Berlin

My plan for 2015 was to spend another few months working on my various projects and then start looking for new full-time work opportunities. In the past month I made a few casual enquires to get an idea of what might be out there and ended up getting quite a few offers very quickly. Many of these I considered but weren't compelling or different enough (from past work roles) to be worth putting a hold on my own projects.

Silicon Allee asked me if I would like to contribute some posts to their Medium publication and I thought what better to write than resurrect something I used to do back when I was living in Melbourne. I go to a lot of meetups. I enjoy meeting people, hearing what they're working on and being exposed to new ideas. Writing something about every talk I see each week would take a long time, so instead I will just tell you who I saw, what they spoke about and what you can do to find out more.

In this Weekly Squeak I cover another week in Berlin meetups and after Apples September product announcements, do they no longer like the prosumer?

This has been a week of me appearing at meetups rather than attending, and I must admit, when I present, I tend to forget what else happened. More of an adrenaline rush than egotism. I hope.

I'm sat at an Apple event in Berlin and there's not many people here, which says something about what people feel about Macs vs iPhones, or something. In a week when IBM became one of Apple's biggest clients and Microsoft announced more interesting products. It feels like there is growing disappointment and boredom in what Apple is offering.

With the UK exiting the European Union, Germany is jostling to become the new FinTech capital of the EU. Frankfurt has the history and established finance industry, but Berlin is more affordable, is larger, and has a more diverse population, looking at challenges from different perspectives. With at least six regular blockchain and cryptocurrency related meetups, founding members of Ethereum and Monax present in the city, and countless cryptocurrency related projects, analysts are beginning to call Berlin “the blockchain capital of the world.” As this year’s FinTech Safary threw the doors of organization and co-working spaces open, I met with a small selection of people involved in the scene to see how true this claim is.

Zone Leader Chris Ward looks forward to upcoming C3 Crypto Conference in Berlin which offers keynotes, workshops, and exhibitions on the cryptocurrency ecosystem and underlying blockchain technology.

FOSS Backstage is a new conference for open source developers and managers. Find out more information about the conference here.

I wasn't at Berlin Blockchain week in 2018, so can't directly compare the two events, but this year seemed busy to me, others mentioned they thought it was quieter. However, the venues used for the events were large and sprawling, so it was hard to get a complete picture of how many attendees there were, but the crowd felt enthusiastic to me. Especially considering the sweltering heat for most of the week.