Dear All,

as promised I would like to give you insight into the surprises that what if? had in store for us and especially me.

1. It took me completely by surprise how scary I would find it to post my first blog post.
(I survived it and I survived the following 36 post blogs to come).

2. I could not have guessed how happy I would be when the first comment came in… (Thank you Charlotte from life&ink)

3. …and the first contribution arrived. Thank you Sylvia for answering our question Who are you this spring?

4. We immensely enjoyed the scoring of our video portraits on our YouTube channel of what-ifblog.net. The contributors were: Steffen Jurkat, Marco Pietroluongo, Aleksandar Vejnovic, Christian Schwind, Jan Longerich, Jorne Marc Siebrand, Maro Ivanova, Moritz Klug

6. Clio joined our team in August and surprised all of us with her enthusiasm and engagement. None of the arts team could have imagined before that we would get so many contributions at such an early point to be able to actually work with them. I am not sure we could have done it without you, Clio. A big thank you to the community for joining us in the challenge about dreams and visions. This is what we created with it:

What if we had wings? Excerpt from a live-performance in Vienna featuring dreams and visions contributed by the community.

7. Another unexpected turn: as artists we are used to work on our own, maybe collaborate in a small group. All of a sudden the community became part of our group and joined in in our artwork. Some of us felt vulnerable when opening up to you, giving insight in our process of making art and when talking publicly about our creative thinking. Instead of being a blog challenge for the what if? community, it turned out to be a challenge for us.

8. Sometimes I think the project could be or should be much bigger and join people in direct conversation. I would love it if there were a forum, but I don’t know how to do it. Maybe somebody would like to set something up? Let us know. Another thought… Anybody out there who could teach me how to write beats? (This an example of what we could use the forum for).

9. Clio still waits for me to surprise her with a what if? SoundCloud. Maybe in November? to get us all to compose winter remixes???

10. I was quite sure that the community would stay an anonymous community for me. As we all know we are talking about connecting via social media. Friends are not friends in social media, are they? Well, here we are: If I’ll ever travel to Armenia, I really want to meet Anahit Mughnetsyan, who wrote a guest post about her country and how it shaped her identity.

I would like to get to know Sylvia Hinz from Berlin, who opened the Facebook group women creators. Sylvia and her partner John Strieder encourage women to take with both hands what life offers. And who is Laura Feathers from New York? If you ever happen to come to Vienna, Laura, let’s have a coffee together. Anahit, Laura, Sylvia and John stand for the people who joined us and whom I would love to meet at some point. Thank you for your steady support.

Last but not least, I would have never thought what if? would be so much work. It’s worth it. Whoever gets in touch with us makes it worth it.

Thank you!

Featured image: shelfie by Cee Jay, a submission for our call “Contagious Creativity”