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The Rising Web
Yet, there is an increasing number of independent projects pursuing common goals: The liberalization, re-decentralization and democratization of the power structures on the Internet. Across all areas of life, people start reclaiming — and regaining — lost ground by providing true alternatives to the seemingly-inescapable attraction of the big monopolists. It's up to each one of us to take a position and add momentum to the tug of war for the Open Web.
With the border:none 2014 event, we’d like to take on the topic that some of our speakers already introduced in 2013. We aim to deliver a conference that addresses the subject in a comprehensive and different way and sustainably helps (re)shape the Internet landscape. Together with our attendees, we want to contribute to the deprecation of the centralized web.
Creator Conference
High expectations call for exceptional measures. With the second edition of border:none we want to make an impact beyond its local and temporal borders. Gathering and entertaining a crowd of awesome people is one thing — seizing the moment of inspiration by leading them to create something outstanding, together, is another. For this reason, we go for a novel, yet to be proven conference format: As one big team, we’ll make the first Creator Conference become real — an event for all those who do not only want to listen but also get their hands dirty.
October 17th — Get inspired
A board of seven authorities from diverse sectors of industry and society — we call them scene-setters — will make up the first day by giving inspiring talks in front of the full audience. With their various technical, scientific, political and design-related backgrounds, they will scrutinize the over-arching topic from a broad set of perspectives. Ideally, you'll get to know seven different views on things — maybe even one you would have never thought of yourself.
October 18th — Get involved
On the second day, the audience will split into seven creator units, each led by one of the scene-setters (and possibly some assistants). Relocated to one of several gorgeous smaller venues, you will spend the day elaborating on the particular facet that your unit stands for. Input will become output, listening will become articulation, ideas will evolve into concepts. The gathering won’t end with contemplative navel-gazing, but rather with collective creation.
Be part of it!
Being the first Creator Conference ever, border:none 2014 will definitely be a remarkable experience:
- The event will be strictly limited to 200 participants. This does not only reflect the fact that we'd like to keep it intimate and on a high level, but is also due to limitations of
- our beautiful venues like the Orpheum Lichtspielhaus or one or the other smaller creator unit locations.
- We will do our very best to make this event the best possible experience for you — but we need your help. Please make sure you are familiar with our Code of Conduct when attending the conference.
- As it's all about getting involved, your participation starts way before the actual event. Regardless of whether you are attending or not, you are able to influence certain aspects of the conference, such as the board of scene-setters and their specific topic facets. To make expressing your interests as easy and playful as possible, we've created the border:none auroras — go and create yours! As a means of identification, but also to keep things personal and sincere, we just require you to purchase a conference ticket or at least sign up for our mailing list in order to get on board.
Meet our fantastic scene-setters!
We tried hard to find the best possible team of experts for you, and we believe that we performed pretty well here. Not only are there quite some fresh and promising new faces amongst our scene-setters, but also they cover a very broad and diverse range of perspectives on our topic. So please make yourself familiar with your border:none 2014 hosts:
Aaron Parecki
Aaron Parecki is CTO of the Esri R&D Center, Portland, and the co-founder of IndieWebCamp. He is known for having tracked his location at 5 second intervals since 2008, and for co-founding Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri in 2012. His work has been featured in Wired, Fast Company and more. He made Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30 for his work on Geoloqi.
Laura Kalbag
Laura Kalbag is a designer with a thing for the web. She works at ind.ie, creating design-led, free and open alternatives to technologies that are funded through the exploitation of users' data. She tends to harp on about web development, design theory, web fonts, responsiveness and walks with her big fluffy dog, Oskar.
Curtis Wallen
Curtis Wallen is a visual artist, journalist, and researcher with a diverse practice that explores identity, memory, surveillance, and the cultural implications of their intersections. In 2013, Wallen began working on a digital and physical alias called Aaron Brown as part of an ongoing project: «In God We Trust, All Others We Monitor: The Story of Aaron Brown.» The Story of Aaron Brown has been featured internationally by the BBC, The Atlantic, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. Wallen lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Jeremy Keith
Jeremy Keith is an Irish web developer living in Brighton, England, where he works with the web consultancy firm Clearleft. He wrote the books DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, and most recently, HTML5 For Web Designers. His latest project is Huffduffer, a service for creating podcasts of found sounds. When he's not making websites, Jeremy plays bouzouki in the band Salter Cane.
Mario Heiderich
Mario Heiderich is leading Cure53, a Berlin based security company that is specialized on attack and defense of modern JavaScript-heavy websites and applications.
Jan-Christoph Borchardt
Jan-Christoph Borchardt is an open source designer, currently focused on ownCloud. He worked with several open source software projects including Unhosted, Terms of Service; Didn’t Read, Litewrite, Shotwell (Ubuntu's photo app), Diaspora and more. Jan also regularly collaborates with design universities to get students involved in open source.
Adam Ierymenko
Adam has been programming since shortly after he could talk, and is interested in basically everything having to do with science, technology, and the philosophical issues surrounding it. He also loves the often crazy world of technology entrepreneurship. Lately he's been working on network virtualization technologies and thinking a lot about how the Internet works. When he's not doing these things, he mostly spends time with his family and teaches his one year old daughter how to stack blocks. He lives in Southern California.
Become a sponsor
The unique and innovative format of the border:none event is a true challenge in many respects, and putting it on the road demands a lot of resources. On the other hand, the broad range of topical aspects offers many unusual possibilities for sponsors to jump in, for instance as a "venue patron" for one or more of the creator units — or even for the main venue itself.
Sponsoring border:none 2014 is not only about supporting a one-of-a-kind conference. It's also about bringing forward an essential effort that needs the help of all of us. It's simply a good thing — while it brings you in the excellent company of our other lovely sponsors at the same time. You should totally do it. Let's get in touch and find out what fits you best!
Stay up to date
Sign up for our new border:none mailing list to keep informed and enter our pre-conference participation stage as soon as it gets launched. Please trust us, we won't misuse your data or spam you at any time.