Happy, healthy autumn of 2021!

I haven’t updated my website for a while, as it’s been an exceptional year, and frankly, for parts of it, I wasn’t sure what to put in an update with all the missing clarity on where things were heading. Fast forward to today, the global situation and events may still be challenging, but a lot has happened in the meantime. So, it’s time for an update! ?

Looking back into 2020

I won’t go into length into the pandemic. As you can imagine, working in events, with the heart in bringing people together for attaining next levels of connections, like for so many others, 2020 and 2021 wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, mentally and business-wise. Ludicious was closed down, Reboot on hiatus, and EGS in San Francisco we had to cancel.

On the positive side, at least one pro-bono project from pre-pandemic times bore fruit: The demoscene is the first digital culture enlisted as immaterial cultural heritage by UNESCO in Germany! Which is a beautiful thing which can have significant ripple effects further down the road. The news about it received 100s of thousands of views.

And professionally and personally, a bunch of things appeared I would’ve never taken the time to pursue while being on the pre-pandemic continuous events/work/travel-mission: like planning to start my own business, holding clubhouse sessions, exploring how to bring people together in many different digital channels, beginning to run regularly, taking a long alcohol-free-pause not being on the conference cycle ??- and last but not least, spending time exploring the coaching and consulting space while seriously considering which quest might be a level-up for having a better impact with what I love to do.

2021: what’s new?

A big part of this was to start my full-time freelancing under curatomic to support event organizers and enablers with programs-work and consultancy. To collaborate with a group of freelancers and partners around a mission to connect. And to level up people and relationships of working better together.

And at the same time, existing projects will continue, so projects like Reboot Develop and EGS will resume in due course, especially whenever physical events are back on track. New partners include old friends at Booster Space, for whom I have been heading the program structure and curation of gamescom congress 2021 for KoelnMesse and game. This collaboration resulted in a beautiful success by changing the conference setup to an entirely online, fully live-produced program, resulting in a whopping 118.000 unique viewers. Other involvements in the first half of 2021 included supporting devgamm in Moscov and A Maze in Berlin.

gamescom congress saw 118.000 viewers, and we managed to make sure we have a 50%/50% ratio in terms of gender diversity.

Aside from conference work, I also learned to love the possibilities of connection over audio, be it in Clubhouse or Podcasts, like hosting the Game Events Organizer Roundtable & The Game Dev Coffee Break on Clubhouse, and also mingling on other places like Gathertown, MixUp, Discord from time to time. If you are curious, join us for the following roundtables! For invitations and reminders, sign-up for my newsletter here.

2021 till the end of the year: Next Level, gamesweekberlin, EGS and Curatomic.

Right now, I am continuing to support long-term friends at gamesweekberlin with the Pro X DevBooster 2021, a pitching format for developers gaining valuable feedback, happening on Twitch on November 23rd at 5 pm CET.

And November is double busy: I am also curating and producing the Games Parcours at Next Level 2021 (25-27 November 2021) at UNESCO heritage Zollverein, on behalf of Kultursekretariat NRW. The frame of the curation of 20 games is on „games and how they reflect the communities we connect in. „

Aside from extending relationships in Germany, work on international grounds is also getting into motion again:

With the EGS team, we are actively planning the next European Game Showcase at GDC next year in its 6th edition. We are just starting here and are looking for partners.

Reboot Develop will continue as soon as the team in Croatia feels it’s the right time to continue the global event series with an unrivaled international attendance, depending on when we see low travel friction due to COVID.

Extralevel

Last but not least, besides the program & exhibition work, I will spend a significant part of the following year at Curatomic also on building resources on helping people level up their game in networking, speaking, and related domains, starting with a podcast series on this in December.

Curious?

I might need your help! If anything of the above resonates with you, and you are interested in helping people to play a better game professionally and personally in conferences, events, speaking, and networking, don’t hesitate to reach out, and let’s chat!