We are in Berlin! And the sun has come out!
I’ll be based at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. I’m excited to be working with Christian Katzenbach and all the other great HIIG people. There are a couple of things I’ll be doing here – besides hanging out with the family and doing fancy Berlin stuff 😉

1. Christian and I are organizing the workshop “We are on a mission”. Exploring the role of future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology. We are happy about the awesome line-up and that Sally Wyatt will deliver a keynote. Given the great number and variety of submissions we’re also thinking about putting together a special issue on the matter. So stay tuned!
2. I’ll be doing fieldwork! Two out of my three case studies on alternative search engines – the open web index and the peer-to-peer search engine YaCy – are based in Germany. I’ll take the opportunity to do interviews and, most probably, mind-scripting workshops with the developer teams (in cooperation with my ITA colleague Doris Allhutter). In addition, I’ll go to the Open Tech Summit to enjoy some more of the free software spirit. It always feels good to go right “into the field”.
3. I’ll be talking about my habilitation project “Algorithmic Imaginaries. Visions and values in the shaping of search engines” (FWF) on various occasions. At the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society as part of their brown bag lunch series. At the Freie Universität Berlin, Human-Centered Computing, where Claudia Müller-Birn kindly invited me. Maybe – most probably not – at the Re:Publica where I got a rejection at the last minute (they call it “long list” since there is the option to drop in if someone else drops out; I’d call it waiting list..)
4. Some other things are still to be explored.. It’s only week two.
5. But the kids are alright..