Post-something and pre-something else

Since the fourth of this month, Third Wave has officially been in business for over six months. It’s probably a statement in itself that this review of the first half year is being posted almost a month later.

The title for this blog post is a quote by Benjamin H. Bratton. It’s from his Postpolis! LA talk. Somehow those few words cover exactly the situation in which Third Wave is right now and – if all goes well – will always be. If you have been following us for a while, you already know that we have always struggled with communicating what exactly it is that we do. That, of course, is the malice that comes with the luxury of not being one thing. We certainly aren’t, and we’re perfectly fine with that, too!

In the first six month, we had 20 different clients and 27 different projects in five different countries and on two continents. Our client roaster is a diverse as we hoped it to be. Agencies, publishers, conference organizers, car manufacturers, startups. Just as diverse was the work we’ve been hired for. Sometimes we’ve been experts who sit in on meetings and function as sparring partners, other times we’ve been classic strategists, social media guys, speakers, event consultants, curators and sometimes we’ve headed the pitch team of an agency.

In all those jobs, there is a common denominator: we’re good in what we do because we are not a single purpose agency with a clear focus. Our strength comes from looking deeper and broader, from connecting the dots or – as we like to call it – from pattern recognition.

All of that means quite a bit of traveling: On average, over the first six months each of us took 22 trips to 14 different cities. At least that’s what our Dopplr accounts tell us. They also remind us that all this city hopping leaves a certain mark on our environment. Our average carbon dioxide emission after six months was at about 3000kg.

With all that, we also attempted (and succeeded) to create a big conference about the future of cities. Which is really quite amazing, given that it took up roughly 40% of our total working hours during our starting up phase. Obviously, we regret nothing. To create an event of this magnitude and actually succeeding with almost everything we wanted to accomplish gave us not only self-confidence. We don’t mind the reputation boost either. Currently, we aren’t promising anything, but you should watch this space closely if you’re interested in our not-client related projects.

With that, there is not much else to say but: Thank you to everybody who supported us during this time. We got a lot of support and feedback before and while we founded our company and that hasn’t changed after the launch. As always, we are amazed and inspired by the people that surround us and couldn’t be more happy to have our base of operations in Berlin. Despite the fact that we actually spend fairly little time here.

Ad Astra and beyond.