Timo Heuers Weblog

I have been in France for the first time in my life last Sunday. I stayed it Offenburg — close to French-German border — and travelled there for the BarCampOffenburg, which I attended on Saturday. It’s easy to go to Strasbourg (France) by train if you are in Offenburg. It takes you 30 minutes without changing the trains. I started 8.34 AM and because I went there with train, the first thing I saw was the “Place de La Gare” and the train station of course. Really amazing. Nice compination of old and new style of building houses.

I did a map with Goole Maps weeks ago where I marked all the sights which I wanted to visit. First on my trip was the famous “Place Kléber”, which is the lagest Strasbourg place according to Wikipedia. But not the most beatiful, if you ask me. After that, I went to the “Notre Dame de Paris” - an amazing church!

After that, I went to “Palais Rohan” near to a river (who can tell me the name?). Also the “Église Saint-Paul” was special, but not that much interesting as “Notre Dame” was.

But now, my favorite place in Strasbourg, where I stayed lots of minutes waiting for nothing, enjoying the sun and the silence (yes, silence, but it’s still in the middle of this city, amazing). The “Place de La République” is located directly beside the “Palais du Rhin” — also a highlight on Strasborug trips.

Shortly after that I discovered the “République” stop of the Tram (Strasbourg Subway) and decided to go to European Parliament with the Tram. I didn’t neither know how to pay nor how much I should pay, so I didn’t pay at all (I paid 1,30 Euro for another Tram trip though).

Strasbourg is one of the most beautiful city I have ever visited and the trip has been really awesome. I think that wasn’t the last time I’ve been there!

I haven’t got any tips yet for my Strasbourg trip on Sunday. If you have one, don’t hesitate to comment and share.

I will be in Offenburg this weekend, which is close to the French border and Alsace. It’s BarCamp time again, sponsored by Burda. I will be there for BarCamp on Saturday and travelling to Strasbourg next day, which is 30 minutes by train.

I will stay in Hotel Palmengarten. Wifi is available in the entire hotel, but is 9 Euro per hour, which means no wifi for me over night. It’s way too expensive!

Will show you some pictures after I am home again Sunday evening. You can keep up to date with my Twitter channel, I try to do most of the posts in English (which takes more time for me, so I will post German tweets when having not enough time).

I will be travelling to Offenburg at the end of April for attending BarCampOffenburg. Offenburg is really close to the French-German border. So I decided to attend BarCamp on Saturday (the whole day) and half of Sunday. Sunday morning I’ll be going to Strasbourg and pass the border by train (30 minutes from Offenburg).

I want to ask for suggestions. What is worth seeing and worth visiting in Strasbourg, France? Maybe you know some insider tips?

This week I spent some hours in East-German city Leipzig for Lunch 2.0. After we ate, talked and shared thoughts, Stefan Oßwald and I were discovering this interesting city. Here are some of the pictures I took:

When the Lunch 2.0 was over, we went to some of Leipzig’s sights, for example the Volkerschlachtdenkmal, which is the largest monument in Europe:

Some more pictures are at my sevenload set.

I will be in Leipzig again in May for BarCamp.

If you are coming to CeBIT and not a XING member, just comment here and we’ll send you more information soon.
If you are a member, attend through our XING Event. https://www.xing.com/app/events?op=detail;id=186174

The second German Girl Geek Dinner, organized by the (probably) most geeky girl in Germany, called Nicole Simon, will take place February 12th in Hamburg. Special guest will be Ian Forrester, who is working for BBC. He is in Hamburg for Social Media Forum.

If you want to attend, you can comment the blog posting or attend through the XING event. The special thing with Girl Geek Dinners is: if you are female, you can attend without obstacles/barriers, but if you are male, you’ll need to be invited to the event by a girl.

By the way, I can’t attend. School sucks, I know. Just some months left and I’ll be free!

If you are attending CeBIT next month, I have a special recommendation for you: StartupWeekend.

Cem Basman wants to found a company in one week. Not enough, he also wants to go public and to put to the NYSE (yes, New York Stock Exchange!) in this week. Cem is one of this types of guys, which earn much of respect, because of their great ideas and how they going to realize it (and I know, Cem will realize the plan of going to NYSE with this startup founded in just one week).

First StartupWeekend in Germany took place in Hamburg last year. The idea is to found, create and (trying) to be in beta in one weekend! That needs a lot of people, of course. First thing is to collect possible ideas for the new startup. Second step is to vote for the best idea and then they are going to realize the idea in one weekend!

I am sad, I didn’t attend the Hamburg StartupWeekend, by the way.

Now Cem and his companion Jason were invited to do the second one in Hannover at CeBIT. Of course they agreed and blogged about it. But there are also some negative comments writing that Cem’s goal is to go public to the stock exchange. Is that really the beginning of a new bubble? I don’t think so. It’s just an idea which enthuast people want to realize. It’s a dream, nut the beginning of bubble 2.0.

Will be there, if they need someone with some journalistic knowledge, contacts and some experiences in PR (not much, I know, but I am improving),

I attended WordCamp in Hamburg, Germany last weekend. Was really cool, I made lots of new contacts and met some friends. Nicole Simon, who is a famous female German blogger (she’s also famous because of her English blog) hold a session about multilingualism and how to blog multi lingual with WordPress. She talked much about do’s and doent’s.

I blogged a summary in German which I made with my MacBook while listening to Nicole. She said, she’ll be focused on the English language in 2008 — both, blogging and twittering.

Most of Germans are “integrated” into the German blogosphere and know the tools the Germans use (Rivva instead of Techmeme, XING and not LinkedIn) and so it’s difficult to learn and use new services. You have to start at zero!

Nicole’s tips to improve English: listening to podcasts, watching TV shows, reading blogs, following and reading some English Twitter and listening to audio books!

If you want to know more about it, Loic Le Meur posted some tips two years ago.