April | 2011 | Peter Bihr

They’ll always pay premium for the traditional experience

24-04-2011

It’s the year 2054. Teleportation is taking over as mainstream means of long-distance travel. Yet, not all airlines have died just yet. In fact, an airline executives is quoted in today’s newscast saying: “I’m convinced that there is inherent value in traditional air travel. Customers don’t just want to get from point A to point B. They will always pay premium for the delicate slowness of traditional flights. Teleportation just doesn’t give you the feeling of going anywhere, you just don’t get to appreciate the distance you’ve bridged. Also, travelers really want to eat during transportation, and value the down time that comes with the no phone & no wifi zones on the plane. Teleportation doesn’t give you any of this. This isn’t going away.”

This is exactly what today’s publishing executives’ statements feel like. Also, many other industries’ statements, too. Just saying. So everybody please do yourselves a favor and stop lying to yourself and start embracing the new world out there. Kkthxbai.

Image: charles de gaulle airport 6 / the waving cat / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Thank you, New York.

By: Peter Bihr

21-04-2011

connected world, travel

New York, you’ve been very kind to us. Again.

It’s great to just dive into the flow of the layers that make this city what it is. In my particular case, on this particular trip, those were the layers to do with the web & urbanism. But it’s not about the events, it’s about the people you meet.

So a big thank you to all of you who made our stay so excellent: Noel, the Roadify & Don’t Eat At & Sportaneous and the other #BigApps teams for the great #OpenNY meetup. Adam & the Urbanscale crew for the hospitality and Urbanscale Friday. Claire for the lovely conversations. Bob & Chris for inviting us over and showing us the Dumbo watering holes. Sam & Mike of Undercurrent for great discussions & a fantastic view. To the lovely baristas at Stumptown, Ninth Street, Gimme, Cupp, Housing Works and Virb for well-needed caffein shots. And of course to Igor for being a great travel partner. And all the others, you know who you are. If any of you plan trips to Berlin, let me know!

Thank you, New York. And see you soon.

Image: coney island / the waving cat / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Waving Cats Galore

By: Peter Bihr

20-04-2011

swarm convenience

Waving Cats from Philipp on Vimeo.

@mjays sent that my way, and I couldn’t resist. Thanks!

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Dispatch from the road [NYC]

By: Peter Bihr

18-04-2011

travel

Hardly a month ago I sent a dispatch from this same city. This fact alone is kind of odd, but exhilarating.

More mind boggling for me, personally, is the fact that this time it’s all about work. My company Third Wave has the first US client, a startup in stealth mode, where we’ve been diving deeply into early stage product development. This is super interesting in and of itself, and also on a meta level, as all three of us are really into working in an international context. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with Berlin (I’m still deeply in love with the city), but there’s so much cool stuff happening around the globe that can inspire and inform us on many levels that we all are actively looking for good, work-related excuses to spend time in other cities. And New York has always been high up on my wish list.

So here we are, hacking away after a couple days packed with brainstormings, mockups, discussions, click paths, and general brainpicking. I love it.

Also, we happened to get into town just in time to catch Fridays at 7, the weekly Urbanscale meetup at Temple Bar. If you are interested in urban computing and the politics of technology, or would just like to meet a whole bunch of smart folks in a relaxed atmosphere, I strongly suggest you get in touch with Adam and check it out.

All that said, there’s more stuff on the horizon that we’re plotting. More on that once we’re back and had some time to process. See you after Friday in Berlin, or if you’d like to meet up before in NYC, ping me. I’m in town till Thursday morning.

Image: Dumbo, park, sun. / the waving cat / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Catch Me If You Can – a simple game for less boring airports

By: Peter Bihr

18-04-2011

connected world, travel

Chatting with Michelle and Igor, we figured that there must me a way to make staying at airports less boring, potentially even more fun.

Initially we wanted to go for a scavenger hunt of sorts, where players would hide stuff or leave stickers. We dismissed both – hiding stuff at airports might get airport security staff involved in unpleasant ways, and stickers might just be removed too quickly. After all, we all travel a fair bit, but not every day.

So here’s a first draft for a simple, open, collaborative game to play with friends who spend too much time at airports: Catch Me If You Can, or #cmiyc.

The rules are simple.

If you want to start a game, take a picture at an airport – any airport – and upload it to Flickr, tagging it (or at least naming it) with #cmiyc followed by the airport code: For Berlin Tegel, the tag would be #cmiycTXL, for New York JFK it would be #cmiycJFK, for Los Angeles it’d be #cmiycLAX etc. If possible, also check into the airport on Foursquare, because geo location never hurts.

If you want to join an existing game, just go to Flickr and search for the CMIYC tag of the airport you’re at. You’ll find one or a series of photos. Find the scene shown in the most recent photo, and take a photo of what’s exactly to the left of this last photo. (This way, the way Flickr sorts the pictures chronologically, it’ll look a bit more like one big panorama photo.)

Currently, as far as I can tell, there are two ongoing games that we just started. One is in Berlin Tegel (#cmiycTXL on Flickr), the other in Frankfurt Airport (#cmiycFRA on Flickr).

Obviously, in the best case there’s only one ongoing game per airport, and some stuff will not work. But it sounds like this might add some fun element of discovery to our travels. Feel free to join!

Photo: #cmiycTXL / the waving cat / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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re:publica11 is on

By: Peter Bihr

12-04-2011

conference

Once a year, Germany’s geek scene gathers in Berlin for re:publica (#rp11), an excellent spot to meet up & chat and hopefully even catch a few great sessions.

The conference is going to go from Wednesday to Friday – at least that’s the core event. Over the years, more and more smaller, often less official satellite events have started gathering around the core. (I just snuck out of one before writing this post, and am missing another one as I’m typing this.) Not to mention all the nice & cozy geek dinners. You get the idea.

I’m a bit bummed I’ll be missing out on a big chunk of the action this year as I’m headed for New York on Thursday. But that doesn’t mean the one day at #rp11 isn’t going to be good. I really appreciate what the organizing team has been putting together here, it’s really quite incredible how well everything tends to turn out, which is also the reason that #rp11 has been growing and growing. From one middle-sized event space it has also taken over Friedrichstadtpalast, usually used for musical shows – which is why re:publica happens to feature the biggest conference stage in Europe, according to the organizers. (I believe the big hall holds some 2.200 or so seats.)

For me personally it’s also always a bit of a special event since I know plenty of folks there, ~~it’s like~~ a bunch of friends are coming into town. Also, similar to the last few years, Netzpiloten.de (who I’ve been working with for years) will be recording interviews and might be able to squeeze you in. Ping me if you have something to say (no product pitches). Also, a lot of close friends will be presenting at #rp11, including Martin Spindler (not once, but twice I think) and Michelle Thorne, who’ll be not only presenting on the big stage but also moderating it most of the day.

Long story short: Make sure to say hi on Wednesday at re:publica, or ping me if you’d like to meet up in NYC from Thursday this week to Thursday. And of course don’t forget to say thanks to the volunteers, who I’m sure are putting a huge amount of work and energy into this event.

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Ping ping. Still alive.

By: Peter Bihr

08-04-2011

conference, travel

It’s been terribly quiet here lately. My apologies. Things are getting more and more crazy. My last blog post had just summed up my last trip to New York and Austin, and since I got back I was on two short trips already, first to Vienna to do some plotting and give a little talk, then to the tiny town of Caputh for an internal strategy thing with the guys. After the weekend I’m headed to Hamburg (client work) for one day, then Wednesday to Republica just for the day (say hi!), then straight off to the airport to head back to New York (client work). In between I was asked to be a judge at the Lovie Awards, which I’m quite curious about. Yes, it seems like it’ll be that kind of year. This is exhausting, but I have to admit I dig it. Getting the chance to go to NYC that often is a bit of a mindfuck, really, but in the best way.

In other words: I don’t know where my head is right now, but it seems like everything’s moving in the right direction.

So what’s actually happening right now?

Active projects: Awesome Foundation Berlin, finding a new office, finding a new apartment, Likemind Berlin (next Friday!), getting ready for summer in Berlin – hands down the best time to come to town if you’re considering it.

(Projects on the backburner at the moment: Public Transportation Hackday, pretty much everything else.)

In other words, I’m not complaining, but I guess I should be trying to cut down on some stuff over the next few months ;)

For brief updates in between, ranging from random snippets found on the web to quotes or photos, I recommend heading over to my Tumblr or Twitter (note, new name: @peterbihr), where I’ve been posting much more regularly.

Image taken at Vienna Air King.

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Peter Bihr

They’ll always pay premium for the traditional experience

Thank you, New York.

Waving Cats Galore

Dispatch from the road [NYC]

Catch Me If You Can – a simple game for less boring airports

re:publica11 is on

Ping ping. Still alive.

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