Exactly one year ago, I officially co-founded my company Third Wave with my two partners Igor and Johannes. While it feels as if I should be writing a long, deep, witty post about that fact, I’m traveling and my mind is elsewhere today. (On our website I wrote a brief anniversary post.)
I might, or might not, follow up on this with a real post. Until then, I’d just like to say: Today is a good day. This has been one good, nay: fantastic year.
Igor & Johannes: Thank you!
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#5yearsago
We don’t take the time to reflect often. Taking the hint from Ariel Waldman, I’d like to do just that. Reflect for a minute – on where I was five years ago, and how I came to be where I am at the moment. It’s both a snapshot of my life and a reminder for a future self, five years from now.
5 years ago, in early 2006, I had just come back from a year of studying in Sydney followed by a trip through South-East Asia. After settling back in in Berlin, in August 2006, I was about to start my masters thesis when I was offered a job as an editor at politik-digital.de, a non-profit think tank/magazine where I had interned several years prior. Excitedly, I accepted and started studying hundreds of “web 2.0″ services for a study we conducted. (I found Twitter to be the most useless of the bunch. Ahem…) In parallel, I was still building websites with my friend Thomas and helped companies learn about the internet. I left an old blog behind and started to blog at thewavingcat.com. Three months after starting my editor job, after it had became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to find the time to write my thesis, I quit and started my thesis for real.
4 years ago, I had just finished my masters degree and was undecided about my future: Find a job? Go freelance? Maybe even a PhD? I got a call out of the blue and was offered a job as editor-in-chief of Netzpiloten.de (then Blogpiloten.de), a young online magazine. It was a freelance gig, part-time, and the basis for the freelance career I would pursue for the next few years. This phone call quite literally changed my life. I’m still grateful for that call, and still work very closely with the person that made it. Just a few months later, my friends Max Senges, Thomas Praus and I would write the textbook for a Spanish university course on virtual identities.
3 years ago, my business card said: “I do web stuff”. As a freelance web strategist I was feeling more and more at home in my role. I had moved in with Panorama3000, a good friend’s agency, and was learning the ropes. Besides my regular work, I blogged a lot both here and on a number of conference live blogs (including Berlinblase). At a conference, I interviewed a pretty free culture activist. (Three years later, we’re living together.)
2 years ago, in 2009, things really took off. In a crazy year, my job brought me all kinds of awesome internet-y gigs (including as a moderator, an artist, and an election campaigner), I spent one month in New York and another in France, and organized atoms&bits Festival and the first TEDxKreuzberg.
1 year ago, besides work, Matt Biddulph and I put another event – Ignite Berlin – where among others Igor Schwarzmann spoke about smart cities. Also, another TEDxKreuzberg. In March, I went to SXSW with Igor Schwarzmann. I covered for someone’s session, thus having my first SXSW workshop on 48 hour notice. Igor and I got infected with the SXSW energy and started talking. We decided to start a company along with our buddy Johannes Kleske. Six months later, Igor and Johannes moved to Berlin and we launched Third Wave.
Today, Third Wave is heading towards its first anniversary, and moving at high speed. We organized another conference, this time together, about smart cities (Cognitive Cities Conference). I’m fully employed by my own company and yet again learning the ropes. And I’m as excited as ever for what the future holds. These are good, exciting days.
And yes, it freaks me out to think where I was 5 years ago.
[permalink]Note: This is a purely personal post. Nothing web, biz, tech here. Not on purpose at least. Feel free to ignore.
It’s time to move again. Nothing new so far: Ever since leaving the small town I grew up in (1999, so that’s 12 years ago) I moved, as far as I can tell and depending on how you count (don’t ask) about 7 times (most of these within Berlin); this upcoming move will be #8. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Far from it, in fact, it has always been my free choice to explore a new ‘hood or live with some new people. I’m just moving within Berlin, and just a few blocks, too. Plus, this time it’s a bit of a special move on a personal level that I’m very much looking forward to, but that’s another story.
While the logistics get better, easier, more efficient with both growing experience and resources, there’s some stuff you just can’t change. Going through all your stuff, deciding piece by piece what to keep and what to toss. (I’ve been trying to take a hint from Bruce Sterling there, tossing everything I don’t really want to keep and altogether trying to buy less, but better stuff.) Out go stacks of books, dust collectors, conference badges, a mysterious fake shrinking head, clothes, magazines, what have you. Also out go a scarily large heap of electronics ranging from 3 (!) ancient cell phones, a Palm Pilot, chargers, routers (with Australian power plugs), cables, as well as most of my trusty old hifi I bought, piece by piece, in my teens. (Tape deck! CD player! Mini disc! Radio!) In other words, it’s a good time to shed the stuff that ends up owning you without giving you anything.
Then there’s the other stuff, the stuff you end up flipping through half by accident, half for procrastination. Photos, tokens of memory, paperwork of times gone by. All the stuff that’s surfaced only on special occasions. Nothing dramatic necessarily, just stuff you usually put in a drawer, out of sight, and it usually just stays there. This is where time slows down. Where it gets a tad more emotional, reflective, personal.
So that’s where my mind is in the evenings this week and next: Sorting out old stuff, pre-sorting the new, and getting ready to move. Maybe I’ll post some before-and-after photos of the physical manifestations of all of this (read: the renovations), too.
[permalink]This might be obvious to you, but during some recent conversations I noticed one thing over and over again: Freelancers, and entrepreneurs, don’t blame others.
If something bad happens to you and your impulse is to blame someone else (client! colleague! bank! landlord!) for the injustice, then maybe you shouldn’t work as an independent. It seems that to those with a more entrepreneurial mindset it never even occurs to blame others: Your client doesn’t pay you? Your fault if you ever work with them again. Your colleague steals your client? Your fault, shouldn’t have picked them. Not enough work due to recession? Oh boy, should you have hustled more.
I know I’m over-simplifying here – sometimes things don’t work out and it’s out of your hands. But in the reaction you can see who’s what kind of personality.
And just to be clear: I’m not saying one kind of mindset is better than the other. What I am saying is this: If you don’t naturally tend to taking responsibility for all the stuff happening to you, you might not become really happy as a freelancer or entrepreneur.
Of all the entrepreneurs and startup guys I talk to, I haven’t heard from a single one that things aren’t rosy because someone else did something. Instead, they go right at the problem.
Kudos.
[permalink]The end of the year is always a good time to sit down for a few minutes and think back: What happened over the year, what worked out well (and what didn’t), what was surprising, new, mind-blowing?
Short version: It was an awesome year, thanks all you guys.
The longer version below will be more interesting for me than you, probably. If you skip this post I won’t be disappointed. I promise ;)
Waving cats in Kuala Lumpur. Some reserved: CC (ny-nc-sa)
So what happened this year? According to Dopplr, I went on 28 trips in six countries. My path has crossed with many a cool folks’ paths which I enjoyed a lot. (Still do, of course.) My sister got married, and several friends had babies (congrats!). The start of 2008 also meant saying goodbye to the small webdesign agency I had been running with my long-term friend and partner in crime Thomas Lacher. We had a great time, but after almost ten years it was time for both of us to move on and focus on our other projects, and I’m curious when we’ll be working together again. I switched to Mac, which even after, dunno, 16 years or so on Windows turned out to be surprisingly hassle-free. Oh, my blog got a new design and a custom-made logo. (W00t!)
And I’ve worked on a lot of projects with clients and partners old and new:
With the Netzpiloten I’ve worked on Blogpiloten.de, a German blog magazine. There, I started out as managing editor, then I moved on to project lead and could win Steffen Büffel to take over managing the authors, which has been a great ride. Expect news from Blogpiloten soon. Also with Netzpiloten, we’ve been working on a number of other projects, most of which aren’t public yet, but one we launched in record speed was a website for famous German comedian Thomas Hermanns: Für Immer Disco is his site about Disco Culture. I’ve been working with Netzpiloten for a couple of years by now and it’s always been a pleasure.
At UOC, a Barcelona/Spain-based university with a focus on knowledge society and virtual teaching, I was involved in a couple of projects, most notably a workshop on Web 2.0 in Education at the UNESCO Chair for E-Learning. Also, Max Senges, Thomas Praus and I have been writing an innovation newsletter for UOC (published here), which will really take off in 2009. Really digging my teeth into E-Learning was great – I also learned a lot, and the teaching community in this field is awesome.
For Golf- und Landclub Berlin-Wannsee, Germany’s top golf club, I’ve prepared a major website relaunch in cooperation with Panorama3000. The site isn’t online yet, but will be soon.
For London-based social media agency We Are Social I’ve helped out with the blogger outreach for Germany for Ford’s new Ka launch campaign. Germany is traditionally a hard market for those talking to bloggers. (Sometimes it seems to me that the German blogosphere is still in its infancy, and I wish German bloggers would look more strongly for input from outside Germany. We’ll see where it goes 2009.) With Hamburg-based Colt Communications we’ve been brewing up a fancy new project not to be announced yet. In cooperation with Panorama3000 I drafted a strategy for the European and federal online election campaigns for Jusos, the youth organization of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD.
Thanks to my friends and office mates at Panorama3000, it has been a great year with you guys!
2008 was the year of liveblogging. I was hired to live-blog at SinnerSchrader‘s next08 conference, T-Systems MMS‘ Dresden Open Space and Deutsche Welle‘s blog awards The BOBs.
Speaking of liveblogging: Event coverage from insiders for insiders is what we’ve also been doing with Berlinblase.de. Together with the rest of the crew, we went to Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, LeWeb Paris and several Barcamps and reported back to those who couldn’t join in. What started out as a little tumblelog has been growing into a full-blown site and team. What’s really great here is that this is a 100% passion project with no commercial interests. It just works, and the feedback has been great. (Thanks to the rest of the crew, and also to TechWeb, O’Reilly and LeWeb for the invites and your feedback!) In 2009 we’ll ramp up our efforts even more. Expect some cool stuff there.
Berlinblase also got a fair bit of media coverage. The other time I appeared on a media outlet was about Likemind, a monthly kaffeeklatsch I also just learned about this year and that I’ve been enjoying a lot.
Speaking of fun side projects, a few friends and I have been printing and selling shirts, mostly for fun, on two sites. First, keingeschenk.de (engl: “no gift”) is where we sell the designs created by my friend and office mate, freelance illustrator Matthias Pflügner. Even simpler (and feel free to clone away) is the geeky goodness of the I Work For The Internets shirts inspired by my co-conspirator Michelle Thorne. Good fun!
So where does that leave me now? I realized that this whole freelancing thing works well for me, I love my job. And even better, it also worked out from a business point of view. This is of course a great relief. So freelancing it is. For 2009 a bunch of projects is already in the making, it looks like it’ll be an intense and really interesting year. I feel particularly lucky and privileged that I can say this despite the recent economic slow-down out there. Again, a big Thank You to all those mentioned above, and also to those I haven’t mentioned but who made my year (you know who you are).
Now it’s time for a few days off over the holidays. There’ll be plenty of good food and quality time to spend with friends and family.
If you’re wondering how to spread some love, consider joining me in donating to Kiva.org. Even small donations go a long way there. What better gift to give than the initial budget for an entrepreneur in a poorer country who can then start a business that’ll help feed the family sustainably?
Happy holidays and a good start for 2009!
[permalink]It is said that Moleskine notebooks serve mainly to pose around in street cafés. Let’s just assume, they can also be used to scribble stuff into them. (Maybe even useful stuff, on rare occasions.) They are, after all, notepads. Or so Tara Hunt insists:
(…) truth be told, it’s a bloomin’ pad of paper. It doesn’t have any special pockets. It doesn’t make you more creative. It certainly won’t get you laid…strike that last one. It may. But seriously. We go out of our way to buy Moleskine Notebooks. Why? There is no rational reason. Sure, they are a perfect size, good quality and all of that, but it really is the essence (mojo) that we buy them for.
But let’s not get sidetracked here.
For an eternity, I’ve been looking for a decent way to stay get organized. I don’t have the most complex schedule, but still – after a few bad cases of data loss I’ve become somewhat paranoid about keeping everything in order. And so far, I haven’t found a system that worked so well for me that I’d stop looking around for better solutions:
1) Palm / Outlook: The classic. Works well enough, really. But I just can’t won’t walk around with a Palm PDA all day. It may seem old school or odd, but I’m not a big fan of PDAs. Kind of anti-social if you’re sitting around a table with your friends or clients.
2) Filofax: The other (analog) classic. Yup, works, but Filofaxes clearly have their limits, too. First of all, I never found a format that made me happy. 1 week per double page? No space at all per day. 3 things to do per day is all that kind of book can handle, so it’s pretty much for people without appointments, i.e. for people who won’t need an organizer anyway. The 1-page-per-day version is way thicker than anything I’d be willing to carry around.
3) A smart phone: The hi-tech solution. Does sound pretty tempting. You get calendar, to do lists, email, phone and music player all in one place. Drawbacks: I don’t have a data plan for my German mobile, and I wouldn’t want to switch my music to the second best player as long as I’m happy with my iPod. Also, let’s face it: I’m too cheap for a smart phone.
So I went analog for about a year with a lovely tiny pocket calendar from Muji. I loved it. However, the space in there was hardly enough for birthdays, so it was more like a platonic relationship. To fulfill my real needs, I adopted a wild hybrid of Outlook, mobile phone and good ol’ post its. As you can imagine, not exactly the most sophisticated system. It worked, but, you know.
So while I was thinking about some Google Calendar / Palm setup (won’t sync, plus I still won’t carry around my Palm all the time), I stumbled upon this beauty, the Moleskine PDA or PigPogPDA: Basically, just a simple Moleskine hack that converts your regular notebook into a simple one-stop solution for to do lists, project notes and other basic stuff. (Based on, basically, any simple notebook plus a dash of Getting Things Done.)
I won’t bother you with any details (you can find excellent descriptions at PigPod and Creating Passionate Users), but for the time being I’m quite content that between my Moleskine PDA, Google Calendar and the occasional post it note, not a whole lot of stuff will get lost. (Stay undone, maybe. But that’s a whole different story.)
So here we go. My first Moleskine PDA:
While I was offline for a few days, Dave Sifry, weblog ranking chief honcho and founder of Technorati posted his most recent stats about the State Of The Blogosphere, in which he regularly shows trends and stats about the development of the blogging scene.
So what do we learn? First, weblog growth is stable, if a little slower: Currently, Technorati tracks some 57 million blogs. Second, English remains the top language with about 39% of postings with Japanese a close second (33%), followed by Chinese (10%). Surprise, surprise: In contrast to Japanese and Chinese, English and Spanish posts occur all day without a clear local bias based on time zone, indicating that people worldwide post in English and Spanish. Third, and most interesting as I find, are Dave’s findings about blog authority, both compared to mainstream media and within the blogosphere:
Weblogs vs mainstream media
There are still only a few weblogs as influential (or at least linked to) as top mainstream media: 3 in the top 50 and 12 in the top 100. BoingBoing, for example, ranks higher than Time magazine! If you move down the curve a little bit, weblogs do get pretty dominant.
Authority within the blogosphere
With some 57 million weblogs, of course some have to be more influential than others. Dave had a closer look at the weblogs with at least three links or more. That’s some 1.1 million weblogs who represent the top 2 per cent of all existing blogs. Divided into four groups based on authority, two strong correlations showed up: a) Age matters: Weblogs that have existed for longer tend to gain authority. b) Frequency matters: Bloggers who post more often gain more authority. While that’s not a big surprise, it’s good to see that common sense does work when talking about weblogs, too. (The Waving Cat has been existing under this name and URL since May 3, 2006. According to this distinction, it’s somewhere in the middle authority group for reasons unknown to me. That’s roughly 200 days and pretty much fits the scheme. Thanks anyway to everybody who’s reading it, and big hugs to those who’ve linked here. You’re my heroes.)
“Hey, it’s that time of the year again!” Says Dave his post, and right he is. Skimming the State of the Blogosphere stats, I got all melancholic (right!) and started wondering about my personal blogging history. Time for some serious bio building. Poking around in some old webspace of mine (which I won’t disclose), the first test run of a weblog (which wasn’t labeled beta at the time) that I actually referred to as a weblog (or “blogger”) back then dates back to march 2001. (Before, and even then, some had to be updated by FTP manually. Ouch.) Over the next two to three years, it was followed by several others – most of them being in use for between some weeks and several months, some of them just created for a vacation or something. (And let’s be clear on this: None of them particularly worth reading.)
In 2004, I met some top notch bloggers without even noticing: During the build-up to the U.S. presidential elections, I spent a few months in Washington, D.C. At the time (March?), the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) was hosting the annual Politics Online conference, then in its third year. There, clueless as I was, I spent the day with the blogging hotshots Markos Zuniga (dailykos.com) and Matt Stoller (co-creator of The Blogging of the President, and I think also involved in the Save The Internet campaign) without knowing who they were. And so on. What I’m trying to say: I happened to stumble into all kinds of (in relative, weblog-kind-of-a-way) important events and people, mostly completely unaware of their significance.
Makes me feel like Forrest Gump.
(Gives me warm fuzzies, too.)
(Link to the State of the Blogosphere)
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