Our topics

This page lists a number of topics we are interested in. Its barely curated at all, representing the diverse set of stuff that our group wants to talk about.

Build your thing - hobby and business

• Exploration of alternative corporate models and the definition of “value” in corporate context
  • How can the economical and technical foundations of alternative companies look like?
  • Not only exploration, but actually trying to do it
• Build your own physical spaces - hackerspaces, workshops, offices, alternative living
• Hacking for fun and/or technical excellence, in contrast and together - how do they interact with each other?

Hard tech - do it, and do it well

• Motion control, industrial applications, field busses, FPGA, mechatronics engineering, robotics
• Building electronics with KICAD
• Finding open and composable solutions for product lifecycle management in electronics and mechatronics
• Technology in the office and in the field

Big corporate then, now and in the future

• Discussion of how the biggest companies in the world seem to become the most incapable ones
• Structures of power - cooperations, states, organisations and their challenges in the future - utopian and dystopian mind games
• What does the recent extreme consolidation of companies mean?
• Capitalism vs. Post-capitalism: Where value creation is not incentivized anymore, but deriving profit from value that others created is - revenue stream capture
• Raising awareness about enshittification and understanding the mechanisms
• Intelectual Property: Brakes applied to the progress of society?

Politics × democracy

• The process of shaping the future - hwo
• Resistance to change in people, until change actually happens - then it’s as if things were always like this
• Crisis of democracy - basic guarantees are not longer fulfilled by the state - symptoms, observations, what to do

Technology and/or freedom?

• Everyone should understand technology and science, otherwise they’re easily exploitable
  • Right to repair
  • DRM must die
  • General consumer protection
• Without broad understanding of technology, people cannot imagine what technology could be, how good it could be compared to now
  • Utopian world where software platforms dont suck, like some kind of quality-land but opposite, to show what technology could do for us
  • This kind of exists with solar punk, but it focuses on energy production and social change and not specifically what technology at a small scale could be like

Transformation of digital creation & value

• Generative AI, when programs program themselves, future human-machine interfaces
• The value of data, data ownership and data monetization

The world as we see it - perspectives on reality

• Google Glass -> Apple Vision Pro: Augmented reality, yay or nay?
• Echo chambers, social media bubbles, hand tailored content
• Aftermath of walled in comfort zones, is comfort our biggest problem?
• How do we counteract “alternative facts” content creators and the algorithms spreading this content, that people fall prey to?

Philosophy, existence, cognition and neurodiversity

• How the things are the way they are because somebody made them that way, and that you can at the very least imagine any change once you realize this
• Exchanging about neurodiversity, and how society is not made for people who fall out of the norm, but also how neurodiverse people contribute to society

Communities, regions, nations and alliances

• What can be done to make the European Union even better?
• At which stage of the rise of populism is Germany, how can we prevent a further rise of it
  • Look at examples: Populism in America, England and France

Urban spaces and mobility

• Observing and discussing urban development and green transformation in general
• Car lobby and how they turned the 15mn city concept into prison cities
  • How the idea of freedom is twisted to just sell more
• City infrastructure
• Bikes
• Trains

Art & culture

• Art and music 🎶
• Improvisational theatre and Comedy - show concepts with AI
• PowerPoint-Karaoke

All beings are welcome / queer department

• Queer stuff
• G a y s h i t