Weekly Recap #9: “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!”
Hey folks, this is Harry from diesdas.digital and you’ve stumbled upon our 9th weekly summary of how we’re doing with our little company. This will be a short one since The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD was released on Friday and I’m giddy with excitement to play it. When I’ll actually sit down and grab a controller though, it’ll take five minutes until I’m annoyed with the cutscenes and after 10 minutes I’ll feel uncomfortable for wasting my time and then I’ll switch the Wii U off and be frustrated that you cannot relive the childhood joys of immersing yourself in a virtual world. It just doesn’t work as an adult … unless … maybe … with the right equipment …
Nevermind. Let’s get started!
Yadda yadda projects yadda productive!
We’re looking back at a successful week, wrapping up some projects, starting new ones, making good progress on the ongoing stuff. A lot of code has been written, despite quite a few meetings happening and we had a productive rhythm going. I’m quite happy with how we balance project work and organisational matters right now.
Lots of people ask us if we work crazy long hours and only then I realize that this could be the norm. So for the record: No, we don’t. We start at 9 and finish around 7, pretty much every day. Like a regular job, but more fun!
And it’ll get even better because …
Max Mussehl is joining us March 14!
Edenspiekermann agreed to let our 4th team member leave two weeks early. Huge thank you, we’re super grateful! 🎉
And with four people this whole adventure will be even more chaotic, which is the reason why …
… we need some space!
For the first couple of months it’s been great sitting in häberlein & mauerer’s loft in Mitte, but we feel we’re reaching a point where we need some office space of our own. To have more privacy, be able to listen to music and decorate how we see fit. We’ve been looking around, but so far it’s been underwhelming. I mean, what the heck is this?
Anyhow … if you’re currently renting office space and you’re moving out or you know of something going on in the same building … do give us a shout! We appreciate any help or leads! 🙇
Happy birthday Lorenz!
Restaurant recommendation: For Lorenz’s birthday we went out and had dinner together at Gasthaus Figl in Kreuzberg. Highly recommended, super good Pizza!
Betriebshaftpflichtversicherung! #killitwithfire
If you’re not a German native speaker, this must be a terrifying word. Anyhow, it’s a company insurance type of thing and if you want to rent office space as a company you need this in Germany … a ton of mails and personal meetings with Axa and Gothaer (two insurance companies) later, we were a bit lost. Neither of them seemed to understand what we’re doing, the whole process was super random and the costs didn’t make any sense to us. In a last desperate attempt we googled some new combination of words and Exali popped up. Their website didn’t look too trustworthy at first, but at least they provide insurance specifically for IT and media companies. We decided to call them and ended up talking for an hour on the phone.
They explained to us why all the other insurance providers cost more and how they cheat you out of getting your money with clauses that don’t make any sense to people working in IT (e.g.: if you accidentally leak data from your servers they won’t pay anything if your software isn’t all up to date with the latest versions — which it basically never is).
The whole conversation made so much sense and it was such a relief to talk to a sane human being that we signed up immediately and had the proper insurances 20 minutes later. Crazy well done. Good example of a thought-out service. A++, would insure again!
Bonus round: They have an awesome Facebook page and a genuinely interesting blog. Go Exali, we’re big fans already!
Speaking of insurance …
Pro tip of the week: Don’t lock your bike like this. Especially if it’s such a nice bike.
Reading material for the weekend
- A website that attempts to simulate what reading with dyslexia is like.
- Nicely put: Design For The Fucking “Why?”
- Vice launches TV channel Viceland with an “unbranded” identity.
- The smartphone replaced …
5. And finally: Some good thoughts on UX from Tesla’s User Interface Manager Brennan Boblett.
And that’s it for this week. I’ll go explore Hyrule now and leave you with this terrifying face swap:
Once you recover you might want to follow us on Twitter or Instagram — and as always: feedback is very welcome! Have a nice weekend and see you next week! 👋 🤖
