The Node 008: New website, new office, new ThingsCon (and more)

Hello dear friends & colleagues,

How are you today? It's been a while!

Don't worry,  that's usually a good sign! It's just that it's been some quite busy months and I'd rather get stuff out the door to talk about rather than spend my days announcing half-finished things. (Even though, of course, that might still happen here and there.) 

So what's been happening? Well first of call, there was a vacation up North - Sweden and Finland. Once that was over it went straight back to the usual pace with a mix of behind-the-scenes consulting work and the diverse mix of projects that I'm privileged (and happy) to call my work...
 

Planning for ThingsCon 2015 is in full swing. (Isn't it always?) We got a new logo, website and early bird tickets: 
http://thingscon.com
 
We also, and that's pretty new and awesome, a first local spin-off of ThingsCon. ThingsConAMS (Nov 7) will bring the spirit of ThingsCon to Amsterdam thanks to good friends & collaborators Iskander Smit and Monique van Dusseldorp. Also, if you're in Amsterdam on Nov 7, come say hi!
http://thingscon.nl

 

Our second issue of Connected has been delayed by, well, I'm not going to lie: by life. Just too much to do, and so this kinda moved to second priority for a bit. But it's proof-read, and we're applying last color-correction touches and uploading files and setting up order pages and whathaveyou every day now, so the launch date is in sight.
 

Regular collaborator Max Krüger and I recently published a little ebook titled "The Indie Conference Organizer Handbook - A practical guide to running your very own indie conference." Just after launch, volunteers from the Wikipedia community approached us. They want to translate it to German, and quite possibly other languages as well. That's amazing! As a side effect, we're opening it up even more to a more liberal license (Creative Commons Attribution), one of the most liberal of all licenses out there. So now everybody can do pretty much whatever they want with it, which is pretty cool. 

The free PDF is still available here, and for those who like a bit of extra formatting and to also kick in a bit of a tip, it's also up in your local Kindle store for a small fee. The easiest way to find it is to search Amazon for "indie conference organizer", or use these links to jump straight to the links for Amazon.com and Amazon.de. 
 

Together with my long-time office mates - jokingly referred to as KANT Berlin - we're looking for a new office in Berlin with a bit more space. Concretely, around Kreuzberg's Oranienstrasse, where we're based now, too. Happy to share with a co-lease of some sorts. If you happen to know anything, any pointer is very welcome!
 

Ever since my company name changed to The Waving Cat, I've been wondering how to best represent it on my website without completely giving up the space I so far have been using mainly as my personal blog. With a new website design I hope I'm a small step closer to striking that balance. Lots of loose ends still, but it's getting there. I hope.
http://thewavingcat.com
 

Chris, Matt and I have had a great run with the last two installments of UIKonf. So much so that we didn't know how we could take it to the next level with the limited time we would be reliably able to commit to the event. So we decided NOT to run it again, and rather look for a team to take over from us. We're so, so happy that a great group stepped up right away, and we're handing over the virtual keys right now. So UIKonf can live on, and grow, and grow up, and we can support it from the side lines rather than pushing it forward ourselves. It's so great to see that something you helped create had such an impact on other people that they volunteer their time and energy to keep it alive and foster it. Here's to the new team, Engin, Maxim and Sabine.
http://uikonf.com

 

That was quite a bit of stuff right there. 

There are, in fact, a few more things I'd love to talk about, but sticking to what I said earlier I won't announce them before they're at least, well, "live enough" to have a proper link. So there.

Have a great week, everyone! And if you're new here, say hi. It's always great to hear from you.


Yours,

Peter