It’s the summer edition of up.front! In the summer, many of us try to take some time off and maybe reflect on the things we do. We would like to pick up on that theme, with two personal talks, aimed to help us define ourselves as professionals, freelancers, designers or developers, and maybe as humans.

• 

  Sven Ellingen Always be Building

  Sven loves to start things. And then grow them. Ideas, things, projects, products, teams. And lately: a company — after 5 years at Edenspiekermann, he decided to start from scratch, on his own. This talk is about leaving something great behind to make room for something that’s even better. It’s essentially about the beauty of building things.

  Sven is a designer bridging disciplines across business, design, and technology. Co-founder of @acolorbright. Previously: Creative Director at @edenspiekermann.

  • @se
  • svenellingen.com
• 

  Kilian McMahon Embracing what you're not

  Kilian has spent the last couple of years fumbling around as a designer trying to figure out how to become the people he admired but to no avail. This talk is about getting away from the idea of fitting yourself to others, recognising that you don't work like everyone else and understanding that being different is so much better.

  Kilian is a designer from Dublin who works on a ticketing app called Tito and a conference called Úll.

  • @kilmc
• 

  Fabian Mürmann How not to get killed as a freelancer

  Fabian spend nine years working as a freelance front- and back end, product / concept guy for a bunch of different, international, companies & startups.
  In this talk he’ll share a few things that he learned on the way: Infos on how to deal with taxes, clients from hell, working remote, that kind of stuff.

  Fabian is a Creative Technologist, working in the web since 16 years and currently co-managing an innovation lab at the Bertelsmann DirectGroup.

  • @fabianmu
  • fabian.mu