The New Year is fast approaching and if you live in Germany, I bet your list includes: improve my German. And if you live in Berlin it goes like: start learning German.
All in Berlin
10 years in Berlin
It’s Wednesday 31st of August 2016 and yesterday marked exactly 10 years in Berlin, since I first moved to B-Town on 30th August 2006.
And I just did something I never did during all this time. Today I got in a plane without having a return ticket back to Berlin.
Bye bye Madonna, hallo Urban Sports Club!
If you follow me on Twitter, you know I like to do sports. When I first moved to Berlin to live and die here (I mean it!), my budget was nearly non-existent and that's how I started jogging. My first love is swimming, but that meant buying a ticket every single time and I figured out that going for a run was free and I should try.
BabelCamp 2015 in Brno: a moravian adventure
Beginning of September Christoph Raethke took a couple of Berlin adventurers to Brno, in the Czech Republic, to attend the BabelCamp, a Social Media conference in the Moravia region.
I have a story with Social Media Week Berlin. And now it is time for some confessions.
Karneval der Kulturen in Berlin
The 17th edition of Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures) is starting tomorrow Friday. Celebrated always on the weekend of Pfingsten (Pentecost), it is the perfect time to experience the big diversity of Berliners living in our beloved city.
As you might have heard, MyFest (Mai Fest) for 1st of May is one of the biggest highlights of the party year in Berlin and unofficially the one open air party that kickstarts the summer season. Everyone is looking beautiful and you can't keep wondering where all those people were during the long winter. One of the biggest mysteries of Berlin, indeed.
But if you really want to enjoy the celebration, read this guide of "MyFest, the clever way". Why the clever way, Monica? Isn't that arrogant of you? - you might ask. Well, tomorrow it will be my 6th MyFest in Berlin. And I have learned a couple of things that I want to share with you. So really, take my advice.
On the 16th of April every year, Foursquare Day is celebrated worldwide. The initiative to dedicate a full day to spread the love to Foursquare among other people and mainly businesss owners came from the community. Which is kinda amazing. Check #4sqday on Twitter to see how much is going around the world :) Why I am so passionate about Foursquare
Foursquare is a great service. It is in some ways still crossing the chasm, in that difficult area between being a geeky platform for the "savvy crowd" and becoming totally mainstream. Thanks to their early API access and as well as Twitter's, its arms expanded beyond their platform. So, everytime you geotag a Instagram pictures, yes, it is thanks to the powerful Foursquare data. But after 4 years, still many mobile users link Foursquare to "creepy" check-ins and "nonsense competitions" to accumulate mayorships and badges.
GiveCamp is a worldwide initiative to bring developers and Non Profit Organisations together for a weekend. During the GiveCamp developers help the organisations to improve their websites and at the end of the weekend, they donate their code.
For me, the first edition of GiveCamp Berlin has been an eye opener experience. Even if I happen to NOT to be a developer or a designer, I joined as a supporter and volunteered my experience with social networks. Usually managing the online communication for a project takes a lot of time and resources, which many non profits prefer to put on other aspects. So my role has been to give them some ideas on how making the most of their time and still be active and engaging on Facebook, Twitter and so on :)