 26. Open Everything is a great initiative taking open source principals and practices out of the software sphere and into other areas like design, fashion, science, business – you name it. We’re talking to the Open Everything Berlin crew and they’ve signaled interest, so let’s see if we can put this together. At the last global Open Everything, we witnessed some pretty fun handovers via livestream from HongKong to Berlin and then off to (I believe) the US. A room is reserved for Open Everything.
Breakout Festival
Also a global event, Breakout Festival is all about coworking (which personally I’ve been really interested in lately). With the Studio70 crew, Hallenprojekt.de and other coworking spaces in Berlin, we’d like to take part in Breakout, and what better opportunity the combining both events. Breakout lasts for a month (17 Sept to 16 Oct), so our Berlin event will fit right in. At least a room (or the cafe?) will be dedicated to discussing coworking and working on the concept. Edit: Sebastian just reminded me (thanks!) that this track is only a small part of the local activities within Breakout. There’s more, and there’ll also be more events the day before. (Some info over at Sebastian’s blog [de].)
Breakaway rooms
Inspired to plan or code something right there and then? If the location allows, we’ll also have breakaway rooms to dig in and work on stuff. After all, it’d be great to come out of this weekend with some concrete results at hand.

In general we feel that we should have some real results from this weekend. Get stuff done! So I’d like to encourage folks to stream or record sessions, and why not do brief interviews with the speakers and participants at the end of a session; I’m sure we can collect all the stuff and share it afterwards.

That said, and again with all the disclaimers noted at the beginning, Nicole and others and I will try our best to get this set up. And we’ll do all we can to make it rock.

Wanna get involved? We’ll be setting up a website and mixxt network soon; until then, feel free to get in touch via email (peter@thewavingcat.com), contact form or Twitter (@thewavingcat).

How to get involved?

As a sponsor: Barcamps are 100% non-commercial and free. That only works with your help. We need to pay for catering, internet, insurance, location. The currency we can pay you back, or rather pay it forward, is by links. We’ll ask the participants to blog and twitter about you. It’s a good audience. Sounds good to you? Please get in touch (peter@thewavingcat.com).
As a co-organizer, helping hand, volunteer: You’re the ones keeping it all together. We’ll be trying to make it as easy and smooth for everybody as possible. We can’t pay you (we don’t get paid either), but you’ll be part of something cool. Wanna help out? Get in touch!
As a participant: You’re the most important part of the event. You make it or break it. Yet, please wait a little bit, we’ll set up a system to handle registrations. (Thanks!)

Update 29 July 09: Comments were closed automatically after 14 days, now commenting is back open for another 14 days. Sorry, my bad. Also, more – and more concrete – info about barcamp, festival and how it all fits together very, very soon. Within a few days. For really up-to-date info, please follow @atomsandbits, but I’ll be posting an update here, too.

Photo by Boogah (Creative Commons)

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Fair Trade Music Label

By: Peter Bihr

13-07-2009

commons, digital rights, media

We prefer to know if our coffee & food was produced organically and if the farmers got their fair share, so we buy products that carry a Fair Trade certificate. But what about our music? Ever so often music labels are criticized for ripping off their contracted artists. Well, let’s see if that’s true. Let’s give an incentive for labels to pay their artists well and treat them fairly.

Could a Fair Trade Music label or certificate be the solution?

What is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalised producers and workers – especially in the South. Fair Trade organisations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade.

Why not use this definition for Fair Trade Music, too:

Fair Trade Music is a music production and trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in music production and trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better music production and trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, music producers and workers – especially in Major Labels. Fair Music Trade organisations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional music production and trade.

Is there already any initiative out there?

(And could someone please come up with a better name, and a logo?)

Update: There’s this initiative called fair-trade-music.de, but the website seems poorly maintained. Is this still active? (Thanks Martin!)

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Peter Bihr

Likemind Berlin featured on taz.de

German Young Voter Campaign Copies U.S. Don’t Vote Video

Hamburg Declaration: Google Embarrasses Whiny Euro Publishers

Save the date: 26/27 Sept Barcamp “Atoms & Bits”

Fair Trade Music Label

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