Both events will be completely different, no doubt, but also I’m expecting both to be a lot of fun. At the Becks Camp I’m actually invited as one of 10 creatives (whatever that is) to put together some kind of installation to reflect on the theme of the event customize reality. (Full disclosure: As invited artist I’m getting paid for my participation.) My take is to think about workspaces, and how to create workspaces for laptop workers (think coworking) by working with a given environment and tags to recontextualize as necessary. How exactly this is going to work I’m not sure yet, but the resident artist-in-charge Luis Berríos-Negrón has promised his support and my feeling is that my very rough ideas are in excellent hands there. So we’ll see. I’m curious how it’s going to work out, and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been invited as an artist anywhere, so it should be fun. That’s Thursday, 12 November.

Barcamp Hamburg will be on 13-14 November (FRI/SAT). Last time I was at Barcamp HH I met a lot of very interesting and cool people, and I have all reason to believe this time will be no different. And since links are the currency that barcamps can pay it forward to their sponsors, here’s a hat tip to the sponsors: Otto, Google, eVenture, Lecturnity, T-Mobile, BCD Travel, kaffeebazar, Pure Tea, Microsoft, Yalook.com, saftblog, T3N.

So let the games begin. I hope to see you at Hamburg!

A few days ago, the annual fundraiser campaign has kicked off. As you can imagine, like many industries, non-profits like Creative Commons have also been hit hard by the economic crisis as they have to rely on donations both by institutions and individuals.

Before getting into the details, though, a quick intro video for those of you not familiar with Creative Commons. A good place to start is the video “A Shared Culture” by filmmaker Jesse Dylan, known for the “Yes We Can” Barack Obama campaign video:

A few brief examples how Creative Commons is relevant to my work:

• Practically all the images used in this blog are licensed under CC. The blog itself is licensed under CC – with one of the most liberal licenses (CC Attribution). Anybody can use all the content that I created here as long as they point out who it’s from (that’s the “attribution” part), no matter if for non-commercial or commercial uses.
• My photos on Flickr are all licensed under a slightly more restrictive license (CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike), which means anyone can use them as long as they point to me as the creator, but they may only use them in a non-commercial context (because I wouldn’t want a friend of mine ending up in some kind of commercial or anything along those lines), and as long as they share the work based on my photos under similar conditions (thus also contributing to the growing pool of available works).
• In practically every client project I argue for sharing as much as possible on the web, and usually a Creative Commons license is the easiest, most reliable (and most legally sound) way of doing so.

For different kinds of uses and content, Creative Commons offers me the chance to pick just the right license and keep the rights I want to keep while giving up the ones that aren’t important to me. That’s the main difference between the old model you know from old-school copyright aka “all rights reserved”. With Creative Commons, it’s “some rights reserved”.

The official fundraiser kick-off post has the details on the campaign (and a neat CC shirt motif), Joi Ito has some more background.

So what can you do to support a free culture? You can spread the word, share your content (thus enabling others to build on it while also building your reputation), or donate cash, which helps fund the (small) organization behind the scenes:

Here’s more ways and hands-on tipps on how to support Creative Commons and spread the word. Thanks for your contribution.

The election results, frankly, suck. We (Jusos, Panorama3000 and I) put a lot of effort into the campaign and I think we did a good job. But I can understand everyone who’s frustrated with the politics of the last four years, and voters have made it clear that they didn’t want politics to continue the same way for another four years. Both major parties got the worst results in 60 years, the three small parties got record highs: This clearly is a signal of changing times. Where exactly things are going we’ll need to see. I worked with the SPD (the equivalent of the US democrats) in the campaign because I believe that they’re a really important force in our society – and I’m saying that despite my total and utter disagreement with their recent internet politics. So of course I found it somewhat frustrating that the liberal FDP gained so many votes and Germany is going to be governed by a conservative-liberal coalition of CDU and FDP. (And no, I don’t believe it’s good for the economy either.) So now I’m hoping that the SPD will draw the right conclusions and regain both their strength and – in the next elections – also government power.

atoms&bits Festival on the other hand was a total success and I had a great time. We had planned on getting together the communities around coworking, DIY, OpenEverything, participatory politics and art, and it worked out great. We saw a lot of happy faces, inspired (and inspiring) talks, as well as connections being made across these topical boundaries. Also, I had a great time with the Geeks On A Plane, who kindly invited a few of us to join their dinner and in turn joined us at the atoms&bits party at Betahaus.

All that said, some great weeks. But now I’m off for a little while to marry off a friend and go on a little backpacking trip. So if I don’t respond to your calls or emails, you know why. See you in a few weeks!

* Full disclosure: I was an adviser to the online youth election campaign of SPD/Jusos. That was a paid gig. This post expresses my personal views only.

A nice little presentation about the power of social media. It’s trying to me a bit more provocative than it really is, but the fun pictures make up for it. Some good stuff in there. (via). (Also, just after posting I noticed that this presentation slightly overlaps with the identically named presentation I blogged here.)

Jay mentioned something he had done over at a Barcamp in the UK, which is give people a funny hat with their tags (i.e. interests, skills, companies etc) so you could see across the room who you might want to talk to based on shared interests. So we wondered if there’s a way to reach the same effect without running around in public wearing giant tag-cloud hats.

Here’s a proposal: Just tag your laptop, so people can see what you do:

The important bit: The piece of duct textile tape in the lower right corner, tagged with some projects i’m involved in.

It’s probably too much trouble to update it to a current status, but at least you get a general idea. In my case that you can see in the photo above: I’m interested in #coworking, a regular at #studio70, co-organizer of #atoms&bits as well as #likemind Berlin, and I’m a member of Berlinblase.

Of course, duct tape might not be everyone’s first choice. (If in doubt, double check first if you can remove it without traces!) So get creative: Use a non-permanent marker right on your laptop. Use stickers. If you’re a tinkerer, attach a little display on the back of your laptop. Of course it all works with your Moleskine, too. And next time you’re in a cafe and see someone with the tag #coworking on their laptop, make sure to say hi!

So last weekend was the highlight of atoms&bits Festival that we had put together in hardly 10 weeks. While we’re recovering from the weekend and also putting together the documentation (i.e. all the blogposts, photos, videos etc), I’d like to briefly say THANK YOU to everybody involved.

THANKS to the participants, who were super active and fun to have a camp with.
THANKS to all the volunteers and helpers, who did a great job and who we can’t thank enough for going out of their way to support the event.
THANKS to the sponsors and donors, without whom we couldn’t have realized atoms&bits.
And my personal THANKS to the rest of the orga team, you guys rock.

We had planned with slightly more participants, but we all had a great time, and feedback has been excellent. (Now it’s time to catch up on some sleep.)

And while we’re still collecting the photos from all kinds of sources, I’d like to share these two pics which really tell a lot about the do-it-yourself culture of atoms&bits – they show a conference shirt being silkscreened by hand at a little booth by SDW.

Printing an atoms&bits shirt. (Photo by Just/Just.Ekosystem.org, Creative Commons BY NC SA 3.0)

Printing an atoms&bits shirt. (Photo by Just/Just.Ekosystem.org, Creative Commons BY NC SA 3.0)

Time to sit down and pick some personal highlights to see what I really don’t want to miss out on. This list is, of course, just personal preference.

• Reading of Cory Doctorow’s MAKERS (TUE 22 Sept, 8pm at Studio70)
  From the teaser: “What happens when hardware hackers get tangled up with microfinancing venture capitalists in the aftermath of the financial crisis? The answer: a fast-paced witty novel whose ending the public doesn’t even know.” Cory Doctorow, sci-fi author deluxe and co-author of BoingBoing, has been publishing bits and pieces of MAKERS first on Salon.com (in a series called “Themepunks” at the time). It’s a great story, and it gives a bit of a glimpse into where we might be headed, what with MakerBots and RepRaps and the net. Timewise it clashes a bit with the last of our a&b preparation meetings, so I’ll have to see how that works out. But I’ll try my best to see that.
• Screening of RIP – A Remix Manifesto (THU, 24 Sept, 8pm at Betahaus)
  I love RIP – A Remix Manifesto. Had the chance to meet director Brett Gaylor at a screening in New York, and certainly won’t miss out on that one. It’s a celebration of remix culture and not to be missed, not just because of the great soundtrack featuring plenty of DJ Girl Talk.
• Pecha Kucha (FRI 25 Sept, doors open at 7:30pm at IMA Design Village)
  At Pecha Kucha (what’s that?) a presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds apiece, for a total time of 6 minutes, 40 seconds. It’s a great way to get inspired by the projects presented in a fun and quick way.
• Rebike Workshop (SAT, 26 Sept, 10am-6pm at Betahaus)
  Chances are I won’t be able to really participate here because I’ll be at a&b Camp next door, but the Rebike is an awesome project, and here some will be built: The Rebike (debut at reboot11) is a bike pimped out with a solar energy source and wireless network, i.e. it’s a totally mobile, largely self-sustaining coworking module: transportation, energy and internet all wrapped up in one.
• AMY – A Streetart Game (weekend 26/27 Sept, starting at Betahaus)
  I don’t really know anything about this beyond the teaser, but it sure sounds like some cool augmented reality project that’s played all over the city. Won’t be able to participate since I’ll spend my weekend around IMA Design Village for a&b Camp, but this is certainly worth checking out. (Make sure to check in advance if you can participate in English, too.)
• Washing Machine: Reloaded (weekend 26/27 Sept at Betahaus)
  Sounds like fun and certainly is: A challenge to upcycle your washing machine. Tinkerers, geeks and designers are invited to take an old washing machine and build something cool out of it. I probably won’t be able to participate in this beyond the occasional glimpse, but I’m certainly stoked to see the results.
• atoms&bits Camp (weekend 26/27 Sept at IMA Design Village
  This barcamp-style conference is where I’ll be spending most of the weekend. As one of the organizers, this is kind of my baby, so of course I’m very excited to see how it’ll work out.
• Wahlsonntag (SUN 27 Sept, 4pm at Betahaus)
  Right after a&b Camp is finished we’ll quickly clean up and head over to join Wahlsonntag, where Tim Pritlove and Philip Bahnse will be hosting a live show all about the election day and the web: what’s being discussed online, what’s the parties take on the net, what’s relevant in terms of net politics? All that and more will be featured in this show. Perfect way to relax in a nice and interesting atmosphere.

Seriously, sleep dep or not, I can’t wait. And I can always sleep after the weekend, right? ;)

Ps. If you’re still planning sessions or events, drop any of us a line, you’ll find our contact data on the a&b website.

The theme tying these videos together is basically: Every vote counts, so go vote, or you support some non-candidate or another.

Time permitting, I’ll be adding more videos as they’re coming in. Please let me know of others if you know them. Also, thanks to Thomas for a first collection. (I’m still thinking of putting all the US versions right next to them. Could be good fun.)

To watch the video, please go to www.deine-stimme-hat-die-wahl-entschieden.de, as the embeddable player is on auto play and I didn’t want to force you to watch it every time you visit the site. Customized by name. Plot: One person didn’t vote, thus a black/yellow (CDU/FDP) coalition wins the election with the result of fostering nuclear energy. Well-meaning, but rather cheap.

gehnichthin.de features German stars or VIPs who, like the American Don’t Vote video seem to suggest that they don’t vote. Enter the plot twist, i.e. they do. Despite my criticism here, this is pretty well done.

Whole video at www.nachrichten-tv24.de, it’s not embeddable. (Can be sent by email.) Plot: A fake news channel announces the suprising new chancellor Westerwelle (FDP), who one by one vote or rather, because one person didn’t vote. (Customized by name.) To be fair, it says “inspired by Obama and MoveOn”. Side note: Since the chancellor isn’t elected directly by the citizens in Germany but by majority vote in the parliament, this doesn’t really make sense. By IG Metall, a major union.

Whole video at www.zeig-stimme.de, it’s not embeddable (can be sent by email). Customized by photo upload. Plot: a news show featuring a massive mysterious campaign to get one citizen to vote. Produced by SPD.

Whole video at http://www.einslive.de/wahl09. Not embeddable, can be sent by email. The best in the bunch, at least the best-produced both in terms of “fake news credibility” and the customization features. Also, the speakers are all professional journalists. Plot: A new party (”G.A.G.A.”) rises out of nowhere and goes straight to the top of the polls. Their lead candidate is the recipient of the email, customized via photo and name. The reason for G.A.G.A.’s success is the overall lack of interest in the elections. Fun side note: The polls seen at one point with the new party attracting way more votes than the established parties look remarkably like the online polls if the Pirate Party is involved. Also, the Pirate Party and the fake party G.A.G.A. here sport orange as lead color. By WDR/EinsLive, a public TV channel.

Full disclosure: I’m an adviser to the online youth election campaign of SPD/Jusos. That’s a paid gig. This post expresses my personal views only. It’s not part of the election campaign, just my personal thoughts. I had an appearance in the “Zeig Stimme” video.

Edit: I had two more videos listed here but realized they didn’t fit the same scheme (”get folks to vote”) but were rather traditional campaigning viral videos. I’ll try to compile a list of those in a separate blog post, so keep the links coming. Thanks!

atoms&bits Festival Logo in Lego Stop Motion from atoms&bits Festival on Vimeo.

Wow. I had no idea this was coming. But I have to say, I’m liking it…

But back to the “support the festival” part: If you want to show some support for atoms&bits, like if you’re planning to participate in any (or a lot of) atoms&bits events, here’s the easiest way to do just that: Take the logo and put it on your blog or website.

For your convenience, we prepared for you the code to just copy and paste into your blog platform of choice. (Code right after the jump.)

To display this image (376px wide) just copy and paste the text under the image.

<a href="http://www.atomsandbits.net" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.thewavingcat.com/images/atomsandbits_logo.jpg" alt="atoms and bits festival"></a>

To display this image (500px wide) just copy and paste the text under the image.

<a href="http://www.atomsandbits.net" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3463/3859363908_a0c330e8ab.jpg" alt="atoms&amp;bits festival"></a>

To display this image (200×200px wide) just copy and paste the text under the image.

<a href="http://www.atomsandbits.net" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3499/3924619524_6942e25b8f.jpg" alt="atoms and bits logo 200px" /></a>

(More logos available at http://atomsandbits.net/presse.)