The idea came almost out of nowhere. It was on a Sunday afternoon, one of the first cold days of this winter. A few of us were sitting in an empty office somewhere near Potsdamer Platz, trying to compensate having to work on a Sunday by eating both homemade brownies and delicious cakes while supposedly figuring out how to improve our film database – nothing really exciting. And somehow, the idea came up that the next thing to change about the Teddy’s website wasn’t the database, but the blog.

Because yes, we already had a blog. Or at least, something we called a blog – actually a beautifully written but terrible looking page hidden somewhere on our main website. Finding it wasn’t easy and despite all our efforts to make the articles look as beautiful as possible, the result was always the same. Teddy Today was a dark, static chaos with too small pictures and no videos – a nightmare to read or to work with.

So here we are, feeling like we’ve left an old, stinky, noisey moped for a really expensive high-class car, just by throwing WordPress on our website. Sometimes life can be easy, isn’t it?

Or maybe I should say “seem”. It hasn’t been so easy. We wanted more than a good-looking Teddy Today. And there will be more. Lots more.

I could start telling you about the articles we plan to write, about posting videos of our artists or about all the infos you will get here. I could tell you about how happy and proud we are to have this new tool to share the Teddy with you all. But believe me, this isn’t the most interesting part of it.

A guy called Doc Searls wrote that the internet isn’t a medium. It’s a place. This sounds good to us. A place: exactly what we want #teddyaward to be.  And not only a place to connect everything we do on the internet (yes, we are EVERYWHERE) or to post Sebastians Teddy Todays on a good-looking blog.

This is the place where we meet you. Teddy-guest or not, young, old, real hardcore nerd or just learning how to use your computer, Berliner or from some city we don’t know in a country we’ve never visited: you are all welcome here. Welcome to read and welcome to participate.

So please: comment, send us your pictures, videos and any ideas you might have about #teddyaward. Enjoy your time here, come back and help us build a nice, colourful chaos. It doesn’t have to be perfect, we aren’t and we don’t ask you to be. But we will need you. Because this place is actually yours.

Best,

Esther

PS: Are we being serious? Yes, definitely yes. Having a blog doesn’t mean we plan to spend our office time posting funny or even stupid pictures. Having fun together is an option, but we want to provide you real content. And lolcats are already all over the internet anyway.

PS2: And yes, we still have a main website for pure information, press or archives. You can find it here.

PS3: This doesn’t mean that Teddy Today will disappear. As always, our blogger Sebastian is watching films for you and looking forward to guide you through the queer Berlinale every day.