It is always fascinating to see start ups working hard for their launches. The team behind Realmee.com is no exception and they are focusing hard to meet their dealines...

A fantastic afternoon at the Staatscircus with Oleg Popov in The Hague with the kids, the full set here, and if you want to see a great circus, you can go until early January.

Roderick got the inspiration for conducting from famous Israeli conductor Itay Talgam at Mastermundo. Now with WII music, there are no limits to free flowing classical music...

It is always great to visit our stations such as KinkFM. Yesterday we had new staff joining us and that is always a good moment to share what we are doing and meeting up with some of the DJ's....

LeWeb08 is over... I am back in Amsterdam… Having had some time to reflect during the journey home, I thought back at LesBlogs were it all started. A fascinating small get-together with 200 people from all over the world…. No distinction between rock-stars and others, all digital pioneers willing to share, meet each other, work on ideas and full of entrepreneurship.

In this years edition Loïc and Geraldine and their team have done a fantastic job again. A programme with speakers that are industry changers, 1500 people to create a vibe second to none, themes that will be on the agenda for the next years to come, easy access to everybody at anytime. What more would you like to have?

Reflecting it appears that the foundation is still there that started at LesBlogs and Loïc has created a scalable format that brings together a lot of good things. In all fast growing environments the pace will bring some side effects, but I believe it is better to enjoy what is being achieved over focussing on small side issues. If the team keeps going at it at this pace, LeWeb will become the institution it deserves to be.

Finally it was wonderful to see Loïc and Geraldine enjoying themselves so much!

The pictures are here.

Great and interesting Leweb08 just behind me. Pictures will follow soon, so watch this space... Some Dutch digital pioneers already added. Want to know what Anina is doing here? Follow Dutch cowboys...

Piet Hoffman, the driving force behind Veronica Story (the digital history of Veronica) had a terrible accident a few weeks ago. We are very happy he is recovering again fast and we hope to have him back as soon as possible. Today we gave him a special Sinterklaas gift, still secret for the rest of the world and only 100 will be issued, each with a signed certificate...

Massive open source project... the result will not be published soon as I gather...

Tonight I moderated a panel at IPAN with the full range of venture funding available to Dutch start ups and fast growers. From seed and startup capital (DCIF and Identity ) to growth capital (Solid Ventures, Prime Technology Ventures en Endeit) finishing off with transaction services (Fortis corporate finance).

The outlook for 2009 is not good, the markets will be down for a time to come, but the right companies will be able to get money...

Gray and cold weather, good for tonality and kids for a day at the beach

Great to see young talent audition for the musical school Broadway Academy. Such energy and drive to follow up on a dream...

We had a number of start up pitches today at our DCIF investment committee meeting at Ilsemedia in Amsterdam. A good number of Dutch digital pioneers gathered for the session and some of them might receive funding probably pretty soon...

A great remembrance night with Marc Geerards' movie Paradiso Stills. Back to the early 80's with punks and more. Most of them pushing 50 now, but energetic as ever tonight...Diana Ozon, one of the icons of those days opened the film and the following party

Great to see the V-Academy students working on location...

UPC is promoting its high speed internet offering ('Fiber Power') in Amsterdam. I must admit I am a happy man since I have this over 100 MB download speed again for the first time since 2001 when I lived in Stockholm. UPC even offers a speedtest meter at their website to show it off....
As a digital media mass consumer, the combination they offer of HD content, DVR , high speed internet access and cheap telephony is ideal. I am wondering to see what the competition from KPN and the other service providers will bring....But important for this ultimate digital utility is that is has all the quality aspects of a good utility... as my Tele2 downtime for two weeks experience learned me....

Dutch digital pioneer Roeland Stekelenburg won the ABNAMRO new media award today for his groundbreaking work at the public broadcaster. FD media group was a near second...

Today I was one of the people presenting a keynote at the conference "onder de knop" (under the button) a long running event for the Dutch media sector. Next to some interesting new media and technology by some Dutch Digital Pioneers, the overall theme was weathering the current recession and how to do so. I shared our pioneering approach to that and highlighted the areas where we believe a difference will be made.

Incredible hoopla around 'For the love of God' in the Rijksmuseum. Roderick was very keen to see the diamond studded skull... Unfortunately the line in front of the ticket office was way to long...

Tonight we met with the former IPAN board to have a 'thank you dinner' with these Dutch digital pioneers who have helped to move the interactive creative industry further. Next to some great food and drinks, we had many nice anecdotes about the good old times of the post web1.0 bubble...On December 2 we will have a very interesting event with IPAN specially focused on financing in difficult times with an exquiste group of private equity players...

A fantastic evening rewinding the 80's with Peter Hook. Third time I saw him play and the music and his bass playing still giving me the shivers....He also did a DJ set following the concert. The full set is here

Another interesting evening at Foam with Bruce Gilden of Magnum. His famous quote: "I'm known for taking pictures very close, and the older I get, the closer I get." is very applicable to great photography I think...

Meeting up with interesting entrepreneurs at Mediaguild. Pakhuis De Zwijger is one of the hotspots in Amsterdam for the creative industries.

It is always nice to visit your investments, but with Kalkmann Audio, it is a pleasure to my ears too... This amazing Dutch audio pioneering company marvels at sound...

A very interesting evening at IPAN discussing how to win a Cyber Lion in Cannes. The highest creative on-line award. We had a great panel of winners and jury members, that by default got included in the Dutch digital pioneers book...

A great afternoon and evening at Momo Amsterdam. Lots of interesting presentations and discussions, many new Dutch Digital Pioneers added and live witness of a physical flamewar between Erwin Blom and Vincent Everts...

An evening at the Amsterdam Concert building, combining great music by Jorge Luis Prats and meeting with some Dutch Digital Pioneers. Very inspiring indeed.

The future was now as we had Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic for dinner. The evening was very interesting but so was the day as I introduced Roderick into science fiction. He got Bruce and Jasmina some really nice wooden robots...

Halloween!

Meeting up with another Dutch digital music pioneer, Chris Bol from Cloudspeakers. The guys are creating some good traction indeed...

Nice and busy day. Among others I was one of the presenters on the cross media day arranged by new TV production company Quadia. Ronnie Overgoor did his usual snazzy and driven moderation.... Met with lots of advertisers experimenting with new media and video formats... Also added another four Pioneers....

Great to meet up with old friends and young talented Dutch Digital Pioneers. Also Twitter is becoming a very useful tool for me, both for spreading good news as well as to keep posted on developments. I'll be shooting coming Monday at Momo for DDP.

Busy day today, adding people to my Twitter account, making my initial posts, meeting up with the IPAN advisory board for '09 strategy and making pictures for the Dutch Digital Pioneers.

Life to the max

It had been many years since my last trip to Berlin. This time I visited this great city together with a number of Dutch Digital Pioneers to share our experiences in growing the Dutch Creative Industries. My session was about venture capital.
Berlin is a definite place I will try to return to in the near future as it is a fascinating city indeed. The full set can be found here.

Together with Wijnand Jongen (pictured), David Vink, Allain Silbernberg and chairman Egbert Jan van Bel I am in the jury of the crossmedia retail price. Today we had the final presentations of the three nominees for the price: Hema, D-reizen and Selexyz. On November 5 you will find out who won.... the pictures of today are here

Both innovation, pioneering and working with start ups and fast growing companies in media and technology and photography are my passions. That combined with the fact that many people claim to have little visibility on Dutch Digital Pioneers who are creating our digital future, I took the decision to combine my passions in a photobook to be called: Dutch Digital Pioneers Volume I. Today I had Michiel Frackers in front of the lens...

I will create an online picture gallery only version here and as time goes by, I will make a digital and print book from it, hopefully before summer next year....No promises, it is a hobby.... If you want to be included, let me know...

The American Book Center in Amsterdam has very often interesting activities around: books.
Today they had the translator of the famous Dutch children's book of Jip & Janneke read from the stories in Dutch and English...

With the financial markets in great turmoil the week became a roller coaster... the little boys lucky did not get any of it and Roderick showed his friend all the greatness of Youtube on the iPhone...Life can be full of great stuff when you are seven....

Very inspiring days at Stream08 in Athens last few days. A worldwide gathering of industry leaders and entrepreneurs from media, technology and finance. Discussing the challenges of the current economic climate, the opportunities arising from new media and new technology and creativity...The full set can be found here.

A special evening tonight meeting up with the widow of famous Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken. She shared many highlights of his work and insights into his thinking and working. Another stimulating evening with Foam Fund....

I am very spoiled with events and have seen my fair bit of conferences... I am not very easily surprised in this respect. Kinnernet in Israel has been one of the highlights of recent years in the 'different' category. Today I can add a new gem: Mastermundo. Very well done, special event with great speakers such as Werner Vogels, Itay Talgam, Ethan Zuckerman, Jeroen van Erp, Fons Schiedon and my good friend Laurent Haug. Adding good and interesting speakers together is not easy, but can be done. What the team behind Mastermundo did though was 'mash it up' with silentdisco set up, orange stewardesses, a train trip to The Hague and many more things. Truely great. Roderick enjoyed it a lot too. The full set of pictures can be found here

Beautiful weather made another great and final day of PICNIC'08....

My first day at PICNIC lots of activity...the full set is here

The digital media circus is in town... Some very exciting events I am participating in such as the Connected Urban Development Summit and PICNIC. My little boy is becoming a digital media nomad too by the way, with his own iPhone...

A car free Sunday in Amsterdam and therefore lots of car(e) free activities...

You need less and less people to populate a picture with gadgets... A great Emerce Eday today with top speakers such as Jeff Howe, Fake Steve Jobs and Lawrence Lessig. Also a very special intimate IPAN session with Jeff Howe to get to really understand about crowdsourcing. The full Eday set is here

Every third Tuesday in September, the new plans for the coming year of the Dutch Government are released in a ceremony called Prinsjesdag. I did not take my Leica, so instead I shot with my iPhone. Tja...

The huge huge content creation conference exhibition IBC is in town again. Halls and halls in the RAI conference centre with the latest and greatest...

With the sun, lots of activity comes out in the Vondelpark...Amsterdam is always full of entertainment...

Creating sound carriers that recreate the original sounds has been on the agenda since the beginning. Even now we are still capable of building better and better audio systems so we can enjoy our music and more. Today we announced our investment in Kalkmann Audio, a Dutch company bringing patented quality a step further... We did this with our investment partner BOM.

By the way Wheniswhat.com just opened up for the world....