I’m Vidar @blacktar Andersen and I don’t talk about myself in the third person.
I like taking stuff apart to see how it works. I like to reassemble stuff in different ways and see how that works. I like to question the how and why of current stuff. Because I have a compulsion; I must try to make stuff suck less!
I have no agenda other than that of participating in the global conversation. Actually, this thing is perhaps more about you than it is about me. I’m sincerely interested in getting to know what’s on your mind. Don’t hesitate to get in touch! I’m convinced you have some great stories to tell and I’m quite eager to hear them. Let’s have coffee. Or a beer.
You may already know me from them there internets trolling as ‘blacktar’; my trick SEO pony nickname, scener name or gamertag from back in the glory scener hacker lamer days.
At around the ripe old age of nine I started my first entrepreneurial venture; putting on a magic show and charging the neighborhood kids for admission. Not very novel perhaps, but in retrospect it probably says something about my urge to fleece my friends create and manipulate people tell stories – it did even manage to land me in the regional papers at the time.
I think it was around that age I promised my mother to buy her a house with a swimming pool for her retirement. I guess I’m still working on making good on that one.
For many years I thought that getting a university degree and graduate at a film school of some repute would be my railroad express to fortune, fame and changing the world. Then reality set in the Internet happened and I dropped out.
I founded blacktar.com in 1997, co-founded the Plone CMS, together with Alan Runyan and Alexander Limi in and around 2000 and later in life Social Media Lunch Cologne and the Hacker News Cologne Meetup. And currently I’m co-founding Gauss – The People Magnet!
Over there years I have also perpetrated numerous consulting hours, making software and processes suck less by means of web-based fixes behind NDAs and corporate firewalls prostituting contracting for other dubious venerable governments, national companies and global corporations. I am guilty of doing work for weapons manufacturers, big oil and publishers. The latter probably being the bigger evil.
I probably have over 20.000 hours of flight time in software development; making software work for people and not the other way around. It’s a sad fact. I know. Yes, I’m still looking into getting a real life™.
Somehow I survived the roller coaster Internet bubble ride v1.0 unscathed and without ever receiving a dotcom cent. There were some obligatory options, and of course they went bankrupt. Yes, I’m not bitter.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be told by others what to do – especially by empty, dispassionate, meritless shells. I don’t take orders and I take issue with rules, so early in my professional career I thought I’d be happier becoming a a suit in management telling others what to do instead of a t-shirt in dev toiling away with their meaningless crap.
Thus I climbed the proverbial well-lubricated salaryman pole and became “the man” – and realized I hated it. Not so much for telling people what to do – I still love that find that a useful application of my energy and skills – but for the shift of focus and responsibility from innovating and creating something new in the world to just manage and optimize the status quo and minimizing risks. Not so much for the pay – it was nice – but it sure wasn’t FU money and it didn’t make me more happy. Nor did it help change the world. So I decided to stop doing that. Permanently.
That’s why I’m currently in the process of co-founding ‘Gauss – The People Magnet’ a brand new startup! I’m bootstrapping “Gauss – The People Magnet” (@getGauss) with friends – it’s an exciting new venture in social capital. This allows me to still tell people what to do – and getting told straight back what I should do too by peers – all the while building and creating something that we believe can bring positive change in the world – and all the while risking our own reputations and money to prove it!
Don’t let these things or anything you read on the intarwebs fool you – I am used to be a notorious underachiever. I am was a professional – albeit somewhat productive – coaster.
More details about my professional life can be had at LinkedIn and XING if that’s more like the sort of thing you were looking for.
In further trivia, I haven’t owned a TV since 2004, I’m a shareholder in the Aston Villa Supporter’s Foundation and a member of the ACLU, although I’m a paternalistic libertarian in the sense of the authors of Nudge and not a liberal. I am a sceptic, an atheist, a supporter of separation of church and state, KBHC supporter, member of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and a card carrying member of EFF.
I see all numbers and certain smells as colours and for a long time I thought everybody does. I only discovered later in life that there’s a word for it: Synesthesia (Wikipedia).
I’m into entrepreneurship, people, making a dent, changing the world – even if it’s just a little bit and just for you, removing gatekeepers, anything disruptive, behavioural economics, cinema, storytelling, knowledge, science, reading, photography, design, MUSIC!, Open Source, the global village (you know, the Marshall McLuhan kind), innovation, usability, Squash, inline skating, swimming and you. Yes, YOU – so let’s talk.
I have no role models or idols except for my late uncle.
I like to think that his some of his passion for building stuff and genuine child-like interest in other people lives on in me.
Music is my hot sex.
Entitlement is my biggest turnoff.
I’m trilingual; Norwegian, English and German. Sometimes I think in one language, speak in another, write in the third and dream in all.
I’m accessible; You’ll find me floating around the social interweb thingamajig.
Just search for ‘blacktar‘ or ‘Vidar Andersen‘ on other sites not mentioned and feel free to get in touch or invite me to new ones – I’m quite sociable.
Mail – blacktar@stopmebeforeiblogagain.com
Voice Landline (US + international) – +1 (650) 450-8047
Voice Landline (DE + EU) +49 (0) 221 3023 9530
Voice iPhone (DE) +49 151 40 133 149
Skype – blacktar
GTalk – ‘blacktar’
Twitter- @blacktar http://www.twitter.com/blacktar/
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/Blacktar
Foursquare – http://foursquare.com/user/blacktar
Instagram – blacktar
Google+ – https://plus.google.com/105140524673082283597/
flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/blacktar/
TED – http://www.ted.com/profiles/43226
Vimeo – http://vimeo.com/blacktar
SoundCloud – http://soundcloud.com/blacktar
Bitcoin – 1PWp8EDUBeRoJKTYX6SGsca4sp3rxsqPEG
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/therealblacktar
Plancast – http://plancast.com/blacktar
Tripl – http://tripl.com/blacktar
TripIt – http://www.tripit.com/people/blacktar
And so on and so forth.. .
Caveat Emptor:
I would like to state – for the record – that the content published on this blog are my own private opinions and may contain adult colourful [as well as incredibly childish] language.
I hope it’s self evident and makes sense to you that I can’t and won’t take any moral or legal responsibility for any external stuff that I link to.
The stuff hosted on this blog is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license if not otherwise explicitly indicated.
Other copyrights and licensing may apply to embedded / externally hosted stuff.
