Alright, I just gotta get something off my chest... the DevMeet was epic!! I really enjoyed it and the six hours trip there and seven hours trip back was definitely worth it BUT I know there were many who couldn't make it because they live too far away, so if you're one of them, please read the last paragraph of this journal, okay?

Berlin had the great pleasure of welcoming $Heidi and $spyed to it's gates, and since I wanted to be there I started my journey at 8am on Friday. I don't want to bore you with my travel stories, let's just say it all went well, I was not kidnapped and my heart only really stopped beating once I had the big luck of being able to stay with Jakob aka ^Grandchild who was an awesome host and offered me a place to sleep for two nights. (By the way, he's the GM for the Visualization Gallery. You know, when you listen to music on Winamp or Windows Media Player and your screen shows fancy colours and shapes moving accordingly to the music? That's what he does! Awesome, huh?) Thanks again, I had a great time! I need to play Settlers from Catan more often

On Saturday, Jakob and I went to the Brandenburger Gate and searched the crowd for... well, not familiar faces, but more like familiar shirts or clothes or bags with the dA logo on them. We eventually succeeded in finding Heidi and Angelo as well as =travisk and some other dA folks and soon a big crowd assembled. We started to split up into smaller groups, talking and getting to know each other. It was a bit weird at first because noone really knew what to say, especially cause I tend to a be a bit introverted. After a while, $spyed made us all sit down in front of the gate so we could take a group photo. That gathering of the deviants made the police a little nervous

After that we went over to the Tiergarten, Angelo held a little introductional speach and advised us to sit down in groups, according to what we enjoy doing most. "Who's a photographer? Who's a digital artist? Who's a traditional artist? Who's angry I didn't mention his profession?" So we started chatting, drawing, poking Angelo or whatever we found entertaining at the time. There were people climbing trees, cookie art, showing each other our artworks and lots of fun and laughter. Angelo took small groups of Deviants over to the lion statue but refused to climb and ride it and settled down on some bench instead, making us sit on the ground to his feet So we eagerly listened to all the things he had to say (did you know there are 10 Million ACTIVE Deviants on dA??) and found out some amazing stuff...

Attention, Spoilers ahead! Jump to the next section if you consider attending one of the following World Tour Meetings!

Okay, here's the gist of it: We'll get portfolio's for free! They'll be really cool and sleak, with up to four different folders, 18 Deviations per folder if I recall correctly and some nice fancy features. The best thing - it's not in any way linked to your dA Account so you can still keep posting crazy comments over here without future employers finding out You'll get your own URL, something like yourname. devartportfolio.com or something, but if you're a subscriber, you'll get yourname.com which is just awesome! You will have some basic options to change the layout, as light or dark portfolio, have the menu on the left or on top and simple things like that. You have something like a SitBack Feature where you can just slide through your images and the whole things is designed so that people who are interested in your art can get a quick overview of what you do. So that's portfolios, feel free to ask anything you want to know and I'll try to answer as best as I can

My favourite part: Groups!! They tried to implement anything that any group or club could ever ask for, so that - as Angelo put it - "anyone who owns a group right now will want to change to the new system!" And trust me, you will definitely want to change. But guess what, dA will do that for you automatically! There's lots of stuff about groups and I love every single bit of it, like the different levels of membership, the backroom (a private part for members only where you can - among other things - post pictures and have other members give feedback until the picture is good enough to be posted on the front page of the group), statistics (easy way to see what time members are contributing to the group or which jerk posted all those scraps in the gallery ) and so much other fancy stuff! I think you can pretty much adjust everything to your own needs. Again, ask if you want to know anything specific, it's really hard to figure out what you guys will want to know, I don't know how Angelo does it... but he's so enthusiastic, it's great to listen to him

The search system and front page is going to get a complete overhaul, you'll be able to search by print size, format, Artist's city, colour (how awesome is that!?!) and all other kinds of parameters. The search for journals and news articles will actually show you new entries first and the front page will be adjusted according to your likes. As in "show me stuff which is similar to the things I have faved!" and it will do just that. You can also do the opposite and search for things which deviate from what you usually look at (and find stuff you don't like... ) so it seems pretty cool!

All these features will be implemented during the next few weeks and months so it's pretty soon and they are working on a lot more things, too. The whole groups function has been developed for four years now and it's gonna be great. I think lots of dA staff pour their heart and soul into this website and I'm really glad I got the chance to meet two of them and see how excited they are about this page that I love so much

... on german. I was asked to make Heidi and Angelo say "Ich bin ein Berliner!" into a video camera (I am a Berliner = someone from Berlin). So I told Angelo about it and he looks at the camera and says "I am a sausage! Ich bin ein Berliner!" and we all started laughing. "A sausage??" - "Well isn't it a sausage? Like a Wiener and Frankfurter?" Well... kind of. It's actually a kind of donut without the hole in it, but with marmelade instead. And it's a shame you didn't try one, Angelo!! Here's what you missed: [link] Om nom nom Angelo insisted on a retake where he said "I am a donut!" instead. Please, whoever recorded this epic moment, post it somewhere and give me a link. And please include the sausage part

Since it began to rain, the last presentation was held directly under the Brandenburger Gate. $Heidi offered to answer any questions we might have but I was so overhelmed with all the information I had already gotten that I just couldn't think of anything to ask, or rather forgot all the things I had planned to ask beforehand We then tried to get somewhere warm, but we were still about 50 Deviants so finding a place which would hold us all (and serve us!!!) was pretty hard. We eventually ended up at the Sony Center (which has some pretty awesome architecture [link] ) where we got something to eat and drink. Unfortunately it was still cold. Very cold. Poor Heidi suffered even more than I did since she told me that the temperature we had in Berlin in June is as cold as it gets in LA in the middle of winter. Sooo I tried to cheer her up a little and gave her a present I had drawn Heidi and Angelo on Wednesday and Thursday and already presented Angelo with his portrait so he knew what was coming and eagerly waited for me to reach the last picture in the folder of drawings I had brought so he could shoot some photos of a surprised Heidi

We ended up in some warm and cozy mexican restaurant, our number reduced to something like 20-25 Deviants. It was really nice to get into some deeper conversations and get to know each other better. Anyone who left earlier, you definitely missed the good parts!! We learned some cool hand movements and beer coaster flipping and then Angelo got out the famours Wacom tablet. So =Azurelle and I did an awesome collaboration on it. By the way, if you haven't seen Anne's work before, go look now, she's awesome and I was thrilled to get to know her better. At least there was someone whose name I knew - I'm horrible at remembering names, that's why you'll hardly find any in this journal. I'm really sorry for that, if I respond to your comments and don't seem to know who you are, just give me a hint of some sorts. I already recognised my fangirl =Lisl89 Anyways, back to the Wacom Fun - it was awesome! Anne did a landscape and I did an appletree then she did a cloud and a sheep and I did a fish and in the end the sheep ended up as a cat hanging from the tree with the fish trying to eat it. It was very very psychodelic and I sincerely hope Angelo is going to post it somewhere so I can show off our awesome collab skillz!

So, I had a blast, I hope you guys did, too and for anyone who couldn't attend the meeting - go organise one yourself! I'm serious, if you want to meet local deviants, make a group as soon as the new feature is out and find people from your town to join the group so you can arrange a time and place to meet! It's definitely a lot of fun, you'll get to know some great people and will have an awesome time! If you don't know how to find people from your area, just go and type deviantart "residence: your town" into google. Or maaaaybe that's gonna be a part of the new search system too, though I can't remember Angelo saying something about that.

I hope you enjoyed reading my rambling, it's almost midnight over here and spending the whole day in the car (at least that's what it feels like) has made me dizzy. See I forgot a great part!! Just this morning, ~lilyan (who also slept at Jakob's place), =Aracos, his girlfriend and I went over to the Hotel where Heidi and Angelo stayed because Jakob had told me that there was this huuuuuge fish tank and since my boyfriend is into this whole fish tank thing and has addicted me a little bit, I just had to go there, just to get him mad (this is ours, by the way: [link] ) So we went there and this thing was amazing, it was a huuuge cylindrical salt water fish tank, I will post pictures as soon as I got some sleep. Maybe Lily got some better ones than me with my crappy digital camera (she did, see below ). So I was ready to just watch the tank and then hop of to where I would meet with my car sharing host, but Lily went to the reception and called Heidi and Angelo, so they came down for us! I got to see them again and we went to the elevators and watched the tank from up high and Lily got the elevator door smacked into her face because this stupid thing closes very fast... we got the front door guy to take a loopsided group photo and then I had to leave again, so that's pretty much - the end!

I'm really really tired now and looking forward to my bed. No offense Jakob, but sleeping in a sleeping bag on a camping mat is just not that comfortable Du weißt hoffentlich wie ich das meine, es war echt super von dir, dass ich bei dir pennen konnte und mein Angebot steht, okay?

Good night guys, and for all those who still have a Dev Meet to attend - have fun!!!