Christian Heilmann

That was my Beyond Tellerrand Munich 2018 – Keynote talk/slides and impressions

Friday, January 19th, 2018 at 4:06 pm

I just got back from Beyond Tellerrand in Munich and here’s a quick report what you missed if you didn’t go. You might not be interested in my impressions, so let’s get my work out of the way first.

I gave the opening keynote “Sacrificing the golden calf of coding” in which I explained my transition from a hobby coder to a professional developer and learning along the way that tooling and automation is not the enemy.

The video is already available on the Vimeo Channel:

Sacrificing the golden calf of “coding” – Christian Heilmann – btconfMUC2018 from beyond tellerrand on Vimeo.

I also added the slides to Slideshare:

Sacrificing the golden calf of "coding" from Christian Heilmann

As you may know, I am a huge fan of Beyond Tellerrand. The organizer is a very old friend of mine and he bends over backwards to make the event something special. He cherry-picks the speakers, treats them immensely well and on a deeply personal level. I feel very proud to be a part of this for many years. On a personal level, I am chuffed about its success as my partner and me met at this event. Thus, she also was a volunteer this time and helped making this event work smoothly for all the attendees.

Anke packing bags

I was worried that branching out from Duesseldorf to Berlin and Munich might be a tough step for the event and as Munich is not a hotspot for events I worried about participation numbers. But I shouldn’t have. The even was full up and people stayed for the whole duration. I was heartbroken to hear about a massive personal loss in the organiser’s life just before the event and I am even more so impressed how well it worked out.

Attendees painting on the Surface Studio

I shot quite a few photos at the event, none of which of course will match what the official photographers managed to get.

Live Video Editing at BTConf

Beyond Tellerrand is ridiculously fast in releasing the videos of the event as they are mixed live. I love this as with booth duties at the Microsoft stand and personal errands I couldn’t see all the talks but will do so now in the nearer future. Here are some picks that may tickle your fancy, too:

Simon Collison’s “The Internet of Natural Things” talk was a lovely reminder how the internet is not all about cold technical things but also a way to organise your life and record natural things around you. It ends with an intriguing new way how an OS could look to be more helpful for people in their natural environment.


The Internet of Natural Things – Simon Collison – btconfMUC2018 from beyond tellerrand on Vimeo.

Harry Robert’s “Why Fast Matters” is a talk full of great information on how to measure and improve the speed of your products and what the positive effects of that can be. Harry does not only show tools but also proves why considering improvements can make profound business sense. And he explains how well performing products are truly international and help you reach new markets without breaking the bank of users who live there. His slides with all the links are available on speakerdeck.


Why Fast Matters – Harry Roberts – btconfMUC2018 from beyond tellerrand on Vimeo.

Nadieh Bremer’s “Data Sketches: A Year of Exotic Data Visualisations” is a whirlwind explanation of her last year of creating bafflingly beautiful data visualisations. She doesn’t only show off her work and talks about the beauty of it but explains the story warts and all – from having to scrape and clean up the data to iteratively doing the math on paper to get the effects she wanted to have.


Data Sketches: A Year of Exotic Data Visualisations – Nadieh Bremer – btconfMUC2018 from beyond tellerrand on Vimeo.

Dina Amin’s “A tinker story” was a total surprise to me and clearly the winner of the event. It already inspired me to write two new talks. Dina is a lady from Egypt who likes to take mechanical things apart and build stop motion animations from them. That’s impressive enough, but the real beauty of the talk is about her story. How she dared to do something that crazy and creative instead of pursuing a normal career and how the internet and working with other people over it made that possible. If you want to see some really cool animations and hear a story of empowerment and joy, this is for you.


A Tinker Story – dina Amin – btconfMUC2018 from beyond tellerrand on Vimeo.

Make sure to keep checking the channel for more videos coming up. Another absolute highlight was Stefan Sagmeister’s closing keynote which was a gorgeous and sweary rant about how we should embrace beauty instead of following outdated Bauhaus ideas. And it ended with the whole audience singing along with him to a song about beauty.

Stefan Sagmeister's Karaoke about beauty

There is no question in my book that Beyond Tellerrand is a worth-while conference to support and attend. My company agreed to support all the events this year and I am looking forward to seeing the next one in May in Duesseldorf. You should, too.


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