I ride my bike to betahaus between 9 and 10 am in the morning, sit down in front of my laptop and „go“ to work. Pretty glamorous, isn’t it? My creative process? I’m talking to myself on the computer. Asking myself questions. „Why is the protagonist funny?“ - and answer them. „He thinks he’s smart while being a complete idiot. … He’s not funny, he’s like me."
All the parts.
I don’t. Still, I’m a social animal and go for lunch with my fellow coworkers. Sometimes I do a little market research and ask them about ideas of mine.
I wrote my novel „Romance for beginners“ in betahaus. It brought out my romantic side … just kidding. Has betahaus inspired me? You bet. Just the other day I was pitching a story to a production company about betahaus. My idea: a young hotshot working in betahaus gets involved with the German industrial military complex. He tries to sell them his brilliant software for operating drones. Of course you know how the poor guy ends up. Pretty dead, you’re damn right. It’s just fiction but still: It should be a warning for all of us!
We'll leave that to the imagination of the reader.
betahaus is a supercool place, no question about that! You might not always find a table with stable legs in this place, but you definitely find the coolest people on earth. I probably never belonged to this group, but I learned from the best. I even bought a beanie the other day!
“ You might not always find a table with stable legs in this place, but you definitely find the coolest people on earth”
I really love betahaus and its spirit. I really do! The thing I love the most: the TOURISTS. The hoards of Japanese, Scandinavian and South European tourist groups that are led through the house, staring right at my face watching me curiously while I try to come up with the best line of my career. Seriously, it doesn’t bother me, I only wish they didn’t throw bananas.
Wanna meet the novelist? Ron has had a 12-Day/Month membership for the last seven years. Catch him on one of those days and he'll be happy to share a coffee and a story with you. Just make sure to not mention bananas.
Toni: Honestly, we have skillsets that you don’t usually find in developers. Because we've had lives that were not just about computer science. I think to some extent this is what makes us different.
Martin: I believe one of the reasons why people pick us over other studios is because it can be very hard working with developers. If you’re not understanding their work, if the communication is not flowing, you, as a client can feel lost. We're easy to communicate with and we’re always open to feedback and we're open to discuss anything. In the end, after all iterations, if you say we need to start the website from scratch and that you don’t like the idea, we won’t take it personally.
Alex: Also, I think, since we all work as coding teachers, we are officially qualified to explain what coding is to people who don't code, which is actually really rare because a lot of developers, as Martin says, don't want to, or literally just don't know how to articulate what they're doing. Whereas we are trained in articulating what it is that we're doing, why it's meaningful and why it takes a certain amount of time.
Alex: Zimt & Mehl - the Turkish bakery around the corner. It’s just soo good.
Martin: Oh, there is this Italian restaurant called Ristorante del Arte
Tony: Oh, my God, this place is so funny. It looks like a pretty average Italian restaurant, but the whole interior design inside is just decorated in such a weird way. The entire place is covered in frescoes. They have crystal chandeliers and Easter bunnies. Some Greek columns. It has a different name on the menu, on the side and on the Internet. And it was an ex-shoe-store.
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