Summer Break! 🌴🌞🍹 The sunny days in Berlin are to be celebrated outside, and thus upfront will take a break. We’ll be back in September. Enjoy the summer everyone – and don’t forget to submit your talk ideas!

Before we’re closing our laptops, putting on our sunhats, and heading off into the summer break (of course only after swinging by at some great conferences) we’re taking a step back and take a look at the world beyond our daily business: How can we be more creative? And how we use our creativity to make a mark on the world?
Our speakers may not have all the answers but they’ll for sure spark some interesting discussions.

• 

  Lisa Passing Federate You, Federate Me

  Lisa will talk about open source, decentralized, federated social networks. Mastodon, for example, is rather new and has learned a lot from the mistakes of the past and from similar projects. Why is federation cool and what does it mean anyway? This is what this talk is all about!
• 

  Kai-Uwe Niephaus How to become a more focused, empathic, healthier, beautiful and better paid creative in only 1 step

  Analysing, and drawing parallels between the publishing trend, classic marketing, universalized process disfavor and common sense – this talk explores possibilities on how to take advantage of the everyday creative discomfort. Nonseriousness may occur.

  Kai-Uwe is a Berlin based user experience designer and strategist with a focus on digital-products and integrated communication. He can only use his powers for good.

  • @kainiephaus
  • kainiephaus.com
• 

  Christine Lariviere The Fisher King: Solving Climate Change in a Post-Truth World

  Belief in conspiracy theories, such as the idea that climate change is a hoax, suppresses a person’s feelings of autonomy and willingness to act—they’re resigned to impotency in the face of forces they deem more powerful than themselves. Now, social media is spreading suspicious thinking with user-specific filters and social exclusion, as well as exposure to increasingly extreme conspiracy content via recommendation algorithms. With an issue as pressing as climate change, we cannot afford inaction. This talk asks: how can we overcome ‘post-truth’ culture and create empowered individuals for climate action?

  Christine works with social media, communications, and data at Climate-KIC, Europe’s leading climate innovation initiative. In her spare time, she dabbles in digital media theory.

  • @cdlariviere
  • medium.com/@christinelariviere

Up.front happens every month (except during our summer and winter breaks), usually on the second Tuesday of the month. The next Up.front meetups are scheduled for:

• #83 Tue, Sept 11 2018
• #84 Tue, Oct 9 2018
• #85 Tue, Nov 13 2018
• #?? winter break!

We are always looking for interesting topics and new perspectives. If you are interested in speaking at Up.front, you are welcome to submit a talk.