I’d like to do a talk, what’s next?

We’re looking for 10-minute talks and need to know who you are and what you want to talk about. In order to choose a few talks, please fill out the survey and tell us who you are and what you want to speak about. Within the next two weeks we’re choosing some topics and get back to you.

What do you have to do to get a ticket?

Not much really. You only have to write a bit about you and your background, so that we understand, why you should get the ticket. So, who are you? What are you doing? Why do you think a scholarship ticket is something that you want/need? And what do you think you get out of the event when attending?

Answering the questions only takes a few seconds. The form is open until Friday 29th of September. Then we’ll have a look and choose three out of all applicants right away and notify them on the following Monday.

The reason for mentioning this episode here is, that Keir an I spoke a lot about events and how sponsorships – which I prefer to call partnerships, as you know – works. From both perspectives, the event organiser as well as the partner. What does someone expect from you, when they give you money. What do you, as and event organiser, expect and how do you treat partners.

Apart from this, we had a very nice chat about the life, especially with a family, with the jobs we have. I enjoyed it very much and actually think about really starting an English show as well. What do you think? Enough shows already? Or should I just go for it? ;)

Listen to episode 8 of TWUMBLE

For beyond tellerrand in Berlin this year, we have 5 workshops where I personally would love to attend in every workshop at the same time. Here is what we have cooked for you:

“Research Together” with Erika Hall

I am really happy that I finally got Erika Hall to be part of the beyond tellerrand family. Next to her talk she presents a workshop called Research Together. Erika will take you from initial question formation through analysis to reporting and sharing findings through a combination of hands-on exercises, discussion, and a small amount of lecture for framing and instruction. So whether you are a freelancer working in teams or on a product team: this is for you! But actually it is really for anyone who wants to learn to make better decisions faster.

Letterpress Printing

This is a very special workshop we organise every year since beyond tellerrand is in Berlin. Using the workspace p98a, that was founded by Erik Spiekermann and Jan Gassel, you’ll learn everything about letterpress printing. After a short journey into history of printing, you’ll get your hands dirty and work on the wonderful printing machines. I had such a great time working there and as you only work in small groups, you can be sure to get time to print some great stuff. It is always a mystery, if Erik will be there, but if he is that is a nice thing on top.

“CSS Architecture for Large-Scale UIs” with Harry Roberts

Harry Roberts is part of beyond tellerrand for the second time (but for the first time in Berlin). When he first spoke in 2013 in Düsseldorf, it was only his second presentation, if i remember correctly. Now he is back after speaking on many stages and has a workshop called CSS Architecture for Large-Scale UIs in his bag. The title says it all, so join Harry and level up your CSS!

“Building Performant Websites” with Tim Kadlec

Performance is an absolute trending topic when it comes to what web developers speak about nowadays. But who doesn’t want to build better performing sites? And as long as you're at least familiar with the basics of HTML and CSS, you'll get a lot our of this workshop by Tim Kadlec called Building Performant Websites. Tim, whois part of beyond tellerrand for the second time, shows how to integrate performance budgeting and testing into your development process, how to identify performance bottlenecks in your sites and applications and much much more …

“Presenting Work Like Your Life Depends On It” with Mike Monteiro

At Mike Moteiro’s first appearance on the beyond tellerrand stages, he also not only brings his talk, but a workshop with the title Presenting Work Like Your Life Depends On It. It is for designers, developers, engineers, content strategists, or whatever name you are coming up with for yourself. If you have to convince someone from something – and this is true whether you’re working in an agency, a studio, inside an organisation, or for yourself – then this workshop is for you. As Mike says: Everyone has clients, even if you call them “boss”.

Tickets

Tickets for the conference are nearly sold out. But also most of the workshops only have a few seats left. So don’t wait too long to decide, if you want to attend a workshop, as it might be sold out by then, and get your workshop ticket now.

Earlier this year my long time partner Tito, where I sell my beyond tellerrand tickets with, asked me, if I’d be interested in joining for a series of interviews and stories about Tito customers. Of course I was happy and honoured to be part of this series of stories.

I use Tito for a long time now – which I mentioned in my last post about Hard- and Software I use as well – and I am really happy with their platform and their service. But not only this: they drive their business with the same passion as I run my events with and that is something you can feel, if you chat with them and suggest new features etc. And this, in my opinion, is something very valuable.

I am happy that I started to use Tito and to see that many other events, who I have seen using other solutions, now using Tito as well. At this point I say thanks a lot for your help, Paul and Doc and the rest of the Tito team.

I hope you enjoy reading the story that Aoife Reaper-Reynold has written from our interview.

Links:

• Tito Website
• Story/Interview about beyond tellerrand
• Article photo by Marcel Böttcher

Also this post does not teach you how to run and event. There is a great blog post by PPK on how to organise conferences called “Conference Organiser’s Handbook” which is a great starting point for anybody who ever thought about punishing her- or himself and run an own event. Nope: there is no holy grail, which shows you how you run a successful event. It is as with many things: be passionated about what you do, keep being exited for the topic and – maybe most importantly – recognise, when you loose interest and don’t want to to run an event anymore.

This post is a collection of hard- and software that I use and used during the years to plan, organise and run my events. So let’s dive into it.

Plan Your Event

I am running events for more than 16 years now. I recently remembered, that I rarely took any notes or used a notebook in the beginning. I used a list of thing that had to be done, but had all the actual things to be done in my head. I am not sure if it is a matter of age or if it is just because I want to make sure not to forget anything anymore, but nowadays I take a lot of notes. I literally write down everything that falls out of my head. First I used a sketch book, like a Moleskine or FieldNotes and have written down everything in there. Obviously the downside is, to find again what you have written. Often I experienced, that I knew I had written down something, I just wasn’t able to find it anymore in all the notes I took.

In 2010, when I attended Future of Web Design in London, I met my friend Brendan Dawes. He was using Evernote back then already. I myself was signed up for a free account, but never really got into using it. Bren showed me how he was collecting everything in Evernote and that inspired me to force myself to use it constantly instead of using my paper notebooks. The benefit of using digital notebooks of any kind is, that you can search it, can use it on multiple devices and you are able to sort it according to projects or even delegate certain tasks to certain people in your team, if you have a team. Furthermore I am able to dictate things into my notebook while I am driving for example and on longer road trips, I am quite productive sometimes ;)

In addition to Evernote, I use Things, in which I have a to do list with all my to do’s and dates when until when I have to get tasks done. You can do checklists in Evernote as well, but that is sadly not the same. I love reminders in Things, I like, that you can assign a task to a person in your team and I love the option to have projects as well as so called areas to structure your to do’s.

If you work in a team there is plenty of good services that you can use to communicate and work together. With SmashingConf we use Basecamp for example, which gives us the opportunity to work project based with an individual project for every city. If you only run one or maybe two events and have a team, you might get along with Slack as well. Another good way to structure your tasks For beyond tellerrand, I use none of them, as I don’t have to communicate in a team really. And – to be honest – my wife would kill me, if I tell her to use anything like this instead of coming down to the kitchen and talk to her ;)

But here is a list with all these things, mentioned above and alternative software to what I use, plus a few links with even more tools:

Task Managers (To Do Lists)

• Things – I like Things, because I use their areas and projects a lot. Downside is, that it is not really cheap. The desktop version is 49 USD and if you want to use it on your iPhone or iPad in addition, you have to pay extra. Another aspect against it for you might be: you get it only for Apple hardware.
• Wunderlist – I tried Wunderlist a while ago and missed the projects and areas a lot. I think they changed it and now at least projects are possible, but I did not try it again. A plus for Wunderlist is, that you get it for Apple, Android and even Windows Phone next to desktop/web version. Wunderlist is freemium. So you can use it for free, but if you want all features it is about 5 USD each month to use it.
• TeuxDeux – a very nice and minimalist service/app. I liked it a lot from the look and feel, but then again it was missing the options I love in things. I do like, though, that is had MarkDown support for the notes you take.
• Omni Focus – I never tried this one, as it is quite pricey to just try it. But I heard many good things about it and it is hight customisable. You can style it, it comes with multiple apps for your devices and has many options how to use it (e. g. context based, times based etc.)

There is a lot more on the market and I tried a few. Some, like Clear (think it is not maintained anymore?) or Todoist are nice as well, but simply lacked a bit of the functionality I like in Things. Check this list or this list to see a lot more apps that might be good for you to use for organising your tasks.

Taking Notes

• Evernote – as I mentioned above, I myself like to use Evernote. Though it lacks a few things I’d love to see being integrated, I like the easiness of how I am able to take notes in a lot of different formats. I can quickly take a photo, tag it and add a short note to it, when I am out and see something interesting for my events in a store (like furniture for my stage for example), I can take audio notes while I am in the car and am not able to type. You can use Evernote for free, but to get the full power, you have to get one of the plans starting at €29 for one year.
• OneNote – this is a piece of software that comes with Office 365 (€69/year) and is – like Evernote – available for all platforms. You can also use OneNote as single app for free with limited features. I myself don’t like the tab based interface too much.
• SimpleNote – available for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, and the web, SimpleNote does, what the name says: it simply takes notes. I like the clean look and feel of it. But as I described earlier, I like to take notes in whichever way I need it at the moment of taking it. Therefore SimpleNote, which does not allow attachments or images, is not my most preferred choice. But if plain text notes are enough for you, you should definitely give it a try.

Of course there are many, many apps and services on the market to take notes in all kinds. I have just listed the ones I tried during the time I was looking for one. It all is a matter of taste and of functionality/features you want or need. Here is one list, giving you a broader overview on notebook apps and another list with 10 short reviews on this kind of services and apps as well.

Team Communication

• Slack – Slack reminds me a lot of the good old IRC we used during our later C64 days (and still use) to communicate. However, Slack has a polished interface and gives a team a lot of opportunities to communicate and exchange files. You can use slack for free, but be aware that then only 10k of your team’s messages will be archived. Slack is a channel based service, which means, if you run more than on event, you need to created multiple channels, if you want to communicate per project and not in one, big stream. Some events also use Slack as kind of a back network for their events, where people before, during and after an event exchange and chat. A downside up to now is, that Slack is nearly not or poorly accessible – I hope they change this soon.
• Basecamp – If you prefer working projects for your events rather than channels, then Basecamp might be more interesting for you. Basecamp is very powerful, when it comes to uploading assets and structuring your communication. The price to use it for your team is $29 a month. One “Basecamp”, to try if it is something you consider using for your event planning and communication in your team, is free.
• WhatsApp – If you only need a channel to communicate, then WhatsApp might be already enough for you. It is not a typical tool for team communication, but it does what you need to speak together in a group chat.
• Trello – If you prefer a more visual way of communication and planning in your team, then maybe Trello is better than the services above. It comes with quite some limits, compared to other tools, but therefore it feels lighter. If you prefer the kanban-approach over agile or JIT, then Trello also could be more your choice. You can use Trello for free with nearly no limits, but if you prefer more features, the monthly fee per user is $9.99.

Certainly you can also use a combination of the services I listed above to achieve what you want with your team. And of course there are countless other tools, such as asana or podio on the market as well. Two lists, describing a few of them can be found here or here.

Selling your Tickets

Plenty of services are on the market to sell tickets. I myself tried Amiando (now Xing-Events and Eventbrite before using Tito. But you maybe also want to have a look at Get Invited or Paydro or any of the many, many other solutions, which I can’t speak about as I never tried them.

Tito

I have chosen Tito in the end, because I never was satisfied with the way Eventbrite or Amiando integrated in your event website. Eventbrite did not at all and you had to send the customer to a page outside of your event website. Amiando’s integration was badly done and really old-fashioned and also not secure. I have no idea if all that changed for those two, as I am happily using Tito for nearly 4 years now. For me Tito has everything that I need for my event, I am able to suggest new features and the people behind Tito listen to it and the price in relation to what you get is great.

If you are missing a feature, it never harms to speak to Paul or Doc about what’s coming as many things are in the making for Tito as well and if not, maybe they consider integrating what you need. Of course you have to make your own decision and should compare the many ticket services on the market to find the one that fits your needs.

During the Event

During my events, I usually keep and eye on Twitter, as attendees often use it to ask quick questions and it is easier to keep track than email for me (I’m useless with email during an event … sorry). Apart from that I am using a few tools that help me on and off stage.

Confwall

Some might say, that Twitter is not important anymore or the communication is difficult because of the character limit. True when it comes to real communication. For short questions or short comments on something concerning your event, Twitter still is relevant I think. But not only! And that is the reason, why I like Confwall, by Remy Sharp a lot.

Confwall is highly flexible and not only a standard Twitter wall. Next to tweets, you are able to display your schedule, which automatically updates, based on time. You can display a slideshow with information for your attendees or announcements by your partners (that is how I like to call sponsors). For those you can decide whether they should be integrated in your Confwall layout – e. g. one half shows tweets, one part the schedule and you have an area where your announcements are displayed – or if you want to display them in full screen mode. You could sell the opportunity of fullscreen announcements/ads to a certain group of partner for example.

In the admin panel of Confwall, you have plenty of options to configure your wall. Not only using CSS to completely style your own wall, but you also have a blacklist which works user or keyword based or via regular expressions.

A list of core features looks like this:

• Live feed of your custom Twitter search
• Working even when your connection goes offline
• Import your schedule from a spreadsheet or Lanyrd
• Schedule of next speaker that updates in real time
• 100% styleable through CSS
• alternatively to own CSS, select an existing theme
• Emojis, multiple photos, animated gifs, Instagram, Flickr and more
• Advanced blacklist control over tweets
• Multi-track event support
• Multi-user support
• Post-event archive of all tweets (for paid walls)

Introductory price for Confwall is £200 per event day. If you want to have the work done by Confwall and get a fully customised and designed wall, then Confwall charges £1000 for this (plus the £200 for every event day the wall runs). If you rund a free event, running the wall is free and a single confwall tweet appears in your wall at a low frequency, that reads "This wall is powered by @confwall. If you run your own event, get a confwall today at confwall.com".

In my opinion the benefit of using Confwall is, that I have Keynote or PowerPoint plus the schedule and twitter wall feature in one tool.

Newsletter Signup Software

If you are running a newsletter for your event, you might want to use the chance at an event and not only advertise your newsletter on during the breaks in the presentation on the wall, but maybe you want to give the attendees the opportunity to directly sign up for it. I am using MailChimp for my list, but also tried Campaign Monitor and know that both offer apps/services for this. of course you can place a laptop in kiosk mode with your sign up page at a desk, which is one way. Another way are their apps they offer for:

• MailChimp Subscribe – this app is available for Android and iOS and turns your tablet into a point to collect addresses in a beautiful way. You can fully design the signup form.
• Campaign Monitor Enlist – is sadly only available for iOS. But the version available is equally great to customise as the MailChimp app.

Both apps work perfectly and are fully customisable to match the look and feel of your event. As I only used these two services to ever send my newsletters, I can’t speak of other software and/or recommend tools to collect subscriber onsite at your event.

Presenter Timers

Some theatres I have been in have hardware timers. They are working great, but mostly look clumsy and are way to big for what they do. Also they are not really cheap and difficult to get. I started using my iPad for this and this is the software I used:

• Presentation Clock – this app was pretty useful for 5 years for me. It works fine, never crashes and is very reliable. The downside is, that it comes without an option to remote control the app, which means after the introduction of the speaker you have to hit the iPad in order to start the timer. You can imagine how often I simply forgot to do exactly this. The App is available for iOS and Android and costs about one Euro/Dollar. If you don’t need to have an option to remote control the timer, than his is definitely a great choice.
• Podium Timer Pro – when I was looking into option that are able to be controlled remotely, I found this app. It was not looking as great from a designers point – especially the brushed metal interface in which the screenshots are taken, but don't worry, you can change this – and was a bit more pricy than other apps as you have to purchase the apps and also an in-app purchase to be able to remote control the timer. Also I tried using it with my old iPad 2, which can run the app, but is not able to be used with remote control. But after those first glitches, I am using my iPhone 5s and the iPad Air 2 on stage. First I tried it with Bluetooth only, but I had dropouts with that and devices lost connection. Then I created an extra wifi, to make sure nothing interferes with the connection, and also connected via bluetooth and that worked without any problems then. Now I am able to start and stop the timer remotely, but also to add time to the timer while it is running, if needed. And compared to a hardware timer that still was way cheaper. Only negative part is, that this app is only available for iOS.

There is other timer software out there of course, but I myself tested only those two. presenterCue looks quite nice, when you want to use a real display instead of your iPad, but it looks quite expensive as well, if I get their pricing right. From the look Fin looks really good, but I can’t really see, if you can control it remotely only with the Apple Watch or also with an iPhone for example (I sent an email to the support and let you now as soon a I get an answer). I like the idea though, that you are also able to use an Apple TV with a monitor and have a big screen timer.

Hardware During the Event

I guess you are well prepared and a pro when it comes to your hardware on stage. I mean surely you have all the various adapters you need to connect any kind of machine to your projector, right? OMG … there are soooo many different ways to connect a laptop. With a Mac on its own it already needs plenty, but if you then add the different options to connect a windows machine as well … I think I have got about 20 different adaptors in my box on stage.

Furthermore I have got a Mac power adapter fixed to the presenter desk as most (usually 12 out of 13) speakers use a Mac to present. To avoid having the MagSafe plug for the power adapter, I got one of those MagSafe to MagSafe 2 Converters. And to not loose it every time – that thing is small – I got a couple of MagCozy back when they did their Kickstarter.

In addition to this I got myself two clickers. You might ask yourself “Why two?”, but I thought that every speaker, who is not owning a clicker or forgot to bring the clicker, has a different taste. Therefore I got these two:

• Logitech Wireless Presenter – this clicker is quite slim and light. There is one version that comes with a little LCD display showing you battery status, time and such things, but I thought that this is so small that no one really wants to look at it in a darker environment. The R400, without the display, comes with a laser pointer and the batterie lasts forever (never forget to bring a spare pack of batteries though)
• Kensington Presenter Remote – this one looks and feels completely different to the Logitech one. I prefer using this one as the buttons are really recognisable positioned. They are so far from each other that you never can hit a button by accident. On the other hand it is a bit bulkier than the Logitech clicker. It has a big head and also a round corpus. This one also comes with a laser pointer. Kensington also has so called pro remotes that can also control the cursor on your computer and stuff like this, but I don’t think you need this.

Both remotes are about the same price and from the functionality they are very much the same. The only difference really is the feeling in your hand, which made me buying both to have an option for the speakers. Both USB plugs open a dialog box on Mac, when connecting them, so you want to connect the USB receiver before the speaker actually starts his presentation to avoid the presentation to switch to this message. Once you clicked away this message it should not appear again, when connection the same kind of clicker.

After the Event

After an event I mainly write emails and emails and emails. To speakers, partners, attendees and the onsite team, to say thanks, to sum up how it was and to give feedback. If you want to collect feedback, there is a couple of good services that do this in a good way:

• GetFeedback – I am currently using GetFeedback if I ask for feedback and want to do a quick poll. It is easy to set up, looks and feels good and the evaluation tools are good. It lacks a few features for the reporting, such as being able to show a speaker only the part about her/his talk for example. GetFeedback starts with $25 a month and comes with two other plans if you need more.
• Typeform – I like the way you are using typeform when filling out a survey. It feels really good and you can completely use the keyboard (as with GetFeedback as well). Typeform has a free plan to start using it and also two more plans if you need more than the free plan, like a custom thank you screen, email notifications or payment fields.

These are the two services I tried, which are both good and it is just a matter of taste and money in relation to features, which one you want to choose. Overall I have to say that all the times I use online feedback services like those two, the return rate is so much lower than using good old paper. When I still used paper forms, I got more than 2/3 of the audience to fill out the form. When sending an email and ask for feedback it mostly is 1/4 if not 1/5. The benefit on the other hand is the time you spend on evaluating the feedback. Looking through hundreds of paper forms, writing down a few of the quotes you want to use etc. needs a lot of time. The online forms give you a report as CSV or Excel file.

That’s it for this post. I hope there are some useful bits and pieces here and there that you can use to improve your event – if there is anything to improve. As usual I am more than happy to get feedback and additions to this post. If you have software or hardware that make your event better, why not telling me and other people about it in a a blog post as well? If you don’t have a blog, please send me a note and I collect all this for an update to this post.

Many of you, who have been part of beyond tellerrand events, know Tobi Lessnow also known as Baldower. For beyond tellerrand 2013 in Düsseldorf, he was asking me, what i think about the idea of doing sketch notes in music. I was a bit confused and did not know what the f**k he meant with this. “Sketch notes in music … like drawing with sound?”, I thought. So he, in his own and enthusiastic way, described what he meant and I just thought, we should give it a try as it sounded very cool. Of course it could have been a total flop, but if not, it might be really cool. Surely the latter was the case and therefore Tobi is part of the show since 2013 at every beyond tellerrand, not only playing music during the breaks, but giving the music a meaning, wrapping up the talk that just took place and giving the whole event something special and unique, no one else has got … oh ok, the latter is not true anymore as, of course, other people running events have asked him to do similar for their events – which is fantastic for Tobi! Not to forget that next to summing up the talks with his music, he also creates a unique title song for every beyond tellerrand, which I love a lot! Check what he has released so far on Soundcloud.

I also remember that back then, when Tobi asked me if we should do this, he was barely making any electronic music and has seen this also as a chance to explore the field of electronic music for himself.

And now, nearly three years after he made beyond tellerrand richer with his sound, Baldower is playing a solo show in Düsseldorf. And yes, he is also playing a lot of the music he created for #btconf. So come and join us for a concert with Baldower. Free entry, good music.

The Facts:

• Where: Prinz Albert, Albertstraße 113, Düsseldorf
• When: Saturday, 9 July 2016, 9pm
• Ticket price: free
• [https://soundcloud.com/beyondtellerrand/sets](Baldower set from beyond tellerrand on Soundcloud)
• Baldower Website

If you found something that is not already included in this wrap up post, please let me know and I’ll add it. Also come back and check this blog posts for updates as I continuously will update it as soon as new post, new songs by Tobi or new photos and videos are released.

A Few Facts

Hundreds of burgers have been eaten at the burger truck in the yard of the Capitol Theater. Host Europe ordered ice cream for everybody during the lunch break on both days and nearly 2000 scoops of ice cream endet in the stomach of the attendees. Luckily the weather was fantastic, so that the ice cream was very welcome.

Confwall has archived 2927 tweets during the days of the event and #btconf was trending in many countries, which sadly caused a few spam-idiots to spam our wall. Sorry for this again, but I think I acted quick and got rid of those tweets.

In Düsseldorf the usage statistics for the wifi are a little lower than in Berlin. About 35 GB up and 111 GB down have been used by a total of 515 clients. Round about 70% of the devices had been Apple devices.

12 volunteers helped me onsite with the setup, to do the registration, run the exhibition and were simply there for everybody and any question during the two days and the setup. Attendees came from 21 different countries including Hong Kong, Brasil, Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Italy, and USA, just to mention a few. Our partners made it possible that some of the attendees went away with very nice things they have won while taking part in games and challenges. Prices have been two Bose SoundLink Mini, a Raspberry Pi 3, two Arduino Starter Kits and two X-300C 6-axis gyro quad-copters by MJX – wow! Last but not least 20 wonderful partners supported the event in Düsseldorf to make it come true (see footer of the archive pages) – THANK YOU ALL!

Photos

I know of at least 4 people – Juliane, Stefan, Martin and Andreas – who took photos at the event. So far two of them have published their sets of photos and one of them, Andreas Dantz, had a data crash on one of the SD cards. As soon as Martin and Stefan publish their sets, I’ll update this post. If you have taken and photos, please let me know as I am happily include them as well.

• Juliane Schütz of Tollwerk has taken a lovely set of photos of the main event as well as of the IndieWebCamp, which took place as one of the Side Events this year.
• Andreas Dantz was able to rescue a few of the photos he took and was able to upload them to Flickr. Sad that he does not have all of them anymore as those he rescued a very nice.
• Really nice set of photos by Patrick Westerhoff of the event and Side Events.
• Dirk Döring was late to the game, but added a very nice set of photos catching the atmosphere and good vibe.

Blog Posts

I say thank you to everybody who makes the effort to write her/his opinion and wrap up of the event. I love to get feedback and of course the warm words most of them have for my event are the fuel that keep me running.

• Eva-Lotta Lamm has written a nice blog post with the sum-up of her favourite talks as well as all sketch notes she took during the two days.
• Liane Kirschner was at the very first beyond tellerrand and is looking forward to come back year by year since then. She has written a lovely sum-up of this year. I don’t agree on the statement, that it was not as much “beyond the tellerrand” (outside the box) as in past years, as I think it actually was a lot, but I understand – of course – that I can’t meet everybody’s expectations every year. I’d love to say thank you though to her very kind and warm words to my work:

Beyond Tellerrand is for sure the most familiar and friendly event for people interested in design and tech I’ve ever been to. Marc Thiele, the organizer – or let’s say father – of the conference does an amazing job there. Thank you for that.

Thanks to you, Liane, for being part of it!

• Björn Odendahl, who created all the pixel graphics for this year’s Düsseldorf edition, has written a great story with some background on the artwork for beyond tellerrand 2016 in Düsseldorf. Even if you haven’t been there, you will get some historical information on earlier days of using a computer ;)
• In his short statement about the event and pointing people to another fab blog post, Tom Arnold says

the way (then) total strangers welcomed me at the first evening's warm-up, the friendly atmosphere between the talks, all this was not the exception but turned out to be the rule.

Fantastic to read and exactly what I was hoping to establish over the years. It is just great to see that there are so many people, who thinking and living exactly like this!

• Matthias Ott, whom I mentioned above already, answers the question “So why go there after all?” with “The answer is: people.” – and I have to say, he got it. No matter if you think about speakers, partners, attendees or the onsite team behind the event, it is about the people all together making it what it is. Thanks for your article, Matthias
• Also Christoph, who has written me an email, exactly recognised the same as Matthias. In his email it said at one point ”Was diese Konferenz so besonders gemacht hat, sind die Menschen[…]”, which translates ”What makes the conference to special, are the people[…]” – wonderful feedback. Thank you!
• Manuel Schulz has been at beyond tellerrand for the first time. Not only did he win a ticket at another event, but he was lucky enough to also win one of the drones that were a price by Accenture Digital. See how he describes his experiences at beyond tellerrand.
• Christian Huber has written a very complete review with details to every talk. Thanks a lot for the work and I’m happy you all had a good time, Christian!
• In a short intverview one of the jambit team, who attended #btconf in Düsseldorf, talks about his impressions and experiences.
• Nice and complete review by PPW who had a couple of people attending. Including short statements of individual employees.
• Steffen Rademacker has written a short, yet very warm text about his days at the IndieWebCamp and beyond tellerrand. In addition to that you find a nice set of photos from those days. But personally, most important to me is this paragraph of the post:

What I really like the most about this whole event, is that the asshole-rate tends to be close to zero. So many open-minded and friendly people from the tech- and web-industry in one place — I think that's hard to find and to accomplish.

Thank you, Steffen!

• Florenz Heldermann has written a late blog post with his thoughts on beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf, including reviews for some of his favourite talks.
• Jessica Lazarus has written a lovely, German, summary of the show in Düsseldorf. Next to the write-up, she also created four posters for her four favourite talks. Thanks, Jessica!

• Phil Shackleton has written a little blog post about “The benefits and challenges of Web conferences” in which he mentions beyond tellerrand and says:

beyond tellerrand is without doubt, one of the most inspirational conferences I’ve ever been too […]

Wow. That is very nice and makes me really happy. Glad you liked it, Phil.

Videos

As for all the past events, the event pages automatically turn into an archive for the event in Düsseldorf on which the videos, where I have the right to publish as well as slides (if sent) and other coverage to the talk and/or speaker will be collected and published.

Up to now 11 of 13 talks are online which are:

• Tobias Baldauf and his talk about “Your Hero Images Need You! Save the Day with HTTP2 Image Loading”.
• WebGL magic in the talk ”Unreal.js” by Michael Chang.
• Lil Chen gave “Advice from a young designer to younger designers”.
• “Designing Meaningful Animation” is important and Val Head spoke about how to exactly do this.
• Mario Heiderich obviously knows his stuff and even though it was way too technical for a few people, everybody agreed, that it was exciting. He spoke about his “Abusive Relationship with AngularJS - About the Security Adventures with the "Super-Hero" Framework”.
• Jeremy Keith was back for the third time in six years. This time he opened day two with his talk “Resilience”.
• Andrea Krajewski said “Bye, Bye Screen”.
• After asking her more than once, Indra Kupferschmid finally was part of the beyond tellerrand family also on stage and not “only” in the audience. Her talk was about “Typography on the web is just like other typography only much more interesting”.
• Chris Murphy opened the event on day one with “Time + Creativity”.
• I guess David Jonathan Ross gave a talk called “Cracking the Code”, which surprised most of the attendees as it was about typography, but more exciting for any programmer in the audience than they’d have expected. See yourself what I mean and watch the video.
• Catt Small showed, what it means, when she says she is speaking about “Designing Socially Impactful Digital Experiences”.

For the slides, I have to say, that most of the speakers say, that their slides without the talk often don’t make real sense to be published. I agree. Therefore only a few of the speaker pages have slides listed. Furthermore all slides are included in the video of the talk using a split screen technology. Makes much more sense in my opinion anyways.

Audio

Every year more and more people really understand what the fantastic Tobi Lessnow (aka Baldower) is doing at beyond tellerrand – not only does he do hand made music during the breaks, but he colorises the music with snippets of samples of the talk that just happened. He deserves all the applause he gets at the event. He once called it Sketchnotes in Music and I love it. Everything that he is going to be released will be shown here.

Tobi released the title track of 2016’s Düsseldorf edition called “All the People” and it ROCKS!.

Tobi Lessnow released the second track of beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf. It is featured by Mr. Bingo. Great track.

Don't miss the opportunity and support Tobi and his work with listening to the tracks of past events.

The Working Draft Podcast recorded Revision 263 during beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf. Their guests were PPK, Chris Heilmann and Jeremy Keith.

T-Shirts and Visual-Theme

My old buddy Björn, whom I know from looong ago when we were using our Commodore C64 instead of laptop or smartphone – nothing else was available anyways – asked me, what I think of the idea to use his ANSI art skills to theme the event, I was very happy. It certainly brings some limitations with it, due to the fact that you only can use certain resolution ratios and colours, but this limitation usually was, what made us creative in the past.

Yesterday I published a blog post by Björn with a lot of background information on the artwork and the technique used.

Again at this point: thanks to Björn for taking care and creating the visuals.

Opening Titles

This year’s opening titles have been created by Bernd Zeier. I loved his hand writing animations and asked him, if he’d to like to do the titles for Düsseldorf. He has chosen a surf-sound as title song for it and the attendees asked more than once, if that song is available somewhere and I have seen them swinging along when the titles where shown.

Therefore: well done, Bernd. And Thank you.

Update May 25: Added a short blog post interview by jambit and the photo set of Patrick Westerhoff. Also added the title song for the event by Tobi Lessnow to the coverage.

Update May 28: Added blog post by PPW.

Update May 30: Added Workingdraft Podcast, which was recorded during beyond tellerrand with PPK, Chris Heilmann and Jeremy Keith.

Update June 3: Added blog post and photos by Steffen Rademacker

Update June 7: Added blog post by Florenz Heldermann, as well as the new track by Baldower from Mr. Bingo's talk.

Update June 11: Added blog post by Jessica Lazarus (she designed four posters for her four favourite talks!!)

Update June 22: Added a blog post by Phil Shackleton

Update July 4: New set of Photos by Dirk Döring added

In a world before the internet, digital communication was achieved by dialling out to computer bulletin board systems (BBSes) with modems connecting at mindboggling speeds ranging between 0.3 and 56 kbit/s. As opposed to the high resolution graphical user interfaces of today, these computer systems offered dauntingly blinking cursors on screens of text, and up to 16 predefined colours to those who could afford it.

The challenges presented were not unlike those that web designers and developers still face on a regular basis today: how to present these “boards” in a visually appealing way while preserving accessibility even at low speed connections and on machines with little processing power?

The solution was based on sequential, progressive display of characters of the systems’ default fixed width fonts on screens typically 40 or 80 characters wide and 25 or 50 characters tall. System-specific control characters as included in Commodore's PETSCII or control sequences such as ANSI escape codes allowed for manipulation of fore- and background colours to be chosen from a fixed palette, often accompanied by additional system-specific restrictions.

Issues like differences in resolution, character encoding and other limitations primarily based on the hardware of choice, a challenge today's developers confronted with a multitude of mobile devices are also quite familiar with, were already present as well. Fortunately device diversity was much lower back then and compatibility was often just an issue of proper terminal program settings provided that the user's system was capable of displaying the resolution and colours in the first place. As a majority of BBSes would usually cater to users of a specific system anyway this was less of a problem though.

In the late 1980s creators of ANSI art started releasing artwork collections to present their work outside of the BBSes they were made for and spawned what would come to be known as the “artscene”, with groups like ACiD and iCE among others.

The rise of the internet eventually caused the decline of the BBS and subsequently the interest in text-based graphics and design faded as well, most artists turned to more modern outlets for their creativity. But in recent years artists of the heyday of ANSI art found back to the passion of their youth and have been releasing “artpacks” of their new textmode creations as Blocktronics.

So when Marc resurrected his personal website last year and revealed to the world that he'd been part of the textmode scene in the past as well the similarities between ANSI art and web design as visual identities and user interfaces of remote sites with much of the same challenges in their creation and use made it an (in our opinion) interesting choice for the conference design of beyond tellerrand.

The ANSI graphics created for beyond tellerrand will be included in the next Blocktronics pack currently scheduled for a June release. Follow Blocktronics on Twitter and/or on Facebook for updates.

We hope you enjoyed the small glimpse into a precursor of web design.

If you'd like to know more about and see more of it, the following links might be of interest in addition to the sites and articles linked above.

• Sixteen Colors - ANSI/ASCII artwork archive
• CSDb Plain PETSCII Graphics Competition 2013 - A few examples of recent PETSCII graphics from the Commodore 64 Scene Database
• PabloDraw - ANSI/ASCII editor and viewer by Curtis Wensley
• PETSCII - Ingeniously named PETSCII editor by Markku Reunanen
• BBS: The Documentary - Documentary by Jason Scott, including a chapter on the artscene
• Like City Lights, Receding: ANSi Artwork and the Digital Underground, 1985-2000 - Master Thesis by Michael A. Hargadon at Concordia University
• Sixteen Colors - Archiving the Evolution of ANSI and ASCII art - Presentation by Doug Moore at BSides Las Vegas 2013

This article was written by my good friend Björn Odendahl who has created the beautiful graphics which decorated the whole event, on screens and print material. Thanks for this, Björn!

Of course you are invited to drop in today or tomorrow and join us, even if you don’t have a registration. Just in case you don’t want to miss out …

Watch the IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf livestream