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 of 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.
Quick links:
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).
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 and consultant.
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.
Media Coverage
Occasionally I have small media appearances: There’s an interview on Radio Trackback (about Berlinblase) and a brief quote in the New York Times (about web kaffeeklatsch likemind). There’s an interview as part of Nicole Simon’s LeWeb pre-conference podcast about Berlinblase, and some more coverage about Berlinblase. PoliticsMagazine.com interviewed me for a story on the impact of Obama’s campaigning on international online election campaigns. On taz.de, I said a few words about Twitter in political online campaigns. Julien Sharp interviewed me for her new book “Design and Launch an Online Social Networking Business“. Daksh Sharma interviewed me for his blog The Marketing Blog. Radio Trackback (Fritz/RBB) and smartworkers.net interviewed me about atoms&bits Festival (27 Sept 09).
Speaking
Occasionally I speak at an event or moderate a panel. At UOC, I gave a presentation about Social Media for Higher Education. At the German installment of a Webby Awards night (7 Jan 2009) I spoke briefly about internet memes. (Naturally, my presentation contained a lot of cat pictures.) At CeBIT Webciety I moderated a 4-hour panel / Open Space about life, work and culture on the web for T-Systems MMS with Steffen Büffel (8 March 2009, videos available here). For Deutsche Welle I moderated a panel on Citizen Journalism with the winners of the Best of the Blogs Awards 2008 at Global Media Forum (4 June 2009). For T-Systems MMS I moderated Dresden Future Space and and Digital Life Pitch at Berlin (19 June 2009). At ISWA gave a presentation about the influence of the internet on politics (15 Sept 2009, slides here). At the Eugene Lang College of New School University, New York, I gave a brief introductory talk about Crowdsourcing vs Wisdom of the Crowd (9 March 2010). At SXSW 2010 (14 March 2010) I hosted a panel on European Social Media (summary), stepping in for Robin Grant.
Conferences & Events
I’m not an event manager, but occasionally – recently much more then before – I’m involved in organizing conferences or other events.
- Likemind
With Thomas Praus, I host Likemind Berlin, our local flavor of the global Likemind event network. Likemind is a pretty informal way of meeting interesting people over great coffee, held every third Friday of the month at Café Sankt Oberholz, Berlin. (See my blog posts here.) - atoms&bits
From 18-27 September 2009, I was co-initiator and co-organizer of atoms&bits (“a festival of thinking, making, doing”). You can find more info about atoms&bits here (or read my blog posts here). - TEDxKreuzberg
On 10 December 2009 we held TEDxKreuzberg, a local independent, but officially licensed TEDx event. (More in my blog posts.) - Ignite Berlin
On 1 March 2010, Matt Biddulph and I hosted Ignite Berlin as part of Global Ignite Week. (More in my Ignite blog posts.)
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 resume below.
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 studies 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. (They hardly do. In the thesis, I explain why that is and why blogs are still useful.) 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!
