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 ÇuÄŸun (@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.