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!