📖
Part II of this series explains how our conference came to be because of the continuous support (and nudging) by many different German community members.

German Angst - Bank Accounts, Taxes, and Liabilities

One of the big discussion points since we started debating the idea of a conference had always been bureaucratic necessities like bank accounts, taxes, liabilities, or insurances for an event of that size.

We felt like we should bore you with all the gruesome, German details like DIN 14906, DIN 14675 or the "Verordnung zum Schutz der Beschäftigten vor Gefährdungen durch künstliche optische Strahlung":

(1) Diese Verordnung gilt zum Schutz der Beschäftigten bei der Arbeit vor tatsächlichen oder möglichen Gefährdungen ihrer Gesundheit und Sicherheit durch optische Strahlung aus künstlichen Strahlungsquellen. Sie betrifft insbesondere die Gefährdungen der Augen und der Haut.

In the end, we decided not to.

Big shoutout to Ankit Taneja (and his accountant 😸) for overcoming these obstacles in one of the most convenient ways possible. You are awesome.

With these angsty details settled, we could focus on finding an affordable and representational home for our event.

Bye, Frankfurt am Main

eagle-eye angle photo of gray concrete building
Photo by Jan-Philipp Thiele / Unsplash

We considered Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt is pretty much in the middle of Germany and excellently connected as well because it is a major travel hub in central Europe. Sounds ideal, doesn't it?

We took Frankfurt am Main off the list quickly. None of us lived there and the Trailblazer community - albeit present - was small in comparison to the other cities we looked at.

O Mei, München

aerial photo of cityscape during nighttime
Photo by Daniel Seßler / Unsplash

At the end of 2022 and in the beginning of 2023 we scouted locations in and around Munich with the help of long time Trailblazer Community supporter Markus Wittig (Salesforce) and his connections.

While we found one or two nice spots, they were almost too small and more on the far side of our intended budget.

Before the pandemic (and some community program changes) Munich had many active community groups to show for and big events. Only London had more groups to offer in Europe.

Today, Munich has three active groups and they are - alas - smaller than back in the days.

Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin

🍭
If you want to come to Berlin, too, how about submitting a talk?
two person kissing wall art
Photo by Jeison Higuita / Unsplash
🍭
Don't fancy submitting a talk? We also got some tickets to sell

Berlin also has three groups but those are alive and well and growing. Berlin Group Leaders like Ankit Taneja, Alex Maier, Narender Singh, Roman Hentschke have been cooperating for a long time now to offer great content without collisions.

We cautiously surveyed the members of the three groups if they would like to support the event and we got encouraging feedback and even volunteering offers in every group we asked.

These were all strong arguments in favor of Berlin and especially Berlin's community. Thanks to Nora Nicklis' scouting talents and negotiation skills we could identify two locations in Berlin that seemed like an excellent fit.

We finally settled for KOSMOS where we hope to see all of you on the 24th of May.