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....

Not that long ago planning was a complex matter, including all kinds of artifacts such as diaries, globes and phone call to understand when what would be where with whom of your friends and contacts. Now everything has gone digital and online. Today Duch Creative Industry Fund DCIF announced our investment in Wheniswhat.com a new online application to share what is happening when... they go live on September 10 so go back and check then or send them an email if you cannot wait...

We launched our cross media V-Academy today under guidance of Director Astrid Babonnick. 10 Students will be given the opportunity to create cross media formats together with KinkFM and independently. A great Advisory Board, tutors, equipment and support will be available for them. We are very keen to see what they come up with! The full set of pictures is here and at V-Academy you can follow their exploits...

Today we announce our investment from Dutch Creative Industry Fund in Realmee, an exciting application to manage you internet presence. Also a driven and strong team. We wish them all the traction they want in moving this forward!

Meeting up at the Buzz event for Picnic08 was great. Lots of people got together to prepare for one of the best creative gatherings. On the Clipper Amsterdam we went sailing in fairly bad weather with lots of wind and rain...and fun.. the full set is here

The great thing of new media tools becomes clear when using those yourself. I did an interview with Erwin Blom on the Dutch start up scene through Skype. You can find the interview here at Checklist. Innovation, pioneering, start ups are of great interest in my professional and private life. The interview is in Dutch only.
(Indeed, I could have done something on the background as it is a little messy (due to the fact that I had to get into the interview straight after arriving home...).)

Only a few years ago, this interview would have been complex and expensive to set up and conduct, now it is a few seconds of setting up the Skype connection and connecting some very affordable pieces of kit.
For example the sound is good though since I used the microphone that I bought for podcasting purposes around Blognomics; the Samson C01U. The camera is an iSight (discontinued unfortunately) connected to my home Mac Pro.

Erwin used a similar set-up too and it would be interesting to hear more about his software and editing software he used for the interview.

The Uitmarkt is a big happening in Amsterdam. All the new shows for theater, music and more are on display. It was a very hot day today and that meant staying in the burning sun for the musical lovers who wanted to be closest to the stage...The full set is here

Preparing for another investment.....

September 18 will bring the 4th episode of the very successful gathering Emerce E-day in Rotterdam. One of the keynote speakers is Jeff Howe the leading thinker behind 'crowdsourcing'. For IPAN members we have something special: a personal session with Jeff at E-day. Let Saskia know when you join us with Jeff!

The ninth edition of Tapps strandvolleybal, the summer event for the interactive sector (of course together with the IPAN BBQ). As many of our members and partners are present, IPAN joined as always. A wonderful day with lots of fun and activity. The full set of pictures is here.

The new kids on the block are fully digital and move between hardware without any problems. Very interesting to see as I am very often still in the middle of old and new media where by far not everything is digital....The other observation is that the Nintendo DS is a fantastic category killer. Even though other kit such as PSP's, PS3 and iMac's are around, they are glued to their little screens... the latest big hit is the DS version of Guitar Hero on tour...

It is great to see Roderick improving fast in schwimmung! He likes it a lot. Follow his progress here.

Giving young talented companies a start is fascinating. Today we announced our investment in Viddix through our joint investment fund with Ilse, TMG and IDG. Guys go and mix up web and video!

There are always nice things to do and to follow in the Vondelpark. In the open air theater today we had some singalong songs from Ricky and Leo. Apparently the theater is under threat of closure, which would be a pity...

Today we announced our investment in music aggregator Cloudspeakers, a promising Dutch start-up with international potential. We wish the team all the traction they need!

A great day at the wicket today with the NacheniusTjeenk Twenty20 cricket finals. The full set including the shot of Johnny Solo is here

Fellow IPAN board member Vincent Gravesteyn got married today on 888... A very nice party and luckily the ceremony got through between the rain showers... the full set is here

I have put some of the pictures from my TPW Toscane workshop with Antonin Kratochvil online here at Flickr. Like in the good analog days, it is better to have some reflection time between shooting and seeing the end product. Looking back at a wonderful week, brings lots of great reflections!

Roderick was always quite keen on water, but not an avid swimmer. Now things have changed and he want to master the 'schwimmung' as soon as possible...the full set is here.

I have just returned from a fantastic TPW photography workshop with Antonin Kratochvil in Toscane. More pictures will follow coming days....

A big day in my little boys life: getting his first fishes. What an experience...

Philip Blenkinsop, my tutor in Cambodia, gave me the love for analogue photography back. So I am shooting with my analogue Leica MP again. But I also want to have that grainy feeling when I am shooting with my M8. Therefore I have been working with Truegrain last couple of months and now I am experimenting with Silver Efex Pro another great grain and more plug in for Aperture. If someone has some more applications in this field, please let me know as I will be out on a workshop again as of next week with Antonin Kratochvil.

I waited for the first and second generation Newton and the first iPhone I had to have... even though it meant having it hacked. I haven't waited in line for the new 3G iPhone yet as have many others here in The Netherlands, but I will get it of course... and in the meantime I've upgraded to the new 2.0 software on my iPod touch. Some very early thoughts:

3G is great, GPS and location based services will be huge and I am waiting for Bliin on the iPhone, but I think the real story is the app store, ease of purchase/payment and wireless delivery, and the innovation and functionality we have learned to love from Apple.

I love the Twitter client, Buienradar and Netnewswire as initial starting applications. I cannot wait for the 3G iPhone to use the GPS applications!

Great weather for the Cartier/Nachenius Tjeenk Summer Polo. An excellent day in the field with many interesting people to talk too. The full set can be found here.

Next to being a good friend, Ibon is a fantastic cook and he made a delicious Paella for us....finger licking....

Our good Spanish friend Ibon is visiting Amsterdam again, a very good reason to get together indeed...

The summer holidays have started. People are getting into summer feeling and taking their boats out in the canals...

Sneaker pimping i.e. personalizing your sports shoes is one of the great developments of making mass production products individual and loved. Roderick got a couple of smashing K-Swiss all naturals turned into 'Kraken' monstered super sneakers. Thanks to Sara-Antoinette Martin! We also got a great pimped Babuschka set by Richard Barnocky. Way to go! The full set of the production process is to be found here.

Another great and entertaining dinner at Boris Veldhuizen van Zanten. Interesting people from Efactor, Twones, Thenextweb, Fleck, Thenextspeaker and more. The pictures can be found here

A very interesting 6th version of the InterimIC Diner Pensant with two good speakers from the public sector. Secretary of Economic Affairs Jan-Kees de Jager and Gerard Dielessen, Managing Director of NOS, the Dutch Public broadcaster. It was nice to see all the fascinating people discussing the failure of ICT projects moderated by the one-and-only Vincent Everts.. The full set can be found here.

Today we went to the first showing of Kung Fu Panda in The Netherlands. A great animated movie by Dreamworks about a panda... the boys loved it!

The second highlight today was the graduation of the Veronica Radioschool Class of 24. Last Monday they had their graduation project Radiobitches and today they got their diplomas. the full set is here.

A fantastic live set today with Nils Lofgren in Jan Douwe Kroeske's 2metersessies in Desmet in Amsterdam. It will be broadcasted with Kinkfm soon. What a great artist indeed! The full set

An interesting day today at the first mediaparkjaarcongres, the conference organized for the benefit of promoting cross media in Hilversum. I did a start up panel moderated by Vincent Everts. Some promising start ups we might invest in... the full set is here

A great evening at the Radiobitches. The class of 24 did an excellent job of creating such an event. Great awards for the best female radio personalities and great music of among others Kraaksmaak...

A great day at Arrow Rock festival in Nijmegen today. Lots of heavy bands giving a great show. My favorites Motorhead rocking like ever. The big crowds came for KISS and many many were in the same outfit as their heroes...The full set can be found here

A special day today. Not only did we announce our investment in the Dutch leading on-demand media platform Gespod, met with the Euro-pace partners, but we also sponsored the new media start-up event 'beerandinnovation'. an interesting and stimulating day indeed, the full set of pictures is here at flickr.

The 10th anniversary BBQ of IPAN was a smashing success. Over 300 people enjoyed a great BBQ and disco provided by Veronica. We invited IAB and DIFA (women's internet marketing) too to celebrate with us. 925people started by Jort Kelder and Michiel Frackers came and interviewed us and filmed it all as this was one of the key interactive meetings this month. The full set is here on Flickr

Back from a terrific week in San Francisco, meeting old and new media and friends. The city is beautiful, but it is a shame and pity to see so many homeless people around....
I have taken some of the pictures through truegrain, you can see the results here.