Hey there!

How are you doing these days? We hope you’re up for another newsletter – because it’s that time of the month again 😀

In June, we have been active with design work, preparing and running workshops and getting exciting projects off the ground. We saw great progress with our conference room build-out, hosted coworking friends and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Today, we have one announcement, one spotlight and heaps of inspiration for you.

Let’s go!

Announcement: Our doors are now open! 🏡

Our studio, the Haus of Ponder, is a very special place for us.

And now that summer has fully arrived, we’re enjoying it even more. We love having lunch or a meeting by the water. And we love working inside with a deep focus as the space stays nice and cool even when it’s 35°C outside 😅.

And, of course, we all know joy is always better if you share it.

So we’re happy to announce that we now officially welcome creatives and other cuties interested in renting our space for workshops, talks, performances, etc. 🤗

Also, we are always up for supporting community work. So, if you are (or know) an individual or part of a group looking for safe spaces to meet up, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are happy to offer our space for free in such cases.

Sounds good? Send us an email to space@ponder.haus if you’re interested or have further questions about the space.

Change pusher spotlight: All Tech is Human 💫

As you might have read on our website, we position ourselves as “strategic partners to those pushing for change”. This applies to our project work but also goes beyond that.

For example, we try to support positive change through fund-raising (e.g. with the Solidarispree event in April). And we try to give change makers a platform, using our modest, yet very relevant, audience to expose people (like you ❤️) to great ideas, initiatives and organisations.

To this end, we’ll use our newsletter from time to time to talk about people and organisations that inspire us.

Today, we want to spotlight All Tech is Human. They’re a very active non-profit bringing together a diverse community of people and organisations to co-create a better tech future.

Their mission:

Technology affects everyone.
We must ensure that it is aligned with our values and the public interest.

With this, they have set themselves a monumental task. Just consider, for example, how social networks are linked to political propaganda. Or think about how tech companies constantly create new dark patterns to give them more success in the attention economy. And how platforms like Instagram play a role in conveying toxic concepts of beauty – especially to young people and other vulnerable audiences.

To work towards a better tech future, All Tech is Human engages in various activities around community building, multidisciplinary education and growing the Responsible Tech ecosystem.

They have A LOT going on. There’s a Slack community, multi-sector working groups, reports, live stream series, job boards, mentor programs, and responsible technology guides – just to get started.

If that sounds interesting to you, we’d recommend you get started here:

• Check out their official explainer video (which probably does a better job introducing them than we can 🙈).
• Read their Responsible Tech Guide to understand what it is about and what you can do.
• Generally, have a look around the rest of their website. There’s so much inspiring information to discover and many ways of connecting with a like-minded community and taking action yourself.

Weekend send-off

As a regular reader, you know what’s next – our inspirational weekend summer send-off.

The coming week marks the beginning of the school summer holidays in Berlin. Hopefully, some of us will be fortunate enough to get time off to wind down – and maybe even read an inspiring book or two.

BOOKS: Responsible Tech Summer Reading List How perfectly convenient that the great people we’ve just introduced in the segment above have published a varied and interesting list of books worth reading this summer. The selection is based on recommendations from the All Tech Is Human community and covers many topics and perspectives across fiction and non-fiction. Have a look at the list and take your pick. And please let us know about your choice – we might start with Ruha Benjamin’s “Race After Technology”.

Thank you so much for reading!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter. If not, please let us know what bothered you before you unsubscribe. We’re always happy to hear your feedback and use it to make the newsletter more relevant for everyone. Here’s a simple form to submit your thoughts.

That’s it. Read you again in a month — or drop us a message whenever you feel like it!

Au revoir,
Your friends at Ponder