Social Media Week Berlin September 2013

Social Media Week is a week long series of events about...SOCIAL MEDIA. Hello!

The Social Media Week website provides a description about what they are about:

We are experiencing one of the biggest shifts in how we communicate in human history. Because of this, our aim is to provide the best information, ideas and inspiration to help people understand how to achieve more in a hyper-connected world. (...) Because of the shift we’re experiencing and the changes happening in our lives, society, culture and business, our mission is to capture, curate and share the most meaningful ideas, trends, and best practices with regard to technology and social media’s impact on business, society and culture.

This all sounded pretty interesting to me so I registered on their website and selected some events to attend (all free).

The first event we wanted to check out was on the Thursday, but to attend would be a bit tricky for us as we also had other plans. Being a technology based thing, we were able to watch this session on a live stream from home. How cool.

Unfortunately with the fixed side position and relative low quality of the camera (and background noise) it was really hard to concentrate on the live stream and so we didn't get much out of it.

On the Friday we went to attend a couple of session in person. Social Media Week was having sessions all over the city, but these two were both at the Design Akademie Berlin.

The first session was about family life in Berlin. This was a moderated session with an interview like format with two women who blog. It was supposed to focus on life in the city and how perceptions change in relation to single vs family life - but the main focus was initially on how they ran their blogs and make money from them.

We had chances to ask questions during the session and the women were questioned a bit more about their blog specifics and also prompted to elaborate their thoughts on life in Berlin from the perspective of being parents.

After this session we had an hour to waste and so we took advantage of an offer to sign up for 'Drive Now', a BMW operated car scheme which provides for short term car hire within Berlin (short term as in by the minute). Usually there is a registration fee of 29 Euros, but as BMW was partly sponsoring the event they were making the registration free. 

We have often thought about joining these type of schemes but never bothered to get around to signing up, and the initial registration fee was a bit steep for something we may or may not use. Now we are signed up and I have a snazzy RFID sticker chip thing stuck to my drivers license. Now I can book a car online or through an app, then unlock the car with my drivers license chip and drive away...for 31 cents a minute.

The next session we attended was titled 'Who is Berlin anyway? The city as seen by bloggers'. These bloggers are onese that I have heard of before so I was keen to hear them speak about their work, All five of them are expats and they spoke about what and why they do what they do.

As a blogger myself it was interesting to hear about other peoples perspectives on what they do. The questions from the packed audience were few but tackled some questions that I've also thought, particularly whether the Berlin blog scene is already 'saturated'. 

A German guy asked an interesting question about whether the panel read any German language media (such as German Language blogs and newspapers) and insinuated that the things that these panel are writing about are all old news to Germans. A German girl near us piped up and chimed in with a more friendly rephrasing of the idea, referencing a blog post that the host Hilda Hoy had written about Berlin's oldest ice cream shop. She said something like 'You wrote about this shop, like its something special and interesting...but as Berliners - we would never go there!'.

And that is/was the point of these and other bloggers...the perspective of the city as seen by bloggers, particularly expat bloggers, offers something new to the idea and perception of the city. That final point seemed to shut 'em up. 

With our dog waiting patiently at home for his dinner we unfortunately couldn't stay around for the closing party (which offered free food and drinks!).

I thought this was an excellent event and look forward to more like it.

TEDxFriedrichshain

Through social media I had heard that a TEDx event was taking place in Berlin. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, are a series of conferences that run under the slogan 'Ideas worth spreading' and their talks are well known, accessible for free on the internet and usually very interesting.

A TEDx event is an independent event that is run locally under the TED framework.

The TEDx event we went to was called TEDxFriedrichshain (which is our local neighbourhood) because I think the guy who organised it also lives in Friedrichshain. However the event actually was held in Prenzlauer Berg, a neighbouring area.

So, on a rainy Friday night we went to the event at 'Die Backfabrik', a former baking factory. The hosts were a company called 'Wooga' which make games for Facebook and mobile devices.

Inside the company offices were really cool. If you ever have thought to yourself 'What would Google's office be like?' then Wooga's must be mighty similar. Everything is suitably 'funky', a bit unconventional with the use of materials (exposed pine, shade cloth for flooring, bright colours), pods everywhere and the in house auditorium where the event was being held. The place felt young and fresh, collaborative and just looked like it would be a fun place to work. But we weren't here to job hunt.

As we waited for the thing to start we were invited to go to the staff kitchen and help ourselves to drinks. I went to check it out, where the Wooga staff were congregating for Friday night drinks. There were several glass fronted fridges in the kitchen full of beers and soft drinks. I asked someone 'Can I just take whatever I want?' She shrugged her shoulders and said 'Yea', like I was an idiot for asking.

The event started with an introduction by the host and then we dialled in to a live stream of a TED event in New York (we were aware that were would be watching a live stream).

The New York event was about 're-imagining the city' and had several speakers, with the schedule listed her (taken from the TED website).

Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is putting pedestrians at the forefront of transportation policy in New York City

Visionary architect Chris Downey, who lost his sight and gained new ways of seeing the world

Robin Nagle, an anthropologist in residence at the NYC dept of sanitation, talks trash

Street performers John Pita and Avi Snow of City of the Sun are flamenco/blues/indie rockers

Place maker Toni Griffin, an urban planner working to make cities more just

Housing advocate Shaun Donovan, the U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development

Sustainability guru Lance Hosey, who's on a mission to make green design beautiful

I particularly liked the first speaker, the Commissioner of New York's Department of Transport. She spoke of changes her department made to the city which were quick and easy yet had huge positive impacts. These included a pilot of making Times Square pedestrian friendly (by blocking traffic, painting the pedestrian zone on the ground and putting out lawn chairs), adding dedicated bike and bus lanes and re-purposing poorly designed or underutilised road space for primarily pedestrian uses.

What was best about her talk is the eagerness she had to make the changes happen quickly and how she demonstrated how easily some of these things could be done - her strategy was 'paint', paint the road to designate the new area as pedestrian....job done. You may need to watch the video for it to make more sense.

After the talks were over we were supposed to reconvene in the Wooga kitchen / cafe area for a discussion about the evening. We went there and got a couple of drinks and waited briefly.

In the kitchen, Wooga employees (I think) were wrapping up their drinks and starting to leave, and very few of the people from the TED event came promptly. It was an awkward feeling to be sitting there and so we decided to leave. As we left it looked like most other attendees had no intention of sticking around. We weren't there any longer to see if at least a decent amount of the group stayed to chat with the organiser.

Despite the end discussion component of the evening, the event was really interesting for us - the talks and the Wooga experience. After the event I was sent a survey abut the event so I gave my positive feedback and mentioned the awkwardness of the supposed 'discussion' part of the evening. I'm sure the guy didn't need me to tell him that, but that part needs a bit of finessing to make it work better.

The organiser said he was hoping to get some more TEDx events organised - so we will definitely look out for that and hopefully be able to go again. 

IFA Berlin - Consumer Electronics Show

In September the annual  Berlin Consumer Electronics Show is staged  for several days. IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung - International Radio Exhibition) Berlin is a long running trade show and is now regarded as one of the premier events of its type in the world.

I had heard about the event beforehand but did not intend to go, that was until a friend that works at Sony (one of the exhibitors) was able to wangle us both some trade tickets.

So we went off the the exhibition which is held at the ICC Berlin (Internationales Congress Centrum). Inside the ICC, which was built in 1979, it looked like an airport and also what the architects must have thought the future would look like. The future looked pretty 70's.

It wasn't very busy in this airport looking part of the ICC, but we only had to get past this space to get lost in a confusing array of large exhibition halls that were bustling with people.

There was all kinds of things going on, like musical performances,

Lots of cooking demonstrations,

And a few live television 'tapings' in progress,

We were interested in seeing what free stuff we could get but with bad timing we managed to miss out on all of the free food stuff - either too early or too late. :(

What was easy to get was coffees. As many of these electronics and homewares companies make coffee machines there was a plethora of places to sample how their machine made the best cup.

We took it slow and tried not to be silly about it, but still had about four coffees each.

Buzzing off our chops from the coffee we zipped around the conference halls with a loose objective to find the Sony exhibition - which was supposed to be huge.

It took us a while as the layout was so confusing. We saw most of the exhibits and played around with a few things - I got to play with a camera that up until then had only just read about. I don't think it was available for sale at that point, like many of the products there.

Eventually we found the Sony exhibit, where I played with an unreleased computer / tablet thing that was pretty cool - with its flip around screen, solid state drives and fancy construction.

There was so much 'stuff' there, everything looks so slick and cool. Much of it you don't dare to ask the price tag or when you do you act as if you can afford it.

I'm not one for the constant turn around of technology, and posed the question to myself regarding everything I handled or admired of 'Do I need this?'. In all cases my answer was no. I don't need any of this super cool, chic, 'revolutionary', latest, can't live without devices.

It is fun to look at though!

We got another coffee before leaving.

Potsdam Day Trip

It is fast approaching Herbst (Autumn) in Germany and the good weather is on the way out. Before the long days of the summer sun become a memory we wanted to make good use of this weekends great sunny forecast.

We had heard that Potsdam was a great day trip to take from Berlin. Easy to get to by train and great to explore by bike. We have just bought a couple of bikes so the scene was perfectly set. However, my bike fell to bits the night before which necessitated a midnight McGyver type repair...which did the trick.

Our buddy Joe is also on his last couple of weeks in Germany so we all decided to go together.

Conveniently Potsdam is accessible through the normal Berlin transport ABC zones (being in zone C), even though it is a separate city in its own right. Even better is that because it is within the ABC zone we could catch a regional train which are nicer and quicker trains that run limited stops in Berlin and get us out to Potsdam in just over half an hour. We took our bikes on board and had to buy special bike tickets.

Once at Potsdam we went to hire Joe a bike (11 euros for the day) and then we set off.

We had a basic map and wanted to get around Potsdam in a logical way however some roadworks forced us into the city centre and we landed at the Alter Markt and the Nikolai Church.

After regaining our bearings we set off in the way we originally intended to get to Park Sanssouci - a large park in which the famous Sanssoucci Palace is located.

There is quite a lot to look at around this park and we didn't attempt to see it all. Instead we, by accident, went to the Neues Palais (New Palace) first, which was a very impressive cluster of buildings.

We then headed towards the Sanssouci Palace, riding through the beautiful park and coming across the Orangerie Palais...

and the Historic Windmill.

I thought that all that was going to be in this park was Sanssouci Palace, not all this other impressive stuff. I wonder if anyone else knows about all this other stuff. Pays to do a bit of research before just (literally) rolling up.

Then we came to Sanssoucci palace, built by Friedrick the Great (King of Prussia) in the mid-18th Century as an escape from the hoo-haa of being King. Just like Elvis's Graceland, I was struck by how modest (small) such a place was for the King (get it? because they both were 'the King' and their houses were small...der).

The size of Sanssoucci doesn't detract from how impressive it is. Looking beautifully symmetrical, its Rococo style looks absolutely beautiful set amongst the huge terraced gardens below it.

This was a great place to have a picnic. After our riding around we were hot and hungry so we put a picnic blanket under a tree at the lowest terrace and enjoyed the ambiance of a beautiful day and a beautiful setting.

Just as we were nearing the end of our little picnic a couple of old guys, Sansoucci workers, came up to tell us we weren't allowed to picnic there. They asked if we spoke German and after we replied 'yes, a little' the went on to explain at great length and with good spirit why were weren't allowed to be 'here' but could sit 'there'. We had pretty much finished anyway so we just packed up and walked the rest of the Sanssoucci grounds and tried not to offend anyone.

As beautiful as Sanssouci is, it does need a new coat of paint.

 From here we rode out of the park and through to the other side of Potsdam. We went up past the Russian Colony...

...right up to the 'Old Dairy' which was a brewery / restaurant on the Jungfernsee lake...

...and then the short ride to the Cecilienhof. The Cecilienhof is the place where after World War II the heads of the victorious powers (represented by Churchill /Attlee, Stalin and Truman) met to work out what to do with Germany and then divided it up into the British, French, Soviet and US occupied zones.

The Cecilienhof is a lovely place. Built in the early 20th century, it's outward appearance gives the impression of a small'ish place yet is houses 176 rooms.

We were most impressed by the many decorative chimneys.

We left this area to go back into the main part of the city, and this was a pleasant ride by the waters of the Heileger See. On the other side of the lake were many Germans practising their nude outdoor sunbaking and swimming. They were too far away for us to assess the talent - even with the zoom lens of Joe's camera.

Back in the city centre we rode through the Neuen Gate...

...through to the Dutch Quarter.

Being in the Dutch Quarter was very surreal. Somewhere around 150 red brick Dutch houses are here, built in the early to mid 18th Century for the invited Dutch craftsmen to settle in Potsdam. It is so beautiful and well kept that it feels more like a movie set than 300 year old stinky houses.

The place was buzzing with lots of outdoor activity. Restaurants and markets filled the streets with life. One whole street was devoted to pottery...

...another to fruit and vegetables...

...and another to arts and crafts.

From the Dutch Quarter it is only a short ride to Brandenburger Strasse - the main shopping street of Potsdam. Here it was very busy with tourists. 

The main historical site here is Potsdam's own Brandenburg Gate, confusingly named the same as Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

After leaving this area we were riding along the cycle path in the non-interesting part of Postdam and heading back towards the train station. As we cycled along the designated path we came upon some roadworks that appeared to block the cycle way. Nordine and I chose to ride along the road (which is a normal thing to do usually anyway) but Joe noticed that the cycle path was not blocked, just detoured, and was able to stay on the cycle way as he was the last of us.

Nordine was quite a bit in front of me and cleared off the road as soon as she was able. Leaving me alone on the road. I was happily plodding along when a VERY loud siren speaker thing shouted VERY angrily behind me in German 'THIS ROAD IS NOT FOR BICYCLE RIDERS!'

I looked behind me to see a police car up my arse, but luckily I was able to quickly pull off the road onto the cycle path. In my shock I just got off my bike and walked. I looked to see both Nordine and Joe follow a native Potsdamer cyclist through a 'red bicycle and red man' traffic light as they crossed a side street.

As I was on foot I patiently waited for the red light to go green before crossing. The police car had stopped and two police officers, and male and female, were confronting Nordine and Joe. I thought I was the one to be busted, but there they were having to hand over their IDs. I went up to them and found out I was in the clear.

The female officer only wanted to speak German, and when Joe said we only speak a little she angrily deferred to the male officer and instructed him to speak English to us. He was a reasonable guy and explained that they were pulled over for running the red light. He explained that a fine would be involved but he didn't know how much - maybe 25 Euros and a point off their licenses. Joe, only visiting Germany, had just his foreign license to give them, but Nordine had to hand over her German one. 

After much discussion it didn't look like the cop was able to show leniency on the issue. We thought this was all a bit ridiculous and I certainly didn't want to be paying any fines so we started to *gently* argue our case. The case in our favour was that there were confusing road works, that we were foreigners following a native Potsdamer, that Joe's license was foreign and that we were all unemployed (all true, no BS).

All of those things seemed to go in our favour with the friendly policeman, but it was the unemployment thing that appeared to get us off the hook. When that was mentioned he said 'Okay, well you didn't need to tell me that, but I trust you are telling me the truth and I will give you just a warning'.

He gave back the licenses and we were allowed to go back on our way without any more hassle. PHEW!

After that we had just one more thing that we wanted to see but we were so nervous riding our bikes. We were super cautious about where we could go and looked out keenly for any traffic lights.

Our last stop was the Glienicker Bridge, know for being a 'Bridge of Spies' during the cold war - where spies could be traded and the opposing forces could come face to face. Today it is just a nice bridge.

Once we had seen the bridge and read the historical placards we rode back to drop off Joe's rent a bike and then got the train back to Berlin.

Potsdam was an unexpected beauty of a city with lots to see. Cycling was definitely the best way to go about it (aside from the run in with the law which threatened to sour the day). Definitely one of the best day trips we have ever taken.