I like 'retrofut' stuff. The combination of future elements such as digital technology and high tech materials, together with 'analogue' look&feel appeals a lot to me. In the Leica M8 this combination has come together, but also in the Koyono Blackcoat.
Jay Yoo of Koyono asked me to become one of their ambassadors
As ambassador I will of course be wearing the Blackcoat, but I will also show it at Brightlive. So if you want to have a look, feel and hear, come and see me tomorrow.

A busy day today crisscrossing through The Netherlands. I promised Roderick to take a picture of the pyramid of Austerlitz as we will go to Egypt end of December and I told him about this Dutch pyramid. Eckart's place is just around the corner so easy to combine. Following that it was of to The Hague for a Technostarter meeting in the Caballero Factory. Finally a Picnic board meeting at De Waag....

Meeting up again with the partners that helped to create the success of Picnic06 was great. Not only reflection on this year, but also looking forward to Picnic07. The event took place in the new creative hotspot in Amsterdam, De Zwijger.

Over 50,000 views of my pictures at Flickr within 24 months.....

On our final day in Sweden we spent quite a lot of time outdoors. As we are real city people the vast nature in Sweden always gets to us :)
We had a great lunch with the families after a nice walk.

The full picture set of the visit can be found here.

After Sime, Caroline and Roderick came and joined me here in Stockholm where we are having a great weekend with friends. The darkness here is still something quite different to Amsterdam though....

The second day of Sime 06 was very good indeed. Yesterday evening at Ola's party I met a number of familiar and new people in a very relaxed atmosphere, and that goes for the entire event. Relaxed but focussed on the opportunities that web2.0 and creativity offer. The full set of pictures can be found here.

It is nice being back in Stockholm again, it has been a little while. Sime is a very interesting conference discussing and displaying the debate in the development of media. The focus is on what is happening in the Nordics, but with a wide range of international speakers, such as Loic LeMeur, who had a terrific week for the airline industry... Unfortunately he has to fly out again tomorrow for his launch in Russia, but we will see each other again in a few weeks at Leweb3 in Paris.

The big debate, the final push for voters took place today in the House of Parliament. Interesting, amusing, embarrassing and so fort. In short an interesting evening.
The full set can be found here.

I am (becoming?) of the web2.0 photographers it seems :) Today I had a shoot with the white suit clad men of Fleck. During their launch last weekend at the Techcrunch party of Michael Arrington in New York they gave pro-accounts to people who signed their suits....

The full set can be found here.

Pim Slager of Link invited me to one of his activities, Het land van Sint. We took niece Gina with us and the kids had a great time indeed.

Now that Fleck has launched, everybody can see what it is all about. Boris and his crew had a great stunt to launch Fleck at Techcrunch party in New-York.

All the best guys, you have the attention, now let it roll...

I went to my province of origin Brabant today. I gave a presentation on the influence of new media on media, technology and communication for E-provinces. Nice to be back in my province of birth and to share of what is keeping me busy with an interested audience...

The nice thing with Creative Capital Amsterdam is that one easily bumps into friends making show reels.....

My good friend Meus was one of the people that made the Flying Dutchmen
happen. A very interesting conference geared towards stimulation of Beta science and education. The full picture set of the event can be found here.

Moving from one appointment to another, I bumped into (drove by) Hans Eagle de Wit, the famous Phlog photographer.

Our City Chat got recorded in a social media/geotagging way....

I met up with Yme Bosma, the man from Eccky to discuss Leweb3. He will be joining too and had some interesting ideas to share.

I am part of a Beta test. Whilst I believe we all live in permanent beta tests nowadays and I never sign NDA's, this time it is different as it is my friend Boris who asked me.

He also tells me what I can blog about:

- The fact that I am in the Fleck exclusive beta
- That Fleck works/doesn't work for me
- My general opinion about Fleck (It sucks/could be better/is cool!")
- That it launches on november 16th

Keep you posted and good luck to all the Fleckers.

I had a meeting with Adriaan today to discuss the progress on some great design work he is doing for me. Of course we took the opportunity to do a photoshoot at NDSM, the new venue for the creative industries in Amsterdam. Adriaan has joined the reporter brigade at Skoeps the citizens reporters online news magazine. To enhance the quality of the material the reporters send in, they get a Nokia mobile, a presscard and much more. Interesting development.

I also bumped into Bill Liao who also sports a Leica M8 and posts his pictures on Flickr. Whilst we both had our M8's there, we did not take pictures of each other....

Playing soccer in the Vondelpark on a Sunday morning is great for the kids and the parents. In between rain showers a couple of matches were played, whilst the parents had time for coffee and sharing the weeks developments.

St Maarten is nice and it comes with a light walk through the Vondelpark. Roderick had his best friends for dinner and together with them we did the walk and they sang at doors and got candy in return...

The first of Roderick.... Outdoor with the fast 35mm. Wow I am happy with the possibilities. (I warned about pictures that are mainly of interest to the shooter would be appearing...)

The first picture with my new m8 Many more will follow, maybe not all that interesting for the viewer, but definitely interesting to the shooter... (a high res version can be found here)

I have two lenses that come with the body. A fast 35mm not yet coded and the 28mm with coding.

It has arrived the long awaited Leica M8
Being one of the first to receive one, might mean that some bleeding edge issues might be part of the joy. The Leica statement that the investment in the M8 will be assured, is reassuring indeed. Therefore I was willing to share the joy of the bleeding edge, that message combined with the great service of Foto Nivo here in Amsterdam.

The battery is charging and I will be snapping away later on today...

It had been quite a while since I went to an InterimIC meeting. I had been quite busy and the Thursday sessions did find some difficulties in my itinerary. Also today I had to leave early to join a strategy workshop at RAI. Next time I will try to be there for dinner too. It won't be next time as I will be at Sime in Stockholm...

It was nice to see Krijn again, now with his black Macbook. For no obvious reason he seems to prefer running xp rather than OSX. One of the downsides then is that you can not use the nifty little Apple remote...

Whilst I am eagerly awaiting the new Leica M8, stories about black and purple mashups appear. So when I see purple pillows I wonder.....

Following the Emerce posting yesterday a lively debate started. Today a second related article discusses the state of Web 2.0 investments in particular. Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten correctly points out that many of the once (prohibitive) cost have come done immensely in the last 10 years to start a consumer oriented internet activity. The cost and availability of human capital is of course another element in to consider....

Today an interview with two Private Equity companies appeared in Emerce where I was one of the interviewed on behalf of DCIF. The topic is the international competitive position for start ups in Web 2.0.
Whereas the Dutch have many advantages (language skills, international orientation, trade mentality, on lineness,...) there are some inherent drawbacks too such as a relatively small home market and small number of entrepreneurs. Interesting read (Dutch only).

Next to Cross Media Week and the PICNIC event, there are other interesting events too of course. I would like to share two events in particular that will take place the coming months and that I will visit.

On December 11 and 12 LeWeb3 will take place in Paris. Leweb3 is the third instalment of ‘Les Blogs’ a major new media event.

I am one of the Advisory Board members of Leweb3 and will moderate the session creating and bridging communities on the opening morning.

The second event I would like to mention is SIME, the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event, celebrates its 10 year anniversary this year. Just as previous years SIME gathers the most important companies and the most exciting speakers during a two-day conference that ends with the “Academy Awards of the Internet”, the official awards ceremony at Berns in Stockholm.

Maybe I'll meet you in Paris or Stockholm, please drop me an e-mail if you want to meet up.

the greatest gift for a father is a gift for his son, the son normally agrees to this rule....

Post CS is a very active place for new media, trotting along on the Vespa it might be a location I will visit more often to see whether investment opportunities might materialise.

Hypemachine is defenitely a nice surround to see what is happening to sound and sharing. Next week at the iPan meeting we will hear more on the topic, so I might wear the t-shirt....