Hello World!

Okay. Right now, Beyond Noise has its new - and first - home at BeyondNoise.net and a WordPress weblog running smoothly that will be published in English. English seams self-evident [for you] but published about what? Well. Beyond Noise is a part of eWerx!..communications° and will focus on online publishing, marketing, advertising and public relations. eWerx!.. was founded by me - that’s Gerrit Eicker - in 1998 when Gartentechnik.de went online…

Naming

The slogan of eWerx!.. was “beyond the noise” from its start, so naming the new site was easy by cutting the slogan to Beyond Noise: “Beyond Noise” is our self-conception regarding online publishing and all other things we’re doing. We believe in professional inquests and user generated content. And in both cases publishing has to be about quality, not quantity, about impact, not simply news. So it’s beyond noise and never on top of it or rudely louder.

The Griffin

The griffin as the legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle reflects this claim perfectly: Since the lion was considered the “King of the Beasts” and the eagle the “King of the Air”, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature: powerful and majestic because of its being not its potential of yelling or roaring. It’s about quality, not quantity, it’s simply Beyond Noise.

Start Up

Giving Beyond Noise the slogan “Online Publishing Since 1994″ might amaze you regarding the official start of eWerx!.. in 1998, not 1994: But unofficially I started online publishing back in 1994 privately and even the name “eWerx” with its slogan “beyond the noise” was born and published online in that year for the first time:

Diplomacy

1994 was my 2nd year of being “online”, meaning the internet and not the previous mailbox systems: It was the time when I discovered the possibility of playing Diplomacy - a famous board game - via email on a global scale and translated some instructions for the so called “judge system” into German and published them on the net. I wanted my friends to play by email as well, but they didn’t like to read any instructions in English: a simple reason for online publishing, wasn’t it? My first website “Diplomacy via eMail” [a last summarizing page is still online] became very popular among German diplomacy players and I became addicted to online publishing.

Bayern-Online.de

About 1995 a friend of mine started the Netz-Aktiv AG, an ICP for regional tourist information in Bavaria: the first portal was called “Bayreuth aktiv” and I did things like HTML coding, Perl scripting, copy writing, offline and online marketing for it. Today the core product is Bayern-online.de with Bayreuth still available at Bayreuth.Bayern-online.de. After many changes during the last years, the whole system will get another face lift, logo and slogan in the near future. I’m not in the operative business of the Netz-Aktiv AG since 1998 but I’m a shareholder and member of the supervisory board since then.

Eicker Land- und Gartentechnik

In 1996 I brought my dads business online: It was a 5 pages website at this time [home, agricultural engines, outdoor power equipment, parts and services, contact] … and it wasn’t very effective either. The net was discussed at the German stock exchange, but not among the Germans who still preferred their newspapers, radio and television stations. And of course: 5 pages with static content weren’t very impressive as well. Today you’ll find his website at eicker.info with a complete presentation of products and services, fresh news and more. And yes: the current site is effective.

Gartentechnik.de

In 1998 Gartentechnik.de [German for outdoor power equipment] went online: Planned as an add-on service for my dads customers, it became independent very quickly and the leading gardening and plants related portal in Germany and beyond. Started as a directory of garden and flora links it developed to the primary news and resources site in German during the last years with nearly 200K visitors a month in 2005. The current record were 348,49o visitors in March 2006: that were 18 times more than during the whole year of 1998.

//Gartentechnik.com

At the gafa 2002 - the world’s leading trade fair for the garden and leisure market - //Gartentechnik.com was introduced by Martin Seibert and me to merchants of outdoor power equipment: //Gartentechnik.com offers online technologies, online marketing and editorial services as an ASP and supervises more than 1oo websites of German “Motoristen” today. And of course: my dad’s website is one of them. The //Gartentechnik.communications GmbH is an affiliated company owned and run equitable by //Seibert/Media GmbH and me. //Seibert/Media provides the online technologies, while we are providing the online marketing via Gartentechnik.de. //Gartentechnik.com itself focuses on data integration and services.

Gardora

“Garten, Pflanzen, Gartentechnik.de” is the complete name of Gartentechnik.de but its limited to a German auditorium: “Garden, plants, outdoor power equipment” would be its direct translation into English, but as you can see it’s far too long. It took quite a while to find a name that’s international, with free domain names etc. But at last we did it: “Gardora” is a merger of “Garden and Flora“. You’ll be able to track the evolution of a new garden and flora related news and resources portal within the next months and years. Right now you can get a first image of it at: Gardora.net | The Garden and Flora Network

Beyond

While preparing the start of Gardora, BeyondNoise.net will be my personal reference and it’ll be my primary weblog in future: I’ve started blogging back in 2004 at eWerx.com/news with the question if and how weblogs will change corporate communications. I’m sure that it changed CC already - especially public relations, marketing and knowledge management - and that there’ll be even more relevant changes in future through Web 2.0 and beyond. Right now, I hope that my “short” curriculum vitae on online activities wasn’t too boring and that you’ll receive my webfeed or newsletter to simplify our future communications and networking.