About me
The extra brief third-person blurb (German version: click here):
Peter Bihr works as a freelance web strategist. For his clients, he develops and deploys strategies to foster relationships of value with their stakeholders, customers and communities. More often than not, these strategies are built around social media, openness and sharing. In 2009 he co-organized atoms&bits Festival.
Before, he studied Communications and Media at Freie Universität Berlin and University of Sydney and holds masters degrees from both universities. Briefly, he also worked as an editor, and blogs about the topics Web 2.0, Social Media and digital life on his blog www.thewavingcat.com.
Maybe you are interested in:
I do web stuff
Hi, I’m Peter Bihr. I live and work in Berlin, Germany. I do web stuff.
What does that mean concretely? As a freelancer, I develop web strategies for corporate, non-profit and political clients (list of clients). My goal is to help you foster relationships of value with your stakeholders, customers and community. That includes helping you to navigate the social web, evaluate the best tools and partners, and getting you started on monitoring what your folks out there are saying about your brand (and how to react to that). Typically this means concept work and workshops to develop strategies. It also touches on product and business development.
In other words: I’ll help you and your company translate your offline strategies for the web.
When I’m not consulting, I blog, write, and do all kinds of stuff in between. I’ve worked as a journalist and blog editor, but first and foremost I see myself as a user advocate.
I’m happy to work in either German or English.
Not sure what you want yet? If you’d like to have a little brainstorming with me, that’s cool too. (Get in touch here.)
How I work
I believe in sharing, openness, transparency and collaboration – if we work together, expect strategies built around these core principles. That’s why I put all cards open on the table (and why I have a full disclosure policy). It also means I distrust customer lock-in. If we work together I’ll do whatever I can to give you all the tools and knowledge so you won’t need me anymore. That way, you’re not dependent on me. Who knows, maybe later we can find a new, cool project to work on together.
I think there’s no reason, need or place for tech arrogance.
(There’s also no reason good advice should be accessible only to corporations. If you run a non-profit organization working for positive social change, I’ll try to help out pro bono wherever I can. Get in touch and we’ll try to work something out.)
(Thanks to Matthias Pflügner for drawing this sketch.)
I check out web trends so you don’t have to
While I keep an eye on the more geeky aspects of the web industry, I respect if you don’t have the time to do the same. Many great ideas are hidden behind technical terms and marketing buzzwords. That’s why I will do my best to explain everything important as easily as possible and to provide the necessary context.
Buzzwords in my world include: Social media, Web 2.0, weblogs, social networking and participative journalism.
What I don’t do
There are certain things I don’t do: Blogger outreach – though I might be able to point you to some good folks. Manage your Facebook page – there are many social media consultants out there who do that, you’ll easily find them. Write your copy – feel free to get in touch if you’d like to have your folks trained how to do that themselves. In other words: I don’t do content, but I’ll work on getting the concepts and structures right for you.
Let’s work together
If you’re interested in hiring me, please get in touch. For some details on my other projects and former employments check out my CV.
If there’s need for more than one person, I’m happy to bring in trusted, skilled folks I’ve worked with before. Just to name a few: Thomas Praus (community building, blogging & PR) of Panorama3000, Matthias Pflügner (illustrations), Steffen Büffel (media & publishing consulting) or Max Senges (open collaboration & knowledge transfer).
Academic Background
For an M.A. program in communications and media sciences (“Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft”) at Freie Universität Berlin, I wrote a thesis titled “Die Bedeutung von Weblogs für die Arbeit von Politikjournalisten” (“The relevance of weblogs for the work of political journalists”) that examines how political journalists in Germany make use of weblogs. (In 2007, they hardly did. In the thesis, I explain why that is and why blogs are useful anyway.) More information about the thesis as well as the full text download (in German) available here. I also hold a Masters Degree in Communications and Media from University of Sydney, Australia.
A word about this weblog
In this weblog, I mainly jot down thoughts on the web stuff mentioned above. The blog serves partly as a sketchbook, partly as an archive for links. I hope that you’ll get something out of it, too. Your feedback is highly appreciated.
Since this is the year of the disclaimers, please allow me to add that everything in this weblog expresses my personal opinion, and mine only, unless marked otherwise. It doesn’t express the opinions of my employers, clients, colleagues or partners. That said:
I’d like to hear from you – let’s talk!
