Our agent Alper has recently moved to Berlin to establish a presence over there and he will be reporting on his progress from time to time.
For reasons both personal and professional I have relocated to Berlin to start afresh in that great Athens on the Spree. Berlin is seeing a resurgence of digital/creative activity that is garnering quite a lot of attention not to mention speculation. Let the reasons for that be what they are, what matters to us is that it is a proper metropolis with both opportunity and urgency for playful experiences.
Having just arrived, the help of (friends of) friends has been invaluable to get started quickly. The temporary office space, knowledge of the local bureaucracies and the connections made, that would otherwise have taken months of attending meetups in shady bars, have all been invaluable. I am surprised how seamless the transition from a city in one country to another can be with our professional communications and culture homogenized by the internet.
Picture by Edial Dekker
Last week, my first week in Berlin in earnest, has been focused on looking for office space and getting some work done that had been left because of the move and the holidays. The start of the week I spent doing a thorough traversal of Berlin’s coworking spaces and these last couple of days have been more productive working at the center of most things digital here, the Betahaus.
Setting up shop for Hubbub as well as my other professional affiliations, I’m looking for a shared studio to go to every morning, where I can have a desk and where I can put my screen and books. This place would be preferably located somewhere in or near Kreuzberg. I have some promising leads, but if you can add to those, do get in touch.
In time we are planning to expand into a location where a handful of people can work on projects in a comfortable fashion. The Berlin studio will always remain tightly connected to the Utrecht mothership, but it should be able to operate autonomously in the same loose fashion that most of our collaboration takes place. A colony on another planet, if you will, though right now Berlin is a bit more hospitable than Mars.
With regard to connections, I have met up with the local indie game developers during a previous visit and Hubbub will be out in force for the Global Game Jam Berlin at the end of this month. Even though I am a debutant in that particular format, we hope to present a respectable showing with the help of some more experienced team members. I am particularly interested in meeting people busy with games for social/organizational change in Germany and comparing notes with what works and what doesn’t. But if you are otherwise interested in playful experiences to get people to engage and create I would of course also love to get in touch.
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Starting up in Berlin
Our agent Alper has recently moved to Berlin to establish a presence over there and he will be reporting on his progress from time to time.
For reasons both personal and professional I have relocated to Berlin to start afresh in that great Athens on the Spree. Berlin is seeing a resurgence of digital/creative activity that is garnering quite a lot of attention not to mention speculation. Let the reasons for that be what they are, what matters to us is that it is a proper metropolis with both opportunity and urgency for playful experiences.
Having just arrived, the help of (friends of) friends1 has been invaluable to get started quickly. The temporary office space, knowledge of the local bureaucracies and the connections made, that would otherwise have taken months of attending meetups in shady bars, have all been invaluable. I am surprised how seamless the transition from a city in one country to another can be with our professional communications and culture homogenized by the internet.
Picture by Edial Dekker
Last week, my first week in Berlin in earnest, has been focused on looking for office space and getting some work done that had been left because of the move and the holidays. The start of the week I spent doing a thorough traversal of Berlin’s coworking spaces2 and these last couple of days have been more productive working at the center of most things digital here, the Betahaus.
Setting up shop for Hubbub as well as my other professional affiliations, I’m looking for a shared studio3 to go to every morning, where I can have a desk and where I can put my screen and books. This place would be preferably located somewhere in or near Kreuzberg. I have some promising leads, but if you can add to those, do get in touch.
In time we are planning to expand into a location where a handful of people can work on projects in a comfortable fashion. The Berlin studio will always remain tightly connected to the Utrecht mothership, but it should be able to operate autonomously in the same loose fashion that most of our collaboration takes place. A colony on another planet, if you will, though right now Berlin is a bit more hospitable than Mars.
With regard to connections, I have met up with the local indie game developers during a previous visit and Hubbub will be out in force for the Global Game Jam Berlin at the end of this month. Even though I am a debutant in that particular format, we hope to present a respectable showing with the help of some more experienced team members. I am particularly interested in meeting people busy with games for social/organizational change in Germany and comparing notes with what works and what doesn’t. But if you are otherwise interested in playful experiences to get people to engage and create I would of course also love to get in touch4.