Long, long time ago, before Berlin even knew it wanted to be hip again, I fell in love with the city. Of course Berlin always was a special city, but in the recent years (even months) it has become a hub for tech and startups.

Lots of articles (see some below) describe the new hotness of Berlin and part of that has to do with Berlin being really cheap and the amount of international visitors / expats. One of my interview partners (Igor Schwarzmann) summed it up: “getting speakers for our Cognitive Cities conference was easy – you just told them it would be in Berlin”. And while it may be hard to get funding in Germany / Europe, who cares? Get your funding some place else and then come to Berlin.

A friend once described being an artist to me as “that thing inside you which wants to come out no matter if you like it or not”.  I don’t consider myself to be an artist, but that pretty much sums up a feeling I have about Berlin. So I decided to make a series of interviews with people from Berlin; how they got there, why they live there, why they find the city attractive, what inspires them and how they see the world.

Yes, these will be audio  but fret not, I will provide you with show notes and links to their projects and social networks, so you can connect with them. And I hope you will fall in love with the city as much as I have!

Have suggestions for interview partner?

I already finished some interviews and am currently in post processing (will start posting next week): Joel Dullroy from Deskwanted, Joel Kaczmarek from Gründerszene, Igor Schwarzmann from Thirdwave, Matthäus Krzykowski from Xyologic, Oliver Beste from Founderslink. The people from Soundcloud are hard to get but already on the list. ;)

I have some ideas of who I want to talk to next, but if you know somebody interesting, let me know in the comments or forward this link. I am specifically looking in the tech / startup sector, but also maybe some design sprinkles.

To get you started in looking at Berlin

Two blogs started writing about the tech scene in Berlin and yes they are in English. A word play on Silicon Valley, the blog Silicon Allee also holds meetups (@siliconallee Facebook). Also dealing with startups is Techberlin (@techberlin Facebook).

Spiegel: Berlin on the Road to Becoming a Start-Up Mecca

Berlin may soon become the place to be for tech entrepreneurs. Berlin may soon become the place to be for tech entrepreneurs. Berlin is home to an ever increasing number of innovative new technology start-up companies — to the point that even Silicon Valley venture capitalists are taking notice. With a new focus on the country, many companies are beginning to innovate rather than simply clone successful American ideas.

Memeburn: Berlin is the hot new city for internet start-ups -

“It’s a big enough city that whatever you’re interested in you can dive into.” Germany’s reunified capital is now one of the most visited cities in Europe and its inner courtyards teem with artists exploring music or creating installations. “A lot of people are attracted by Berlin, Berlin itself is a start-up,” said Alexander Ljung. “It’s growing fast, it’s fairly chaotic. Nobody knows exactly where it’s going but it’s going in the right direction.”

CNBC: Berlin’s new techno beat

“… that are helping to make Berlin such a paradise for start-ups: a cosmopolitan array of young, multilingual skilled workers, swathes of cheap, attractive, post-industrial office space, supportive public agencies, a good infrastructure and growing interest from foreign venture capital.”

Techcrunch: London Is Gonna Be Pissed, But We Prefer Berlin for Startups

“Ecosystem-wise, Berlin has some things going for it that most Western European capitals lack. For starters, it’s cheap to work and live there. Culturally and historically, Berlin is a more natural gateway between Europe’s mature Western economies and the surging talent in Eastern Europe. And Berlin has a surging creative class, largely made up of transplants. It’s become the place where misfits in Europe– people who want to be artists and creators, people who don’t fit in rigid social structures of cities like London– flock to do what they want.”

How Berlin Became the Coolest City on the Planet

In fact, Berlin is cheap — that’s part of the appeal. Soaring real estate prices have driven the starving artists out of downtown Paris, London and New York. But Berlin, with no real industry to speak of, has only the artists to rely on. Here, coolness is an economic survival strategy. As Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit puts it, coining the city’s unofficial motto, “Berlin is poor — but sexy.”

“Berlin has made culture its primary industry,” Berlin festival boss Dieter Kosslick says. “Music, film, art, fashion — that’s been the driving force, the creative industries. It’s an extremely culture-rich, extremely international city.” Caterer K.P. Kofler is more blunt: “Berlin is everything Germany is not: spontaneous, exciting, open and cosmopolitan.”

TC guest post: The upsides and downsides to starting up in Berlin

Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German capital is vibrant with tourists, artists, and entrepreneurs. The city is home to over 200 startups, more than in Munich, Hamburg and Cologne combined. Berlin’s leadership in this domain is perhaps unexpected – it has hardly ever been an economic centre in Europe or even Germany. [...] “For people who are basically looking for a big career and a lot of money, Berlin is not the right place. But if you are motivated by other things, like creating and learning, Berlin is perfect”

Photo credit: 8.23 you make me smile by dabboj, on Flickr

A small little pop up got my attention today:

In the last months (well make that the last year in the US, but there is a rest of the world) we have been seeing a rise of Facebook with what I like to call “normal people”. Not only the moms and dads or the kids, but everyone. (You can call it mainstream, but as I never consider myself to be an earlier adopter, I prefer “normal people” as the ones which for most of my live have called me and my interests “weird”.)

And if you would ask them “do you use Social Media?” like surveys often do, they would deny categorically – because they don’t know what our name for this it. But they do use it. I recently was in a restaurant / café which has been open for 4 days and it already have 300 likes and 50 check-ins.

But the problem with such places is that a) users have to find them from the phone and b) there has to be some additional information like a photo etc. to make it ‘nice’. Now, this will be done by the users. Have a look at Berlin Central Station:

If you click on edit – a principle know kinda from that Wikipedia – you get this:

When sombody enters the geo information, next time I visit a place my mobile phone knows where to place me on the map. You would wish that the owners of the place would fill in the needed information, but they are slow to do so. Users on the other hand will. Maybe not always, but once in a while – more than enough if you have that kind of user base. By enriching the data, combined with the access of demographic data, likes, interests and more it is possible to build a profile of users which should be a privacy nightmare to everyone if you think about it.

For the platform it is a win. No need to buy these data to make the service more useful and the chance to sell more services around this? Awesome. Now Facebook not only has the information where you are but due to the Social Graph can connect the information with your friends and so much more.

Great! But is Facebook responsible enough?

Getting users to add data points like this, using any content the users upload for their own purposes for free and being able to sell it, a user base in the hundreds of millions and people willing to add all their personal information to allow targeted advertisement? No wonder this company is valued so high. Sadly, it is also the Glass Pearl Principle in action, currently on the negative side.

With power comes responsibility and so far there is a bit of a problem. From my – as friends like to say ‘schizophrenic – European point of view on privacy Facebook is on a very slippery slope of how to use data, especially when they come to countries outside the US which actually have data protection laws.

• There is already a lawsuit against Facebook because of the implication of the like button and privacy, , see for example “Facebook’s Top Lawsuits Target User Privacy“.
• Or for example giving away information like phone number and home address to third party’s for free just because a user somewhere clicked yes?
  see f.e.: Facebook Grants Developers Access To Home Addresses … Trouble Waiting To Happen? and Facebook Phone app shares all your phone numbers
• The evil friend finder, aggressively promoted especially to new users, uploads all your contact information into their systemo. Every time a normal person connects with their mail data, chances are other information are in there as well (phone number, address of work and home, birthday etc.) without friends knowing about the upload or even consenting to it.  See “Guardian: Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends’” and “Facebook Agrees to Change Friend Finder in Response to German Privacy Complaint” for more.If you used the friend finder in the past, you can use the remover here.

I believe Facebook needs to be very careful in the future how to handle it well enough. The mantra of Google to do no evil has a reason: it is good business.

Could somebody get Facebook a decent targeting team?

With power does not only comes responsibility to use data well, but also a responsibility it is common sense to behave professionally – and so far the advertisement on Facebook sucks.

I have been watching advertisement for some time now, talked to other users and advertisers. Users complained to me not only about irrelevant advertisement but also that feedback is not used, as I can confirm by personal experience. It may be that somebody pays a lot to have this add here, but most people hate irrelevant advertisement and are open to interesting advertisement.

Personal example: While I may be *cough* over the magic 4, I would like a button “no baby stuff please nor ‘trying to get a kid??’” and also no wrinkles and such ads. I clicked repeatedly on “uninteresting” as well as “misleading” and saw no change. I would happily click on advertisement if it was more targeted. Login in once in Denmark served me for two weeks with danish advertisement, though I never chose anything else than German or English as my user interface. That is unprofessional for any modern advertisement system. Back to the topic: They know so much about your movements, your interests etc, that companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon would have a field day and target me with useful advertisement.

Facebook on the other hand is the talented kid in the room which does not know yet how to use their talents. It is kinda okay but by no stretch of imagination at the point where it could be. Now imagine a professional partner like say Microsoft to make use of that data. Btw did you know that Microsoft does allow targeting based on demographics like Facebook does, in certain markets? Their problem is simple: Through MSN Messenger and a like they have a lot of data but in no way comparable to the riches Facebook has at their fingertips. And Google is like most other networks far far behind in getting those data, another reason why it made sense for Microsoft to invest in Facebook, just to hold off Google a bit.

How the social graph changes search

When I say the advertisement sucks, I am more referring to the fact it could be way better. What really is unusable is Facebook search. In all cases it is better to go to a real search engine, look for what you want and just add Facebook to it – the results are so superior it is not even funny. Better put: The Facebook results are so bad – I have constantly the question from fan page owners “It is gone!!” – no it is just not findable anymore for you.

But imagine, somebody who actually understands search would work with the riches Facebook has to offer … and use the social graph and the way advertisement can be done on their engine? For example the German market is strongly in Google’s hand, search wise. But what if Microsoft suddenly can use the Social Graph to enhance these results?

In case you’ve never seen the options when creating an advertisement:

You can basically say things like “only display ads to people from 20-25, female, living 80 miles from New York and are not yet connected to this” or – and that is even the worse one – only display ads to friends of users already connected with me the advertiser. So next time you do say “I like” on a brand, imagine your name being beneath any advertisement this person thinks of saying “(your name) likes this.”

Imagine this in combination with search results.

Positive or negative? We decide

As consumers and customers, even just as people we need to learn more about what companies are doing with our data and how they are using it, and we do need more control over it. Not to be negative on all, I am rather thrilled by the options even I as a blogger can get out of this, but there needs to be check and balance. For example, why not allow me a setting “this page can only use your name as endorsement for the page itself / third party / etc.”. If you educate well and you do no evil, most customers probably will help you. And you need to provide more for me than just glass pearls.  :)

Like in the fairy tail, when the clock hits 12 [or your flight leaves] I am now back in Lübeck digesting my second SXSW experience. Which of course was different than the first one, better in some regards, not as exciting in others. But I somehow have the feeling that not by what happened there, but by a general feeling about what is yet to unfold in the next months the word I am looking for is "mindboggeling".

I have been around digital communication for over 20 years now and had my share of excitement of what was new and hip. Being on the forefront of those trends in Germany is also one of the reasons why I get a better sense of what is hype because only the hip thing get the ‘media attention thingy’ where there is a small group of people who are always asked about that. It was so with blogging, podcasting, second life and now twitter. Yet, there is currently something different in the mix.

Something new and exciting and I leave SXSW with the feeling that the next 6-12 months will be amazing. We will be flabberghasted and disappointed, excited and depressed about what is possible and what will not be done. Mix in the fear (and hopes!) about the recession and other not nice things, the current change in society on so many levels and you get a feeling which I only can describe as ‘I need time to get my head around this and think a lot about it. Head spins. Mindboggeling.

ps: And for better or worse, I hope that next year there will be more than 4,5 Germans present from the digital sphere. no I am not kidding. We found @heiko @ulrike_reinhard @grex and myself, the .5 is @mattbalera who is Australian but lived in Germany for 10 years. Given the size of the market, the industry and the population there should be at least 50 from this sphere, from agencies over companies up to individuals. It is a shame that they stay put at home not realizing what is happining in a spot like this but stay separated from the market and the international development. A trip to SXSWi is not about the parties nor the conference program, it is *the* meeting space with over 11K people. Are there more high profile events? Yes and they are also more expensive. SXSW is affordable if you just start planning early enough (and that means now) and given the fact that this is a 20h a day experience well worth the travel time and costs.

Nuff said. Need thinking time now. And see you in SXSW 2010.