It’s official: atoms&bits Festival (a&b) is going to happen. It’s all confirmed and getting ready to go.
You may have read about it here, over at Nicole Ebber or on Hallenprojekt. You might have seen the pics on Flickr or read some tweets (see this link for a twitter search, @atomsandbits or @atomsandbits_de).
But all that doesn’t matter, since a lot has changed since the first blog posts and now we have all the info we need to really go public. Here’s the pitch:
What is atoms&bits? atoms&bits (a&b) are the smallest elements in our modern society. That’s what the atoms&bits Festival is all about: how we change society bit by bit, atom by atom – organized through the Internet and with real world results. a&b is a meet up for visionaries, tinkerers, activists, geeks, and artists – in short, everyone that celebrates a new culture of collective endeavor, and do-it-yourself. The five themes that everything revolves around are: (1) new forms of work (Coworking), (2) a fresh desire to tinker, (3) a new culture of openness (OpenEverything), (4) participatory politics, (5) the art of the production of art, as well as internet culture as the binding element that made all of this possible in the first place. a&b Festival is a decentralized event that stretches over 10 days (September 18-27th). Individual events are taking place in different locations from Berlin to Brooklyn, from Munich to Montreal. The festival will reach beyond the physical boundaries of the event, allowing participation throughout the world. Globally more than a thousand participants are expected. In order to foster sustainable networks and collaboration, we’re creating connections to other events that complement the idea of the a&b Festival: all2gethernow (Topic: music; Location: Berlin), Breakout (Topic: coworking; Location: global); OpenEverything (Topic: open source principles; Location: global); Transmediale (Topic: art & digital culture; Location: Berlin). a&b Camp is one of the central points of the a&b Festival. On the weekend of the German federal elections (September 26-27th) around 400 participants will meet at a&b Camp to discuss, plan projects, and to network. Borrowing from the Barcamp format, all participants will actively engage in the event; the presentations (“sessions”) are interactive and created by the participants themselves. In the open “Barcamp” area, participants will organize completely free sessions. Moreover, central themes of the a&b Festival will be addressed and discussed in several designated and curated rooms: Coworking, DIY, and OpenEverything. Spatial proximity and thematic ties will ensure intensive crossover among these topics. The highlight of the worldwide festival and the kick-off for atoms&bits affiliated projects will be the atoms&bits weekend on September 25-27th. In Berlin the a&b Camp around Moritzplatz and several nearby events will take place then. The program includes exhibitions, live screenings, the a&b party, tinkering workshops, live coverage of the elections online, as well as an election party and more.
I hope it all makes sense to you – if you have any questions, feel free to ask! Also, you can check out the progress on atomsandbits.net, where we’ll add info and the program step by step.
Next steps: We’ll publish the names of those who coordinate the five topical tracks. They will be able to invite a few people to the conference. The other seats will be open for registration, details about the best way to register will be up soon.
We’re also still looking for sponsors. The first bunch of sponsors is confirmed, but we need some more support. You won’t find a better audience than this. Please drop us a line at sponsoring@atomsandbits.net or get in touch with me directly and we’ll send you the sponsoring options.
Update 04 Sept: We put up a FAQ on the atoms&bits website that should answer a few of your questions. Otherwise feel free to drop me a line since a lot of the content is only available in German at this point. Email me at peter@thewavingcat.com
[permalink]Earlier today I happened to see this phone:
What you probably can’t really see thanks to the poor video quality is that this phone is actually branded as an iPhone. It’s hilarious.
I have to admit I find it very refreshing in a way to see that these folks didn’t even try to clone an iPhone or anything similar. They built this thing with no resemblance whatsoever to the original product. It’s all blinkenlights and shiny pink and full of logos. (Although it supposedly holds two SIM cards, which would be a pretty impressive feat given it’s otherwise not-quite-so-premium nature.)
Anyway, this inspired me to a brief Google search for iPhone fakes (some of which in fact are spelled lPhone, with a lower-case L). I’m sure you can find even better ones than that. (Feel free to post them in the comments.) Please note that most of these aren’t even real clones. They are basically freely invented and just (totally illegitimately and without any real resemblance to the original) labeled as iPhones. However, you can clearly see different degrees of inventiveness.
Because there’s a lot of images here, the complete post comes after the jump.
[permalink]Just a few brief shout outs:
Likemind Berlin: This coming Friday, Thomas and I will be hosting Likemind Berlin. This has been growing into a bit of a tradition and it’s always been a fun and interesting way to meet folks. Kickoff, as always, is 9am at St Oberholz, coffee is sponsored by Photocase (Thanks!) until it runs out (usually around 11am).
atoms&bits: atoms&bits Festival and Camp are coming together. Plenty of news there. Some in my earlier blog post, but most importantly all will be up on the website in a few days: www.atomsandbits.net.
SXSW 2010: As pointed out in my last blog post, Robin Grant has submitted a panel proposal for next year’s SXSW about Social Media in Europa and invited me to join him on the panel to say a few words about Social Media in Germany. The panel is aimed at helping U.S. and international startups and brands get to grips with the European social media market, so it could be pretty cool. If you have a spare minute, it’d be great if you could vote for the panel on the SXSW website.
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While 2008 was a major conferencing year for me and this year I was slightly more selective (and instead am co-organizing one myself called Atoms&Bits), I’m planning to only attend those conferences next year that I really, really want to experience. Off the top of my head, that’s Reboot, SXSW, maybe Shift and a barcamp or two. Everything else I’ll have to see.
That said, here’s some news that just reached me about SXSW Interactive:
Robin Grant of We Are Social has put in a proposal for a SXSW panel called “Lost In Translation: The Nuances Of European Social Media“:
Europe is ahead of the US in terms of the consumer usage of social media, and yet little attention is often given to the nuances of what is on one hand is the world’s largest economy and on the other a collection of 48 countries with very different cultures. Find out why the blogging scene in Paris is 2 years ahead of the US, the Brits are all a Twitter, the Dutch prefer Hyves to Facebook and the Germans will take any chance to give brands a hostile reception in social media.
In case the panel is going to happen, Robin kindly offered to invite me along with a few other European social media practitioners to take part in the panel.
Besides being invited, I think this topic – engaging the European market – is becoming more and more important particularly for US startups. And while it’s true that the German market can be tricky, it’s not impossible to navigate, and there’s lots to gain. (Side note by way of giving an example: Just today I hosted a blogger roundtable for the Jusos election campaign (full disclosure: paid gig, see client list) and it was not at all hostile but in fact very constructive.)
I’ve worked briefly with We Are Social in the past (my client list) and had the pleasure of interacting with Robin a few times. We’ve never met in person, but I feel like I can give a two-thumbs-up for this panel. And if you vote for the panel, maybe you’ll help me get to SXSW.
Voting the panels is easy: after signing up, it’s a simple thumb-up/thumb-down vote.
[permalink]Another brief note: To make this site’s About section more accessible and transparent – and simply less crowded – I split up the About page into About (brief overview), Clients (client list, disclosures and the like) and CV (mostly for completeness’ sake).
That said, instead of digging around in there, I recommend instead you get in touch with me via Twitter here.
[permalink]Just a brief note: Over the last few days my contact form has been spammed like never before. I’ll be fixing the contact form shortly. In case you want to get in touch quickly, please feel free to ping me on any of the channels listed under thewavingcat.com/contact or via Twitter (@thewavingcat.com).
Thanks!
Update 17 August: The contact form should be up and working again. However, comments are still buggy. Trying to sort it out as quickly as possible. Sorry for the inconveniences.
Update 18 August: Contact form AND comments seem to be working again. If you still run into any trouble, please let me know!
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