Friends. It’s been a while, we know. Habits (and resolutions) have their way - but let’s just skip the explanations a dive right! Since we’ve been lazy, this wrap-up will be slightly longer than usual. We’ll be back to normal in Feb! Besides some personal ups and downs, 2016 left us with:

A wonderful ThingsCon in Amsterdam: The all amazing crew around the all amazing Marcel Schouwenaar organised a fan-tas-tic conference. Carrying the torch from Berlin (and sparking it up!) they gathered a wonderful crowd and put together a top-notch program about building a responsible and ethical Internet of Things. You can read all about it on ThingsCon’s (brand new) Medium channel.

A wonderful music festival in Berlin: A definite all-year highlight for both of us was a big Family Reunion: The J.A.W Family are our favorite music providers in Berlin and above that really good friends. They celebrated their tenth anniversary (in their 11th year), and went out with a three-day music feast. We enjoyed the sounds of Theo Parrish, Sadar Bahar, Yussef Kamaal and Carlos Niño - and while really every act was beyond great, Rabih Beaini stole the show. At peak time on Saturday night he played such a stellar set, both far out and danceable at times. Its hard to find the right words, but its something like emotional musical sociology. We hope someone recorded the set and can release it, the whole earth should hear it.

A new network to connect all the stand alone projects we’ve been working on. We figured to put a name (and a roof) to most of the projects we’re working on that deal with society, culture, tech, and futures. (Turns out there are quite a few). The new home will be called FORRREST - and while its still in super-early stages, we imagine it as a network of friends and colleagues that work together towards exploring the world we want to live in - with events, strategies, workshops, and research, for us and for clients alike. We’re very looking forward to what will come out of it, for now, however, it will mostly fill in the blanks between..

..new jobs + going back to school. While Max is off trying the grown-up thing of working in a new job in Berlin (as community and program manager in a pretty fun and ambitious corporate tech and innovation hub) Simon, besides other work, decided to go back to school - and started studying again. Since late last year he’s now (finally!!) doing a Masters in Philosophy, Politics, Economics where he is a little overstrained but learning a lot about morals and politics and protest. Which brings us to..

..the election of a super villain. We know everybody and their dog is writing/talking/thinking about this, but we think it is important not to stop because seriously - what is happening? A reality show host received just the nuclear codes. (Sounds familiar?) And while our entire filter bubble shakes their heads in disbelief, people everywhere else are preparing for the same shit show. Like many of our friends, we have been asking and discussing what to do best? While we don’t have the answer, we have the same questions and feelings. We figure the media has something to do with this, so probably does inequality (and its dark roots), negligence, fear - and a general lack of credible utopias. What are the alternatives? What to expect in France, Netherlands, Germany later this year? What to aim for, rather than just damage containment? Aren’t there more? important things than ranting twitter feeds and crowd sizes? Why do we still care? We’d love to hear from you, and we’ll share our thoughts with you as well.

Yay. Now what? 2017 is off to a rough start - but it holds a lot of chances. Let’s seize them!

Apart from all these beginnings and ends and scary things, I am particularly glad to have the dust settling now a bit - and find some more time for a wonderful hobby: Over the past months, Max and me have been collecting records like crazy, spent quite a few hours in record shops and in my living room, recording our very first sets. It’s still very very early stage (definitely a LOT of room for improvement on the technical end), but it’s incredibly fun and you can hear our very first 1-hour set over here, ranging from Brazilian and Pakistani drum sounds to Turkish funk and Tunisian disco all the way to some spiritual jazz. In the meantime, my turntables died. Once I find some new ones (in the works!) -we’ll have more to share for sure! 

Since the last Adventure Equation I have moved back to Berlin. While coming back was an itsy bitsy bit difficult at times I also feel really fortunate to back amongst so many friends, and content to be here after navigating the seas of some personal omg and wtf for a short while. 

A highlight of the past months was definitely the J.A.W Family Reunion. Apart from all the wonderful music my ears were witnessing, I was also invited to show some of the photos I have taken at their events over the past years at an exhibition during the weekend. It was the first time Im showing pictures of mine like that, and it was scary and wonderful, and apparently people liked it.

Im feeling grateful these days and this mix by Amila is a good soundtrack for gratefulness. 

We loved watching Ava DuVernay’s 13th, Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation - and we are looking forward to learn more about Fanon’s view on violence soon. On a brighter side, we thoroughly enjoyed listening to United Vibrations and were enlightened by the wonderful lore of these records. We will spend some more time learning about the De-Growth Alternative and we think we should all oconsider the World Happiness Report. And just in case you forgot this podcast series is wonderful.

Hugs,

Max & Simon