The Tellerrandomizer

Every now and then, I pick up something that wasn’t planned for beyond tellerrand, wasn’t on any roadmap and ends up being one of the most memorable parts of the event. This year, next to live phone calls on stage with past speakers and long-time partners, that something is the Tellerrandomizer by Sascha Bregenhorn.

Sascha has been coming to beyond tellerrand for 15 years. Fifteen! That alone is a thing worth pausing on for a second, because it means he’s been part of this little adventure of mine since the very beginning. After last year’s Düsseldorf event he posted something on Instagram — a small offshoot of his side project Artifactor, inspired by Gavin Strange’s talk that year. I saw it, and at some point I just sent him an email: "Hey, wouldn’t you like to do something for my event?”

Turns out he would.

Graphic for speaker Marjan van Aubel on a bright green background with white flowing line art and small graphic elements. The name ‘Marjan van Aubel’ appears at the top in scattered, mixed-case typography. A black-and-white photo, sliced into vertical strips, shows a woman with long hair speaking on stage in front of an audience. A quote in a black box reads: ‘My aim is to change the narrative of solar energy.’ The bottom text reads ‘solar futures’ along with ‘Düsseldorf 2026’ and a note indicating the speaker is from Italy.

What the Tellerrandomizer Actually Is

If you’ve been to beyond tellerrand before, you’ll know about the lovely Audio-Sketch-Notes that wonderful project where Tobi Lessnow sits on stage with his funky setup, records the speakers, and remixes his tracks live using speech samples from the talk that just happened. Tobi started this in 2013 for beyond tellerrand and it is part of it. A bit unusual, a bit unexpected and it adds to the overall energy that exists in the room.

The Tellerrandomizer is, in Sascha’s own words, the ”visual counterpart to that”.

During each talk, photos are taken and quotes are captured. Everything is then assembled in Kirby together with information about the speaker and the session. Afterwards, the result is shown as a presentation that is deliberately chaotic, visually loud, and full of personality. The drawn lines and the wild typography in the names are a nod to the outstanding 2026 CI by Brendan Dawes, or, as Sascha calls him, The Master of Generative Data Art. ;)

Graphic for speaker James Victore on a vivid blue background with white swirling line art. The name ‘James Victore’ appears in the top left in scattered, playful typography. A black-and-white photo collage shows the soles of bare feet, fragmented across horizontal black bars. A quote in a black box reads: ‘I like playing. I’m trying to make myself laugh.’ Small text indicates ‘From Austin, USA’ and ‘Create, create, create!’

It’s called the Tellerrandomizer because almost everything in the presentation is driven by random values. Behind the scenes there’s a whole pool of textures, graphics, masks and fonts. Their styling is controlled, very simply, by php rand(). As Sascha says: as simple as it is effective.

I totally love that. It’s the kind of project that looks elaborate and feels custom-made, but is really just one person, an idea and the discipline to keep it simple.

A Small Note about Kirby

Sascha built the Tellerrandomizer in Kirby and as he himself puts it, the Kirby community and beyond tellerrand have been linked for years. Bastian and the Kirby crowd have been a part of btconf for almost as long as bt has existed and this website (as everything that I create in the web these days) runs on Kirby also. Which makes all of this even more “full circle”.

There’s also a very practical reason Kirby was the right choice for Sascha. He was capturing photos and quotes live, in the room, on his phone. The Kirby Panel works flawlessly on a smartphone, which made the whole live-collection workflow possible in the first place.

Why This Means a Lot to Me Personally

There’s a thing I keep saying to people, and I’ll say it again here: support the small events. Support the people who put themselves out there with side projects, with little Instagram posts about something they built on a weekend, with ideas that maybe aren’t fully formed yet. You never know what comes from it.

Graphic for speaker Lauren Celenza on a turquoise blue background with white orbital line art and black ink splatters. The name ‘Lauren Celenza’ appears in the top left in irregular, mixed-case typography. A fragmented black-and-white photo shows a woman with long hair speaking on stage, holding a microphone. A quote in a black box reads: ‘What gets built shapes us.’ The talk title at the bottom reads ‘Living Through An AI Takeover Without Losing Your Soul’ with a note ‘From Seattle, USA.’

In Sascha’s case, a single Instagram post that I had seen after my event turned into a collaboration. That collaboration turned into the Tellerrandomizer. And the Tellerrandomizer turned into one of the details of this year’s event. Something attendees genuinely stopped to look at, smile about and tell me that they really liked it.

That’s exactly the kind of thing beyond tellerrand is built on. Not big budgets, not big agencies. People. Side projects. Trust.

So, thank you, Sascha. For 15 years of showing up. For building something beautiful out of an offhand email and a meeting over a coffee in Düsseldorf. For trusting that our small project would turn into something cool and meaningful.

And to everyone reading this: go check out Sascha’s write-up of the project on n2.studio and follow his work in general. He’s the kind of person who quietly makes things better and those are the people we should be paying attention to.