Again, we are in the process of optimizing our website. Since yesterday we are online with the new home page. To our opinion it is much clearer than before. Please, give us your thoughts and comments, because as you know one gets blinded by routine working so close and so long with the same topic.

Seit einem Jahr betreut Frank Vytrisal unsere Biest-Athleten und ist selbst überzeugter Verfechter einer Stabilisierung des Immunsystems durch Biestmilch.

Zur Zeit befinde ich mich in der instensiven Vorbereitungsphase auf die Frankfurter Sparkasse IRONMAN European Championship. Das bedeudet für mich nicht nur hohen Trainingsumfang realisieren, das habe ich in den vorangegangenen Trainingslagern schon zu Genüge getan. Jetzt werden die Einheiten mit Wettkampfintensitäten “gewürzt”. Leider interessiert das mein kleiner Junior nicht im geringsten. Er weckt mich zwei bis dreimal pro Nacht . Das Aufstehen am morgen fällt mir dann manchmal ganz schön schwer. So beginne ich den Tag mit meinem morgendlichen Ritual. Ich gönne mir einen “Biest-Booster” und Blättere kurz durch die Zeitung. Schon wenige Augenblicke später freue ich mich auf die nächste harte Trainingseinheit . Die Müdigkeit ist einfach weggeblasen. Das kann echt süchtig machen …

Most of last week we spent reassessing and discussing an optimization of our biestmilch.com website. With its plenty of content it reminds me of a monster that needs taming again and again. Notions were swaying from functionality at the one far end to beauty and elegance of pure logic on the other. We tried to find our way trough, and we decided to disclose the Pandora box again, and our Biest Magazine definitely had transformed into very tightly closed box. Google analytics gave us the undeniable proof. To make a long story short, I currently start re-doing the thing again, or better re-adjust it with this feeling that it is to the better and that it is necessary to do so, and that it will be preliminary again. Some weeks ago I seemed happy with what I just had got. My view on my own stuff changes fast, keeps me moving all the time . Off we go, let’s see what the result is going to be.

I just found a blog post that encourages me to go ahead and to come out with a beta-version of the site very very soon. As my post title already indicates, it is about the »elegance of imperfection«. David Sherwin wrote this post in which he introduces the paradigm for pursuing elegance through imperfection by referring to the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi.

To give you an idea of what he means, here is an example: A Zen master is staying with a priest at a temple close to Kyoto. The priest is having guests over that evening, and he has spent much of the day in the garden—shaping the moss, plucking weeds, and gathering up the leaves in tidy arrangements, all in order to achieve the state of perfection the temple builders had originally designed.

“Isn’t it beautiful,” the priest asked the master…

The master nodded. “Yes…your garden is beautiful; but there is something missing…”

The old gentleman walked slowly to a tree growing in the center of a harmonious rock and moss combination. It was autumn and the leaves were dying. All the master had to do was shake the tree a little and the garden was full of leaves again, spread out in haphazard patterns.

“That’s what it needed,” the master said.

The simplicity of wabi-sabi is best described as the state of grace arrived at by a sober, modest, heartfelt intelligence. The main strategy of this intelligence is economy of means. Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered, but don’t sterilize. (Things that are wabi-sabi are emotionally warm, never cold.) Usually this implies a limited palette of materials. It also means keeping conspicuous features to a minimum. But it doesn’t mean removing the invisible connective tissue that somehow binds the elements into a meaningful whole.

During the next 2 days our team is going to meet for intense discussions about further actions taken in the biestmilch realm. I think all of you who come to this meeting should listen to Seth. He could inpsire our gathering. Since long I have this imagination that biestmilch is more than a substance but an idea that makes it prone to create a tribe/a movement. For this reason and because of the fact that times have changed through mass media and the internet biestmilch has got the possibility, the chance to spread.
Please guys, beside producing nice high-quality stuff (which I agree is important too), we have to be much more concerned about how to get connected. Products are of course essential and necessary, but products for me are not only the biestmilch articles like chewies, caps or boosters, but everything else we do create, products don’t mean hardware only, the term product also applies to ideas, text, photos, videos, talks etc. All together they build an organism that tells the story, they have to be intensely connected and have to be connectors… to be able to connect with others, be it human or non-human. We have to find our tribe!

Seth Godin (born July 10, 1960) is an American author of business books and a popular speaker with appearances at Google, TED and a number of charities. (more…)