It’s official! There is going to be a second installment of TEDxKreuzberg. On 9 Dec (Thursday), 7-10pm, we will have a spectacular line-up of inspiring speakers at Betahaus Berlin.
Last year we had a fantastic time. I was really happy to hear that Christoph Fahle wanted to go into round two as well. So this time it’ll be a co-production of Betahaus and Third Wave Berlin.
For all the details please read the official announcement and follow the blog for updates as they come in.
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Mark Surman, Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation and program chair of Drumbeat Learning, Freedom and the Web Festival, kindly gave me an interview about Drumbeat and why the Open Web is so relevant.
In three sentences: What is Drumbeat?
Ok. Three sentences. I’ll try
1. Mozilla exists to make sure the internet stays open and awesome.
2. With Drumbeat, we’re moving beyond Firefox to build more things that make the web better — not just software.
3. We’re doing this by reaching out new kinds of people — teachers, filmmakers, lawyers, journalists.
Why is that important?
It’s important because these people — in fact all of us — will have an impact on the future of the web, on what the web becomes.
If we care about the internet for the long run, that means getting people like educators involved in shaping the web in their world. Especially educators who are trying to disrupt and innovate. We can give them open web tools and thinking to help do this, which in turn helps the education web move in the right direction — towards something open, free and hackable.
This same scenario plays out with journalists, artists, filmmakers and so on. We want to help the innovators in these spaces take best advantage of the web, get them on board as our allies.
Which fields is Drumbeat focusing on?
Education and cinema are the two places we’ve put the most attention on in the first year. You can look at:
P2PU School of Webcraft, where we’re helping to build a free online school where web developers teach each other.
And Web Made Movies, a lab where filmmakers and engineers work together invent new kinds of web films.
These are examples of the kinds of things we want to do with Drumbeat. There are dozens more small projects brewing. I think you’ll see some the ones in journalism and art grow bigger next year.
In November you’re planning the Drumbeat Festival. What’s that?
It’s a crazy event where 400 people come to talk about the connections between learning, freedom and the web. And make things. And have fun.
More concretely: we have working on everything from web developer education to open text books to hackerspaces coming. And alot of tech and open source people. The ideas for them to find ways to shape the future of learning together.
It’s meant to be the first of many events like this, where we invite the the kind of people we’d like to bring into Drumbeat, find ways to work together and to work with each other.
Next year, we’ll likely have a different theme. Maybe ‘media, freedom and the web’?
How can the rest of us get involved?
It really depends what your interested in. If you are an educator or filmmaker, the projects I’ve mentioned above are easy entry points. And there will be more entry points in places like journalism, art, etc. coming very soon. Same goes if you’re a web developer or engineer who wants to help on projects like these.
More broadly than this, there want to do local Drumbeat events and a online activities and challenges that almost anyone can get involved in. We toyed with this in 2010, but really plan to go bigger with them next year.
Drumbeat Festival is from Nov 3-5 at Barcelona. The (already pretty sweet) program is further developed in the Wiki. Register for Drumbeat Festival here.
The interview was first published on netzpiloten.de under a CC by-nc-sa license. Photo by Mark Surman (some rights reserved).
[permalink]Over the last couple years I’ve been involved in a fair number of events, almost all of which were organized on a non-profit basis and only with volunteer work (Ignite Berlin, TEDxKreuzberg, atoms&bits Festival, Likemind Berlin…).
Motivation & leadership in volunteer settings In this kind of setting, different rules from “professional” (as in commercial) events apply. Where the team members have no monetary incentives and most certainly no power hierarchy as they do in their day jobs, most of the traditional kinds of sanctions won’t work. (You can’t not pay someone, or threaten to fire them, right?) On the other hand, you can achieve wonderful things if you manage to harness these people’s passion – and you know they’re passionate, why else would they have volunteered in the first place?
There are many good thoughts on volunteer leadership or open leadership out there. Let me quote Chris Messina (writing here about leadership in open source contexts):
It is my belief that good, reflective and responsive leadership is needed for any project to find success. But that leadership need not be hierarchical. Or dominant. Or, most of all, exclusively masculine. And it also can’t be cowardly or cow-tow to the imposing and voluminous voice of the community it serves. That’s why leadership is important; it’s not about power, it’s about clarity of purpose and of seeing things through to their desired conclusion, deterring that which threatens to scuttle the intentions of the group. (…) So, coming back to the meeting last night, we have goals in common, even if the path is not clear. Which is precisely the kind of opportunity in which leadership emerges — the kind that isn’t focused in any one individual but is shared among the individuals in the collective. In a very real sense, it is the BarCamp model of leadership, of self-determination, of personal responsibility and of realizing your own role in consciously creating circumstances for yourself.
That sums it up, really: leadership is important to help the group stay on track, and to help the decision-making process along, to help good decisions emerge from within the group. That said, personally I prefer to work with really busy folks as they tend to be well organized. Or maybe it’s the other way round and I just tend to like to work with certain people who also happen to be very busy. Be it either way, you need to have a strong, diverse and super reliable core team so that everybody can work autonomously where needed and be able to rely on the others to do their job.
Also, make sure to credit everybody’s input wherever possible, and for those volunteers who help out outside the core team, make sure to look after them, manage expectations and break down their tasks to actionable chunks so they won’t get frustrated. Communicate, rather more then less.
When picking the core team, also make sure to know everybody’s motivation: all members’ goals and motivations should dove-tail with the overall goal of the event, otherwise the group will spend too much time on self-organization and too little on the actual event.
Clear vision, goal & expectations Know where you’re headed, and why. Don’t just start organizing, make sure to take the time to figure out a common vision that can serve as a framework for all other pieces. Why do you want to organize this event, and what are your goals? Then, based on these, discuss the expectations. Big event or small, commercial or non-commercial, something to bring friends and family or rather a business type of conference? You don’t want to just keep discussing this all the way up to the event.
Size matters If you can expect large sponsoring, a large event might be for you. Otherwise, keep it simple. There’s enough to worry about once you all get rolling – why put in extra barriers or pressure? Again, be clear of why and how you want to play this thing.
Keep a clear schedule You should have (and openly communicate) a schedule: When do you need to book the location, when announce speakers, when start the list of attendees? At which point do sponsors and media come in? It helps having one person in charge of the schedule who can prod the others if need be.
Get organized This is even more obvious than the others: Get organized! Make lists, agree on the tools and communication channels early on, talk about the frequency of calls/emails/meetups so everybody knows how much time budget to set aside. (My guess: it’ll turn out to be 30% more time-intense than expected.) Switching any of these channels in mid-project creates a bunch of overhead that is really avoidable.
Stick to your plan Once you’re set to go, stick with your plan. Don’t re-visit it and re-start the discussion over and over again. That said, if you notice something doesn’t work out, change it. It’s just a plan.
There will be times where things are running smoothly and times where they aren’t. Make sure to not openly point fingers, but rather discuss any potential issues one a one-to-one basis, preferably face to face. Publicly appreciate the achievements. A few nice words go a long way.
That’s a first summary of some of the things I’ve learned over the years; I might flesh those out at some point and expand the list. Curious to hear about your experiences!
ps. By way of blunt promotion, please allow me to plug a few upcoming events:
Being a bit of a geek, I’m always interested in which tools & techniques people use to go about their things. So it’s only fair I also share mine. Here’s a quick snapshot of how we’ve been organizing our company. Keep in mind, what works for our agency of three, Third Wave, may or may not work in your context.
For us, collaboration and mobility are key requirements, so besides a few exceptions working exclusively local isn’t really an option.
Experiment & share your experiences!
Email: Nothing beats Google Mail at this point. Period. Google Apps allow you to use Gmail with your own domain.
Project management: That’s a much more tricky one, as different needs and preferences both inside and outside the company play a role. We’re betting on Basecamp, the web-based project management tool by 37Signals. It’s relatively light-weight, has a fairly comprehensive UI and it’s heavily based on email, which makes it easy to use even when you’re on your phone or extremely low bandwidth (think train rides). This also makes it easier for clients to get involved if they choose to. Hands down the only annoying thing I found so far is that you sometimes have to change through several information layers when moving from one project to another – but it’s doable.
Contact management: Again, we’re going with 37 Signal’s Highrise. Not sure how happy I am with this solution yet. Then again, I don’t know anything better either, so there you go.
Chat & ongoing discussions: There’s always some things that require some discussion, so you need some kind of chat. Skype is very powerful, but also quite invasive. For good measure we’ve been using the third 37Signals product, Campfire. Not all that powerful, but it does the job. Of all the 37Signals tools we use, this is the first I’d give up, but it’s really ok.
Fluid: With all these browser-based services, the tab overkill gets even worse, so you might want to pull some of them out of the browser and into their own app. Fluid for Mac does just that. Make sure to learn how to work the settings and customize them to your needs. If you don’t it’s the software from hell, but once it works it’s a charm.
Phone: Still looking for the best Voip solution, particularly since all of us will be traveling a lot. So far, we’re old school: landline and cell phone, occasionally a Skype call.
Twitter: We have a shared Twitter account (@thirdwaveberlin), but everybody uses their own preferred tool to manage that one.
Files: Dropbox can be very useful in sharing larger files while working on a project.
No big surprises in the whole thing I guess. Always keep in mind that certain projects have security requirements that may not be met by cloud services. Where that isn’t an issue, the setup described above can be enough to get you going.
[permalink][A note to my international readers: This post has to be in German as it concerns mostly German media; the next one will be in English again. Sorry for the inconvenience.]
“Markus Schächter warnt vor Apple, Google & Co“, so die etwas verstörende Überschrift eines Interviews anlässlich der Münchner Medientage. Vorweg ein ausführliches Zitat von Herrn Schächter (Hervorhebungen von mir):
Ich hoffe, dass wir gemeinsam erkennen, was die Stunde geschlagen hat und dass jede rückwärtsgewandte Diskussion uns keinen Schritt weiter bringt. Wer einen Blick über die Grenzen wirft, der sieht, dass sich die Netzgiganten neu aufstellen. In den USA zeigen Google-TV und Apple-TV wohin die Reise geht. Suchmaschinen und Vertriebsplattformen saugen jeden Content auf, ganz egal von wem er stammt – Zeitungen, Verlage, Sender, Produzenten. Unsere Produkte werden zum Gegenstand fremder Geschäftsmodelle. Die heutigen Hersteller und Verbreiter publizistischer und kultureller Inhalte verlieren die Hoheit über ihre Produkte, wenn sie nicht sehr genau aufpassen. Ich sage es nicht zum ersten Mal: Es wird Zeit, dass wir in Deutschland endlich aufhören, die falschen Türen zu bewachen.
In diesem einen Absatz des Interviews steckt so wahnsinnig viel Verkehrtes, ich weiß kaum, wo ich anfangen soll. Also der Reihe nach, Satz für Satz.
Eines noch vorweg: Ich habe größten Respekt und vollste Hochachtung vor den öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendern und habe auch immer wieder mit und für diese gearbeitet. Viele meiner Freunde, Bekannte und Kollegen arbeiten als Journalisten oder Medienberater für privatwirtschaftliche oder öffentlich-rechtliche Medienbetriebe aller Art. Meine beiden Uniabschlüsse haben den Schwerpunkt Medien und Kommunikation, meine Magisterarbeit beschäftigte sich mit dem Medienwandel und dem Einfluss von Blogs auf die politische Berichterstattung. Anders gesagt, ich kann guten Gewissens sagen, dass ich mich ein wenig mit dem deutschen Mediensystem beschäftigt habe und mich sehr dafür interessiere. Niemals würde es mir in den Sinn kommen, den öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk abzuschaffen.
Jetzt wo diese Frage aus dem Weg ist, gehen wir an die Substanz:
Markus Schächter: “Ich hoffe, dass wir gemeinsam erkennen, was die Stunde geschlagen hat und dass jede rückwärtsgewandte Diskussion uns keinen Schritt weiter bringt.”
Herr Schächter, ich stimme Ihnen voll und ganz zu. Lassen Sie uns die Zukunft diskutieren und die alten Streitreflexe zwischen öffentlich-rechtlichen und privaten Sendern sowie zwischen deutschen Medien und US-Internetunternehmen unterdrücken.
Markus Schächter: Wer einen Blick über die Grenzen wirft, der sieht, dass sich die Netzgiganten neu aufstellen. In den USA zeigen Google-TV und Apple-TV wohin die Reise geht.
Richtig, in den USA werden gerade die Spielregeln für die Zukunft des Bewegtbildes geschrieben. Besser gesagt: Dort ist das, was wir als “Zukunft des Bewegtbilds” bezeichnen würden längst Alltag: Netflix, Hulu und Co zeigen, wie einfach und gut Video-On-Demand-Dienste und Web-TV funktionieren können. Übrigens ohne dass sich dabei TV und Web in die Quere kommen würden. Hier gibt es diese Dienste nicht, nicht zuletzt da Medien und Politik in Deutschland als überraschend geschlossene Front gegenüber US-amerikanischen Onlineunternehmen auftreten. Damit schadet Deutschland gleich mehrfach – für Medien- und Internetunternehmen wird der Standort unattraktiver, Medienkonsumenten bleiben viele Spannende Kanäle unzugänglich.
Markus Schächter: Suchmaschinen und Vertriebsplattformen saugen jeden Content auf, ganz egal von wem er stammt – Zeitungen, Verlage, Sender, Produzenten.
Herr Schächter, bitte machen Sie doch Ihre Hausaufgaben. Eine Suchmaschine saugt keinen Content auf, sie indiziert ihn, macht ihn auffindbar. Was Suchmaschinen tun ist das Gegenteil dessen, was Sie hier faktenfrei behaupten: Sie stehlen diese Inhalte nicht etwa, wie Sie mit Ihrer Formulierung suggerieren, sondern sorgen dafür, dass mehr Menschen darauf aufmerksam werden. Sollte eine Zeitung, ein Verlag, ein Sender oder Produzent dies nicht wünschen, so gibt es einfachste technische Möglichkeiten, die Indizierung zu verhinden – nur sollten Sie sich bewusst sein, dass die Inhalte damit massiv an Reichweite verlieren. (Auf der Habenseite ließe sich freilich verbuchen, dass Sie Ihr Budget an SEO-Maßnahmen einsparen könnten.)
Markus Schächter: Unsere Produkte werden zum Gegenstand fremder Geschäftsmodelle.
Es ist wahr, andere Firmen verdienen daran, Ihre Inhalte zugänglich zu machen. Nur gehen diese Verdienste nicht auf Ihre Kosten, da wir hier nicht von einem Nullsummenspiel sprechen, sondern von klassischem Mehrwert im besten Sinne. Dies gilt ganz besonders für die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender, für die Sie sprechen. Im Gegensatz zu ihren privatwirtschaftlichen Kollegen lässt sich wirklich nur schwer argumentieren, dass Ihre Mission dadurch gefährdet ist, wenn Google ein paar Werbungen neben Ihren Textteasern einblendet.
Markus Schächter: Die heutigen Hersteller und Verbreiter publizistischer und kultureller Inhalte verlieren die Hoheit über ihre Produkte, wenn sie nicht sehr genau aufpassen.
Die Hersteller verlieren keineswegs die Hoheit über ihre Produkte, lediglich über ihre Verbreitung – wenn überhaupt. Ich frage mich: wo genau liegt das Problem? Kontrollverlust ist eines der Kerncharakteristika des 21. Jahrhunderts. Dies gilt es als Chance zu begreifen.
Markus Schächter: Ich sage es nicht zum ersten Mal: Es wird Zeit, dass wir in Deutschland endlich aufhören, die falschen Türen zu bewachen.
Herr Schächter, hier bin ich wieder bei Ihnen. Bitte nehmen Sie sich Ihre eigenen Worte zu Herzen und hören Sie auf, die falschen Türen zu bewachen. So intuitiv der Ruf nach mehr Kontrolle auch sein mag, er ist an dieser Stelle nicht nur sinnlos, sondern schädlich. Ein Schelm, der Ihnen unterstellen würde, die allgemeine Angst im deutschen Medienbetrieb vor den Unwägbarkeiten des Medienwandels und den US-Webunternehmen auszunutzen, um den Schulterschluss mit den privaten Sendergruppen zu suchen und somit von der Kritik an den öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendern abzulenken.
Es ist ein Problem, das die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender schon lange umtreibt: “Wie können wir unseren Erfolg messen?” Allzu häufig messen sie sich mit den Maßstäben der Privatwirtschaft: Reichweite, Page Impressions, Unique Visits. Nicht uninteressant, doch basieren diese Messgrößen auf der Grundannahme, dass Werbeplätze verkauft werden müssen. Das Paradigma im öffentlichen Rundfunk ist freilich ein anderes: Bildung, Information, Gebührenakzeptanz. Diese lassen sich nicht über Reichweite messen, andere Maßstäbe müssen her. Die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender müssen sich nicht verstecken – aber sie müssen sich auch nicht schützend vor die Privatwirtschaft stellen. Google ist der Freund, nicht der Feind des öffentlichen Rundfunks.
[permalink]Last night our office neighbors, the good guys of Your Neighbours, celebrated their first anniversary. At the party I had the chance to talk to a whole bunch of great folks. There was one conversation though that I found particularly memorable.
A student asked me what I do for a living, and I told him about our company and how I freelanced as a consultant until very recently. We started talking about consulting in general and how the field has a certain reputation: often consultants have the reputation of being rip-offs, of coming in for a lot of money without any real stakes in their clients’ organizations, and leaving behind a trail of destruction after they move on to the next project. Not all that rarely consultants also sell clients services they don’t really need just to make a few extra bucks, in other words: they milk their victims clients.
I told him I was aware of that reputation, and I’d do my best not to follow this poor business practice. In fact, almost all my clients ever hired me on the basis of a recommendation. When I’m asked for advise I often send potential clients away, straight to my competition or my peer network, or I send them some information if I think any of these sources might be more helpful than my services. I prefer capacity building over lock-in any time. I compared client lock-in to the two-year contracts that many phone carriers force you to take, and how much I disliked them. I had the impression this student didn’t believe me. He kept inquiring.
Yes, in the short run that means I might lose some quick sales. Yet, I think it’s much better business practice to give the best advise you possibly can, even if that means sending clients away. Trust is the best basis for long-term relationships, in business just as in private life. In other words: I’d rather send a potential client away and help them reach their goals then lock them in with a long-term contract and have them try to get out unhappily. It’s better for their business, it’s better for mine, and it most certainly is a lot more fulfilling than a quick buck.
I hope I could help this fellow re-assess some basic business philosophy in order for him to have a better life later on. Really, it isn’t more than a common sense approach to running your business.
That said, we’ll have a launch party for Third Wave Berlin soon. I’ll post the date as soon as we have it.
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