This week was marked by a massive sprint on saba which made me miss this year’s Myfest in Kreuzberg, which is annoying but survivable. I did manage to see Ryoji Ikeda’s Data Anatomy on its last day in Tresor. A visually spectacular but thematically flat affair.

The next day Stefan Wehrmeyer and I went to the Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin to present on the subject of open transit data.

The situation here when it comes to opening up data is rather shameful. It seems hard for transit operators to realize that information about their services is an intrinsic part of their services. People who don’t know how to get somewhere, will also not buy any tickets.

This seems counter productive if you assume that transit operators actually want to transport people which it seems they do not. They want to serve the terms of their contract as cheaply as possible and as long as open transit information is not stipulated within that contract they will not do it. Thankfully Berlin politics is moving on the subjects (because the next tender is not due for many years).

On Thursday I prepared and gave my talk for Hybrid Talks at the Berlin University of the Arts on the Heist Model which went quite well. I am going to write that particular presentation up on the Hubbub blog soon because I think it has a lot of mileage still. Most of the ways of organizing work that are doing the rounds assume you are a company selling a product, not a company doing work for clients.

On Friday I went to re:publica with a familiar theme. In any case it was a good opportunity to meet some people I hadn’t talked to in a while and to see the narratives being told in German about the internet.

After the keynote by the Vice President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes, I got the opportunity to meet with her and discuss pressing issues when it comes to the digital agenda. I decided to step out of my immediate day to day worries and speak out for programming education for all school children (more on this soon, I hope). This struck a cord with her, but somewhat confused many of the other attendants who were more keen to push their pet agendas.

Talking with @NeelieKroesEU, @lorz says the collected German digerati are not interested in startups or education. Your problem right there.

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) May 4, 2012

After that I rushed over to Markthalle IX for the book launch of A Smart Guide to Utopia.

Most of the weekend after that was spent preparing my presentation for NEXT this week.

I got a bunch of accessories for the office among which a bike stand:

On Monday I also finished the Thinkup hack I wanted to present at the Berlin Hack ‘n Tell.

Tuesday was another long sprint on saba and then off to the event. The presentation went quite well and I think I managed to hit both the technical rationale behind the hack as well as its longer term implications.

On Wednesday I wrote up the Thinkup thing over at Monster Swell: “A full Twitter index in your Thinkup” and requested my full history from Twitter.

More saba. On Thursday I went to a book presentation by Jonas Westphal at the FES about the society amidst digital change. It is good that these kind of books are being written to make palatable the socio-technical changes to people not so well versed in these developments. I have several similar reports like this at the studio by the WRR, RMO and by Rathenau.

I also embarked on my first experiment in Taobao shopping (inspired by Jan Chipchase). If this is succesful, I’m quite sure this will be the first of many more.

And finally on the weekend it was the gallery weekend here in Berlin and I took the chance to visit half a dozen in half an hour.

A long week sprinting on saba. On Monday I got a nice desk chair:

On Tuesday I went to the Django meetup which was a lot of fun:

On Wednesday I spent the whole day hacking Thinkup and after went to see Brecht in the Schaubühne.

On Thursday I went to a lecture by Quentin Meillassoux which was terse but interesting. Meillassoux circumvents the problem of the correlational circle to access the absolute by taking the circle itself to be the absolute. That absolute is the contingent nature of everything (contingent, to fact to artifact). What there is is only discoverable by experience. Meillassoux wants to demonstrate that the empiricist is absolutely right.

And I spent most of the weekend writing:

The week before last (I’m running one week behind), was a good weak. Easter Monday was spent cleaning up the house which is now finally fully operational and fit to live in.

Tuesday was spent getting back on top of work.

In the evening I got tipped of by Mathias Schindler that there would be a talk in St. Oberholz about the value of free knowledge. I visited it but it was more of a free for all with the writer spouting their well trodden arguments (and quite a bit of gibberish) and Mathias doing much of the same.

I have written before about how copyright in Germany is locked up in a fierce protectionist policy that benefits only those that have something to lose and not those with something to gain. Germany’s cultural production is not even that interesting for the world at large, but the biggest reason to maintain it: it employs a lot of people. The debate right now is strangely being dominated by ‘Tatort-autoren’ which is odd since the show is on public television and quite dull.

The transition to more dynamic (i.e. not as strictly regulated) copyright is underway and the more the powers try to protect copyright, the more they expedite its demise. It still must be painful for the Tatort man and all those in his camp to be so very much on the wrong side of history.

Also, I’m going to talk about our agency working model —the “Heist” model— at an upcoming Hybrid Talks.

Talking about copyright, on Wednesday the Pirate Party hit 13% in a national poll. I’m also going to present about open transit data in the Abgeordnetehaus Berlin alongside Stefan Wehrmeyer and other notables on an invitation by the Greens.

At the end of the week I went to DAM to see the Blind Sequence Trust exposition by Joan Leandre. I wrote about my impressions of that exposition which is very much recommended seeing.

I also wrote quite a bit about theater that week it seems. A piece about what you should see in the Schaubühne and a piece about the German/Dutch theater debate I attended at the Deutsches Theater some time ago.

I also fixedbetter Tijs’s version of the Anobii to GoodReads exporter and moved my books over there where you can find my reading. And I wrote a bit about how Jan Chipchase’s experiment pertains to the design of withdrawn objects.

The end of the week was marked by an impromptu visit by prof. Scheiber to Berlin which was celebrated with pints of Augustiner and Korean food.

Last week was crazy hectic, notwithstanding the fact that I was ill at the same time. Sickness and deadlines are not fun, but thankfully both were survived.

What had to be done was the prototype iPhone app for the first playtest of saba. Which was finished in the nick of time with programming sprints that ended later and later into the night.

Then it was a train on Friday to Amsterdam for the Open State board meeting followed by the more general strategy day on Saturday. A lot of fun was had and important things were discussed during the weekend (see this write-up by Natasja Trifkovic), which makes it all worthwhile, but some downtime would be welcome at this point.

Last week commenced with preparing my presentation for the CrossLab event in Rotterdam. On Tuesday I took the train from Berlin and got there nicely in time.

The face of Rotterdam is changing massively and visibly right now with the construction of a new central station that is going to be architecturally impressive:

Glad to see so many friends out for the event it was great to present a new aesthetic, algorithmic design (& peril) presentation to the audience of Rotterdam designers.

Wednesday it was off to meet a client in the Bijlmer and then a workday at the Coop.

Thursday I called at Utrecht among other things to celebrate the first anniversary of The Village Coffee and Music. Their continued presence makes working in Utrecht more than bearable.

The other pleasure is hanging out all day at Hubbub base where a lot of things are on the burner waiting to get shipped.

I got to play Hokra at Tweetakt which is one of the social games that are programmed there. The other Joust is pictured below and got a lot of play time:

The week started with development on saba in phonegap. I got that to work with backbone.

I created a template to send invoices from German. Unfortunately at this point the amount of text that needs to be on there (numbers in both languages, custom phrases for the tax service) makes any attempt at whitespace impossible. I’m just glad if everything fits onto one page and I can send that.

There was a flurry about the BMW Guggenheim laboratory that was supposed to call in Kreuzberg on its world tour. Some extremists threatened it with violence because they have issues with gentrification, see Peter Bihr’s write-up. The most recent news that reached us was that it was rescheduled for Prenzlauerberg, but now there is yet another piece in Freitag about the lab.

If the goal of the lab was to provoke discussions about the future, it has been quite successful at that, though probably not in the clear-cut fashion that its organizers imagined it would. The discourse about gentrification is often hijacked and skewed and lacks representation and realistic courses of action. Anybody who has read their Jane Jacobs would say that it is inevitable that neighborhoods change. You can prevent them from overheating by releasing development pressure to other areas with targeted development. Freezing time is not a solution. Neither is socialism.

I attended a work session at Fraunhofer FOKUS about a report on open data in Germany. We touched upon most of the points that I have discussed about in the UK an the Netherlands already these past years so with all of that prior art, the Germans should be able to follow a clear path to open data.

Phonegap development continued in earnest but it turned out on the iPhone DOM manipulation is ridiculously slow even for the simplest of operations. Instead of trying to optimize a dog of an application I switched to native iOS development which should be a challenge, but the clear definition is a refreshing change from the relativity of web development.

On Friday I received a shipment of tyres and I could build up my bike again to tear through the city. That was a beautiful day.

Friday night I attended a discussion at the Deutsches Theater about the culture cuts in the Netherlands and how they could/would be applied to Germany. I piece about that is forthcoming as soon as I get around to writing it up.

Running behind two weeks and off to the Netherlands tomorrow (for a talk at a Crosslab event in the Unie). Oh how time flies! This was a fun week.

On Monday development for saba started in earnest and there was much hacking in Phonegap. Or Cordova, or whatever the project is called these days. By now we have abandoned that approach for reasons that are forthcoming but it was fun while it lasted.

On Tuesday I went to Gobsquad’s Kitchen mostly on a recommendation from Kevin Slavin. That was a very entertaining show.

I finally found a Steuerberater here who seem to be good at what they are doing and friendly.

On Friday I accompanied Alexander and Ernst-Jan who were visiting Berlin on a tour of the former Stasi remand prison in Hohenschönhausen.

Hack de Overheid now has a Google Group where everybody can have their say. It still needs a bit of a startup, but these things always do.

Work continues apace. New websites are forthcoming.

With some heavy lifting in the U-Bahn, I managed to reassemble my library. I eagerly anticipate when I can digitize everything here and not worry about the physicality of my external brain anymore.

Machiavelli (or Ohne Furcht und Adel or Citadels) is awaiting its first play at the studio the first free Friday we can find.

The Apps für Deutschland price winners have been announced. We had nothing to do with this competition, but it is interesting to see how this develops alongside the Netherlands.

On Wednesday I went to co.up to watch the Stevenote:

I got to catch Jeroen Visser and Robert Jan Verkade in Berlin after they had just given a workshop. Dutch website all-stars if ever there were some.

After which I went to the Mart Stam talks in the Dutch embassy in Berlin. Getting a tour of Koolhaas designed building was a nice addition to the event.

The tour made clear two important parts of the building about which a lot probably has been written but which I’ll add here nonetheless:

Our tour guide continued to explain how unpractical various quarters in the building were, how they were not used as much as you would want or expect and how a lot of things had to be patched up after delivery. During the tour one of the very nice looking skewed doors fell apart as if to emphasize this again. In more than one place cables were added because the normal connections were not suitable or were too hidden away.

That very unsuitability for human inhabitation and work is a form of power projection. The fact that a government can afford to place an exorbitant impractical building in the middle of another nation’s capital to sit there and impress guests is another form of functionality, though at considerable expense.

Add to that the Germans’ reactions to the modernity of the building. Many of the (old) people on the tour were very vocally amazed with the material use, furniture and architectural tricks in the building. The building is radical departure from the Berlin tendency towards historicist architecture. Taking both those points, the embassy is ultimately an elaborate joke played by the architect on the German and Dutch people.

Last week also our company names (all three of them!) were mounted on the wall at the office which gives our residency in Berlin a more official air.

Briefly written notes for last week. It was one of the first proper weeks at the office for which I am grateful. German administration remains a challenging affair as my blog post and quoted Times article also testify.

We put a small Tumblr called “Ramen Hunter” online on which we document our peripatetic consumptions of the Japanese manna called ramen.

Also the news that I will be speaking at NEXT Berlin on a topic near to my heart “Love in Times of Gamification”. Not only is that turning out to become a huge and important subtopic within gaming, it is also going to be a lot of fun. The Dutch newspaper NRC featured an article (link for subscribers) about the Social Cities of Tomorrow conference in which I am also quoted talking about Hack de Overheid and Apps for Amsterdam.

Another German copyright issue arose because Open Köln republished a series of government documents on their own website. I wrote up the chain of events and the chilling effects that are bound to follow.

I went to an event called Zukunftgespräche about the future of creative and innovative work in the city. That was mostly a disappointment with commonplaces being trodden over and Zeit articles being quoted near verbatim. It seems these kind of events in Germany are too institutional and manage to invite exactly the wrong people.

The rest of the week was spent hauling my library to the office, writing up some proposals and Skype-ing with the homefront. I also submitted our research initiatives from Open State to Virtueel Platform. And I could finish off the week having a beer at Soundcloud Rebase which turns out to be a pretty good way to end a week.

On Sunday I read up on the Liquid Democracy software platform used by the Pirate Party to decide upon their points of view (read a good Spiegel overview here: “Web Platform Makes Professor Most Powerful Pirate”).

Technologically I have quite some issues with the implementation which is brilliant at places and patchwork on others, but those are mostly besides. It works and it does what it needs to do. The main Pirate Party implementation lives here: https://lqfb.piratenpartei.de/ and is publicly browsable. A cursory glance reveals a lot of interesting things.

First and foremost, it is interesting and essential to build a web native application for the processes of politics. Most parties if they would start anew today would not end up at this exact point, but this is obvious if like the Pirates your pedigree is digitally native. Being able to participate in a more accessible and equally footed arena, without having to go to party congresses is something other parties should learn from and the open democratic process is reminiscent of the Occupy general assemblies. Even more importantly, codifying the democratic process in software and opening that up for evolution by means of open source contributions, looks like the the future of political systems in the digital age.

More worrisome are the non-digital points of view proposed on the platform. Besides a proposal for Open Government Data being approved there are also proposals for a base income for everybody and many other wish-list utopian social measures. None of those seem to be predicated on fiscal solvency. Many of the measures rely on more government to improve society. That is oddly reminiscent of the modeling paradox: a better model does not guarantee better outcomes. The same with government, the current government here is not very small but already rather dysfunctional.

The free for all democracy of Liquid Feedback might easily lead to a California-like situation where proposition after proposition has lifted taxes so far that it has bankrupted the state. This is the biggest risk with general assembly and other referendum type decision making processes. It is too easy to demand everything if there are no consequences attached to it. Thankfully the Pirate Party will never hold a majority in German government because if they did, they would probably bankrupt the nation within a week.