After the association freieFarbe e.V. had met last year in Tübingen for their annual general meeting, this year we met in a rustic hut in the Appenzeller Land, which Peter Jäger from pre2media and Eric A. Soder from pixsource.com had excellently chosen, just like the sunny weather that should accompany us from Friday to Sunday.
The chairman of the association, Holger Everding from DTP Studio Oldenburg and Jan-Peter Homann from Homann Colormanagement in Berlin arrived in Tübingen on Thursday, and after a first long night full of discussions and a meeting in the Proof.de office on Friday morning around noon, the three of us continued our journey to Switzerland. After a joint dinner with Peter Jäger and Eric A. Soder (from Tübingen, we had taken some Swabian potato salad and my handmade Maultaschen with us the evening before), an evening full of planning and a strategy workshop for the tasks and goals of the next year began. Without question, this evening was also spent discussing, developing, laughing and working creatively until late into the night between Flensburger Pils, Swiss mountain beer and wine in attractive red and light yellow shades.
After breakfast, we continued on Saturday to swissQprint, where we had the opportunity to learn more about the status quo of large format digital printing from association member Guy Flüeli, as well as visit the production facilities and conduct print tests on the Karibu and other SwissQPrint presses.
On Saturday, we were also joined by other members of the association: Michael Jakobi from MatchMyColor, Martin Spaar from Schweizer Publisher, Matteo Baschera from Galledia, Jan Seguda from ColorGATE and software developer Kai-Uwe Behrmann from Chemnitz. After a joint lunch, the general meeting started in the SwissQPrint meeting room, which we thankfully were able to use.
After a review of the busy year 2018/19 with the development of the CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL, the DIN SPEC 16699 Open Colour Communication, numerous lecture activities and trade fair visits, great attention was paid particularly to the potential work activities in the next year, where responsibilities could already be assigned to individual members or working groups.
At this point I would like to warmly advertise once again for membership and cooperation in the association freieFarbe e.V.: Whoever can experience how colleagues from quite different branches and disciplines can complement and inspire each other for the topic of free colour, how ideas spark and concepts take shape in a common dialogue, knows: The impulses, ideas and contacts of freieFarbe do not only mean voluntary work for the good cause and the good idea, but also knowledge, broadening of horizons, cooperation, enrichment. Take part, support, participate, profit from the common know-how and the common ideas. The association is happy about every support.
After the club meeting, we left the Rhine Valley with Martin Spaar and Kai-Uwe Behrmann and headed back to the mountains, where after a short evening hike we enjoyed an excellent porcini mushroom risotto with salad for dinner, prepared by Eric Soder and Peter Jäger. Peter had collected and dried the porcini mushrooms himself in the mountains shortly before, an unforgettable culinary experience!
After another creative night between flens, wine, open source, spherical head meters, colour selectors, CxF and more, we went to bed. The next morning, after an extensive breakfast and cleaning the house, we started for a short mountain tour. While Matthias Betz photographed a gigapixel panorama on one side of the mountain saddle with a view of the Säntis, the rest of the group took a few meters of altitude on the other side before we got together again for a spontaneous short video shoot. “I’m at freieFarbe…” was the theme we chose. Granted: The sound quality could be better, the video quality could be better, but not the statements: We hit the nail on the head very well here: freieFarbe is important, for various reasons. And besides all the work, freieFarbe is also quite simply: “Simply cool,” in the words of Kai-Uwe Behrmann.
Around noon we started our journey back from the mountain: 3x to nearby Switzerland, 1x from Zurich by plane to Berlin and one car to Tübingen … from where Holger Everding and Kai-Uwe Behrmann continued by train and car to Oldenburg and Chemnitz …
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