Beyond Tellerrand 24

This week was the annual Beyond Tellerrand Conference in Düsseldorf. It was a good time to meet some of my colleagues and listen to some inspiring talks from very different people. I think that’s what I like the most about Beyond Tellerrand: It’s not focusing on the tech itself too much. So I get to hear a lot of inspiring and motivational things that relate to my interest on the web in general and my day-to-day work. This year, there wasn’t a single speaker on the schedule, which made me think that I was wasting my time.

The conference started really good with a talk by Chris Campe from Hamburg, who spoke about speaking up. "Say something" was the title and told us about Chris’ personal story and how she decided to speak up more often. Thoughts that I also had in the last few months. But I didn’t create beautiful protest signs that went viral and inspired people.

Oliver Schöndorfer was maybe my personal highlight of the conference. Although I've been building for the web for some many years now, I’ve never gotten into typography. It’s one of those topics that I would really know much more about, but for any reason I can’t get my head around it. Same thing with color theory, by the way. Olivers talk "Typographer vs. Accessibility" was so entertaining and actually managed to teach me some things. Maybe it was easy for me to follow because of the accessibility aspects that I know a lot about. I’ve already subscribed to his YouTube-Channel and am happy to report that the videos are very entertaining and educational as well.

David Dylan Thomas spoke at he end on Tuesday and closed the conference with "No, Seriously, Fuck Engagement: Building a More Human Web", an well-chosen talk that summarized a lot of the things that people talked about the past two days. I deeply agree with him that it’s on everyone who’s building the web and creating content should concentrate on the audience rather than the engagement and the algorithms behind it. "Write a to do list, define your goals" was his advice at the end. Let’s see what I can do to make the world a bit better.

Beyond Tellerrand confirmed some things that I’ve had in my head for some time right now. I’m motivated again to do things, to tinker. On the web and in real life.

I also went to the Kirby Meetup and had a nice chat with the people working on the Content Management System and got the chance to ask some questions about things I’m working on right now. And last but not least: Food. There’s no visit to Düsseldorf without having Ramen at Takumi. This time I went actually two times. What a blessing!