People Making Stuff

On Saturday 20 december the ‘people making stuff’ festival took place in The Hague, at the former docks of the Norfolk, which is now an event area. An inspiring night with a lot of enjoyment, the theme of this year was likely to be called ‘new music’.

The festival was opened by a robot from the future who hended out a manifest to a representative of the city-district for 'The Hague as the capital of culture in 2018' :

Before getting in, the first encounter was already quite something, entering the former Norfolk area the way to the docks where the festival took place was directed with a red carpet. This was due to a project of Sara Vrugt named ‘A Red Line’ and where as today she gave a minor preview.

Entering the docks my eyes gazed at the small carton boxes which were placed all around the place. The carton boxes were supposed to sit on I guess, but of the mass and placement a lot of people thought it was art. And it was, I suppose.

After talking to the familiar, and taking some of the appetites we took a seat somewhere upfront. The sides of the dock was filled with music podia, which made me think of Jools Holland. When the first band ended, another one started on the other side.

I enjoyed the sound of the ‘Onur Ataman Ensemble’ and ‘Teletekst is Dood’ (-teletext is dead) very much but the second ‘band’ playing after the kick-off opera was for me the real ‘ear-opener’ of the evening: “The Klang Ensemble”. I had never heard of them before, though they have performed a lot across Holland according to their website. The ensemble was formed in 2003 and consists out of saxophones, trombone, electric guitar, keyboards and percussion.

If you are a fan of Sigur Ros and The Album Leaf you might like this Ensemble. As it is not easily placed in a category more it is more likely to be seen as ‘modern classical music’. Though I found it somewhat relaxing, getting into trance when closing your eyes, entering a whole new world. ( I felt like floating, in a castle made of glass, sunbeams going through, slowly rising into the blue sky. And that without using drugs. )

The First Pressure Cooker in The Hague with FMO

On the first of december the first Pressure Cooker took place in The Hague. One of a kind, the first edition launched in the headquarters of FMO; the Dutch Financial Bank for Development.

FMO is a bank which invests in sustainable entrepreneurship in developing countries. A nice and interesting first timer, to kick off the PC Project in The Hague aswell. And with succes. Now after nearly a month, some volunteers got invited to work out their ideas which were presented on the 1st of October.

In short, the case of FMO was build on their organisatorial approach which will have a major difference in strategy in the upcoming years. As they handle their approach by countries at the moment, the future will be clustered to an approach in three major branches; housing, finance and energy. This results into that a lot of the FMO employees will be working in new teams, so the question of FMO was; "How do we communicate to our employees that we will be working in this new strategy ?"

I invited storyteller Steven van Lummel for some good inspiration on the event, and with succes as I have been told that he was invited afterwards to speak on the FMO conference on the 18th aswell. The photography of the day was done by a serious photo artist named Kim Vermaat and the whole evening was step by step written down watchfully by Froukje Cleton.

The results of the group in total were outstanding with solutions like a market on location, a climbing wall and interactive video art installations. And these are only a few of the possibilities which turned up on the event itself. For a full review, read the full document of the first pressure cooker in the hague which I send this saturday to all the volunteers.

National Think Tank

Last wednesday I had the chance to join the presentation of the National Think Tank. The Think Tank has been raised in 2005 as a non profit organisation with the goal to improve the environment between government, companies and knowledge institutions.

As a first thing to mention, I was excited to be in the ING house for the first time, the ING house is a very famous and extraordinary building which is impressive to see if you pass it on the highway. I was invited to be here because of doing some small contributions in their research where I helped along with other youth ambassadors of the hague.

The theme of this year was "to be healthy for each other"; advices to stimulate youngsters to choose for a healthier lifestyle. Projects were amongst others a T-Party and Run2Gether.

A T-Party is, as the word says, a tea party for the parents. A workshop about educating children for approximately eight parents guided by a social worker. A nice idea, which is of course taking place already in some other ways. But organising this more strictly (maybe within school aswell) should help in breaking taboos within educating children amongst different cultures.

Run2Gether is supposed to bring quality time within your family by moving together. Employers and employees with their children should be offered a full program with monthly 'running'-activities.

Interesting, but I seriously had my doubts in combining these kinds of running social activities with your parents imagining of how I would feel like doing that in the age of 13/14...

For more information about the think tank, and other projects, go to http://www.nationale-denktank.nl/

ICT&Media-profession day

On 12 December the College-University of Rotterdam organized the so called ‘day of ICT and media -profession’ conference. The event was held on two locations; the Academieplein with the morning program and the afternoon at the Pieter de Hoochweg; where the communication and multimedia institute is located; the main location of my education. Last week the school invited me to come and help at the day itself, and since there were no lessons I thought I might join in.

The afternoon contained mostly guest lectures though at the main hall held some informational company stands, amongst others IBM, Logica, T-Mobile, Mangrove, Riscure and Delta Energy.

The day itself wasn’t badly organized but the amount of students was unbelievable. And don’t get me wrong, I did not meant that in a positive way. As the food and beverage counted on three hundred people, not even a third showed up; resulting in slightly offended company holders (presenting in front of an empty classroom isn’t that attractive I guess).



So, why is that? Why didn’t the students show up? Was it such a bad timing ? Were it extraordinary boring companies? Maybe the terrible subjects? Or would it be the worst of all; the free beer?

I guess not.

The timing would be right, Friday afternoon, near the weekend so that would be fine. The companies weren’t that bad at all and they had quite interesting topics like ‘how to hack the public transport’-cards and mobile innovation. And free food (even salmon) and french wine, god please, it couldn’t get better.

What is it then?

To be honest. I don’t have a clue, but I do know this:

• The day was promoted through email, which nobody reads.
o You could say that’s the fault of the students, I agree slightly. Students get spammed by mail a lot, and as they don’t throw away their mail their mailbox claims to be ‘inaccessible’.

• The day was promoted on the school screens, which nobody sees.
o Again, you could say that’s the fault of the students, I agree as well, slightly. Because 99% of the time the screen shows useless information, which all looks the same. So why look at it? Besides, you have to look 4 meters up to read it. So why bother.

• The day was promoted on A3 posters, which you do see, sometimes.
o But again, I would not be really attracted. The poster contained ‘the same old’ easy layout and some information about an ‘ICT-Day’ which I guess it had to do something with stuttering guys with glasses talking like beavis and butthead. It did not contain companies or information, or well, maybe it did, but I didn’t see it.

And the location? I don’t know. For me it is familiar. But, for most of the ICT students it isn’t. Because they are in another building I thought, and I heard that the morning lectures which were on that location were a lot busier.

Too bad, because the opportunity to talk with somebody like the chairman of t-mobile isn’t very daily.

Designing 8 December

The NRC Next started a design competition to create the front page of Monday 8 December 2008 so I decided to participate.

Yesterday's newpaper contained an article about printing on demand, user generated commerce and web-to-print where the 'personalization'-trend is explained with several examples. In the following article the newspaper announced a design battle to design your own front page for the coming newspaper on monday. Here is my contribution:

The front page I designed contains over 400 presents with a title saying "find the suspicious present". The design is follow up to a sad newsarticle of yesterday, about a school which had been evacuated because of a bomb-threat. Because of the traditional "Sinterklaas"-fest which was being hold on the school, all the presents at that time were suddenly 'suspicious' objects.

This resulted into that a team of explosive-device professionals had to research all of the presents, one by one (!). Nothing was found, and the threat turned out to be a hoax later on.

The children were to be asume devastated by the cancellation of the celebration day where they have been looking forward to for the past weeks. The school announced that the celebration of Saint Nicholas will shift to monday.

********** EDIT **********

I did not won the front page, but was 2nd placed:

"The front page of Sander Westerduin (the presents) was very popular amongst the editors of the editorial office who make up the front page 'cover'-stories. This front page could defenitely be used in stories like the warnings of anti-terrorcordinator Tjibbe Joustra."

Take also a look on

the article on their website with

their comments (in dutch)

The Innovation Platform

The “Innovation Platform” is a conference established by the dutch govenment to raise ideas for the cabinet to raise and improve the competition level of the Netherlands globally. The event took place yesterday in the Vanelle Fabriek in Rotterdam, opened by our prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

Due to a participation in the orange contest I was notified that the nominees will be announced on this conference, this for me the main reason to go there. After taking a look at their website I had serious doubts about this event, aswell because I read nothing about free entry for students which was quoted on other spaces though. But after a telephonecall I found out anyway.

And damn, as I proclaimed a free entry pass I guessed the food and beverage would be several euro’s it slightly surprised me that everything on the day itself was free. Yes, everything.

But to return to our main objective, trying to hand out my “21” book to the president (*damn* security…) I pointed several places on the map with lectures I surely wanted to join. Starting with the coffee. And another one. And what the heck, take the whole box instead.

With coffee in the left hand and a brownie in the other I walked trough the main hall, passing Enviu’s sustainable dance floor rapidly entering a conversation with the ‘taskforce innovation utrecht’, an institute that stimulates entrepreneurs helping them to (re)new their products, services or (internal) processes.

Next to it the ‘dutch centre for social innovation (NCSI)’ had a stand, where they let visitors test their way of working, and if they are productive and innovative with handling and using the ICT possibilities within their company. The testing was done by using an online 3d game, which on me raised certain questions confronting the speech holder. Because as I thought, and found out by asking who their target group was (which were mainly older people). I wondered if this approach would be the right one then… and surprisingly the girl agreed…

But nevertheless, the idea is nice, and the ‘centre’ is still in development, so intended sessions, workshops and advice are surely there to become realized.

Further on the day I followed interesting lectures and participated in several discussions, where amongst others one about internships and studying abroad. Besides following the lecture Luis Suarez about a world without email (read a report here in dutch) I followed several lectures within the seminar ‘innovation across borders’. Within the seminar I would like to point out the workshop ‘ICT boosts social economic development’ by TNO, where the task of audience was likely to give feedback and pointing out the opportunities.

Within the workshop four presentations took place, where after the audience was commited to comment, vote and possibly engage. The four presentations consisted out of; Leveraging Microscopy, Rural development (LinkNet), next-door internet (NICE) and collaborative creation for succesfull ict solutions (IICD).

Leveraging Microscopy trough cell phones is a nice technique which saves days waiting for the patient and doctor for the results of bloodtests. By simply making a picture through the microscope with your phone, and sending the image through MMS to the doctor is sufficient to recognize if the patient has malaria or hiv.

Linknet on the other hand is a project in Zambia which inspires local talent in rural Africa to reach their collective and individual potential in ICT, two areas are now covered with wireless and multiplication in all rural areas of Zambia is going beyond imagination plans.

NICE does it slightly different setting up wireless and solar powered multi services where there is aswell an offer in education and work employment. IICD on the other hand enables people in Africa and latin America to implement ICT to help improve their work and quality of life.

You can imagine there were more green cards in the air on the voting times. These sessions were for me one of the most fun presentations I joined this day. And some I had seen desperately needed presentation guidelines... which refers me to Don McMillan's 'how not to do' powerpoint:

To make a long story short. The innovation platform is a seriously interesting conference and I would surely be there on the sequel. And not only because of the snacks. Though I had some questions and remarks, for instance the ‘meeting spots’ which were not working at all to my understanding;

The Social Interaction & Innovation on the event itself could be much better; as there were a lot of ‘formal’ discussions were you could not intervene, which where the speaker is there only to ‘send’ though the whole attention was going to ‘learn’ from ‘each other’?

This ‘formal’ atmosphere resonated trough the conference, which could be easily broken by small things, look at PICNIC for example, by doing and undertaking action on the conference at self, and by doing that meeting new and interesting people.

Besides the atmosphere the surrounding could slightly be better organized, by more centralizing and positioning the event. The location is great, but walking 6 stairs every 15 minutes is a bit overdone.

Then, last but not least; the attention to their website has been slightly overseen I guess. I think this is one of the worst websites I have seen in ages, especially for a ‘professional’ conference of this size. That's a thing that defenitely needs innovation…

The Resistance

An introduction of the OrangeContest took place on the Picnic festival of 2008. In the following lessons within Concept Development on the College University of Rotterdam I tried to gather up students with an interest to participate in this orangecontest .

And with succes, with some students we managed to set up a project for the contest; mail goal: 'putting holland on the map'. Now after several weeks of time pressure the following plan 'The Resistance' has been finalized, and is in the run for the election of the ultimate Dutch experience.

On the 21th of Novembre we held a presentation about our plan according to the participation of the Orange Contest. We started out with the following taste of orange:

In short; our concept basically stands for the retake of Manhattan. Nearly 400 years a go, the Dutch ship 'De Halve Maen' crossed the rivers around manhattan and set foot on a piece of land which will finally rise to one of the world most popular cities. 'The Resistance' brings us back to the urge of the Dutch to take back what is supposed to be theirs; New Amsterdam.

The project is divided in three chapters; preparing, transitioning and invading with a covering television program following the route.

The preparation is a long term project including the capturing the 17th century battleship 'the 7th provinces', and rekruting craftsmen (cause you need an army ofcourse). Dutch people can sign up for the program (winning a free ride) by presenting themselves with their most original thing they will bring to conquer New York once again, ending in a serious competition for the crew.

The transition is a two monthly show (which can be stretched) taking place on the 17th century ship where the crew selected in previous rounds of the preperation will battle for leading the invasion, battles on the boat will take place in extraordinary and never seen reality tv.

The invasion will take place, entering Batterypark, where the winner of previous rounds will run as Prince Carnaval in the orange parade turning Broadway and Nassaustreet orange once again!

Read our final document here

Let it snow...

It had been a while since I had seen snow, and yesterday it was finally there, made me think of the time I spent in Mongolia, The whole day it snowed covering trees, roads and buildings with a white layer and as seen on the picture, the peace palace also got some.

I thought I'd share.

This picture was taken from Anna, a 'creative' space near the peace palace. The building shelters creative companies, artists, galeries, and even a small movie theatre. And that's why I thought to check it out; ending up into seeing the manga classic Akira once again.

For those who are interested, take a look at Artikraak.org for more information about Anna.

The College-University Fair, do you stare or do you dare

On Monday 3 November the college-university of Rotterdam organised a fair where students from second and third year could get information about their possible ‘minor’ (the so called ‘specification’ within your study). I had the chance to promote and inform other people as a representative of the ‘minor’ I am following currently, formally known as ‘concept development’.

The fair took place at one of the main buildings of the school department offering information and services and first encounters with these ‘minors’. As soon as I entered I had the feeling of chaos, and it was, quite.

Though there was a map, the interaction with the environment lacked severely, not mentioning the programming and understanding timetables and ‘whereabouts’ on the location itself. We even had to share our small stand which made it even harder.

In the afternoon we organised two lectures for interested students, and two times we were able to fill the room, nevertheless not always with the most interested students seeking for their obligations within the minor.

The presentation ‘thinking outside of the box’ answered questions of students as in why students should choose for this minor, what you can do by following this minor, what is expected from you and of course, what do you expect from it.

A lot better than previous slides I have seen, I must say. The presentation has improved a lot, and fairly stands out amongst the others. Strong and clearly students could see now what it is about, with me and my fellow student giving live examples and interact with the audience. And by taking that last thing, that is exactly what should be, by my understanding, more encouraged.

Interacting with the potential students can be improved. This could be simply realized by picking examples and making it more fun which is exactly what will keep it attached, remembered and told about.

Simple solutions to make the concept development presentations more interesting is to start with a ‘check in’, a kaospilot technique, naming what were you thinking in a maximum of one sentence, breaking the ice already.

The content of the presentations could be also somewhat more active, like naming trends, you name a trend! What did you noticed lately? Or why do you have an iPhone ? Why do you wear GStar, why do you stand still on the escalator? You could play more to the awareness of the students present, like 'did you notice the red arrows on the sealing?' or 'did you notice that the text under my name tag is upside down?'.

Let them name their ideas, their quest for life, let them think out loud and feel free to join the fun and serious sides of concept development.

Preview OrangeContest

...of a new project we are working on...

... just a preview... soon more :D

Windy Windmill (3)

Last week we had a meeting with Eneco and it seems Windy Windmill has a follow up...

Windy Windmill isn't just an idea, it is a well thought of plan, a longduring proces, and this week we had a meeting with Eneco about it. If you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. Windy Windmill is a concept which won 2nd prize with a battle (within BattleOfConcepts) for Eneco, which proclaimed goal to create 'a windmill you can love'.

Windy Windmill is a character builded program where in Windy Windmill and her friends Seta SolarScreen and Wilbert Waterpump are bound to save the world from all evil for instance Olga Oil and Ali Atom.

if you are interested look also at the previous posts;

http://sanderwesterduin.blogspot.com/2008/06/windy-windmill-2.html

http://sanderwesterduin.blogspot.com/2008/06/windy-windmill.html

where there is more to be explained.

But the future is bright, talks and meetings are planned for the upcoming weeks and who'll know what is about to happen...

are You cut out...

This week I had the chance to follow a lecture about entrepreneurship, with a theme quoted as "Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?"

The workshop was hosted by Keith Wallace (see Nebib.nl), an entrepreneur and micro-investor who has seen many an adventure succeed and far more fail. And it started in the morning being the first to join. Luckily some other students showed up, cause I was wondering if I was the only one signed up for the workshop.

And it was indeed an interesting workshop, many presentational skills and many discussions. Which was good, I felt alot like the others; the main fun thing; the people I thought signed up were there. And the other fun thing; or call it interesting thing; many had the same problems.

Problems? Yes, sometimes the workshop seemed like doing a therapy session where everybody talked about their problems. Which problems? Well, that everyone present are doing everything at the same time, many hobbies and interests and feel like doing everything.

I enjoyed the workshop and feel alot more secure now, as well as that I am planning a meeting with Keith in the future as he offered to help me.

Dutch Design Week

From 18 to 26 of October the Dutch Design Week is taking place. If I were you, I suggest you take a visit! Numerous lectures, workshops, shows, seminars and exhibitions are (mostly) free to enter. For an impression take a look at the video I shot yesterday:




With my visit to the Dutch Design Week I would like to point out the following projects which made quite an impression on me and would definitely see them in future environments, as in households and public spaces.

Tender Tub (maren hartveld)
A rubber coated foamrubber bath, easy to transport, easy to use and very comfortable! Not cold and hard like the average bathtub but soft and warm like a sofa.
http://www.detank.com/det/node/2347

Save Our Seeds ( regis lemberthe)
A fascinating experience inviting users to behave more carefully. As well as plants conservation, Regis created tiles, which are easier to break; on streets you see trees which are cutted down because they break out of their public space. The result is breaking them down, but is it the trees fault to grow, and lifting the tiles around it?
http://saveourseeds.wordpress.com/

Kid’s balance (niels smeltink)
This bike can be re-used when the child has grown, as it is double used (one of the major themes on the event). The use of the bike is it simplicity itself, look at the video where the bike is shown.
http://www.nielssmeltink.nl/

Re:act (daan spangenberg)
An interactive installation, alternative to illegal fly posters put up on walls. The installation begins showing images when people move around it (using infrared cameras to detect motion). Pretty cool, imagine what you could do with React in combination with RFID!
http://react.vandaan.net/

http://www.dutchdesignweek.nl/

Fuck The Rain!

Saw this one in a newspaper, made me think of an idea sketched in my dummy some time ago about umbrella's. It would be awesome those 'personalizable' umbrella's... im still waiting for one with a Stop sign on it... pretty handy for when the bus comes!

Smart FireFighter!

Wow, I did not see this before! Firefighters (and some police, so I heard) now also changed into a new appearence, on top of their usual trucks I may hope!

TNT Battle

We (students of College University of Rotterdam, specification Concept Development) are hard working on a new battle, for TNT (within Battle of Concepts). And last previous weeks we had some very nice brainstorm sessions, to give an impression of what we are dealing with:

TNT's battle is quite a something, and we want to make the most out of it. The battle's aim this time is to create a new service within TNT's photo service ("They have a photo service?"- yes they do).

Next week we are finishing the document, hold a presentation and turning in the result. We are working quite on schedule but to work within the boundaries of the assignment is quite hard, as we believe the solution for their problem is already given. Though is their solution truthfully the solution for their problem ? We don't think so.

Nevertheless we should keep within their boundaries, and only hint in the document for the real solution.

Besides, I'm leading my team a little differently now, with support of the team, creating somewhat better results. So what am I doing different now than previous battles? Well, to get the most out of the team, motivating them I created a percentage system which we discussed in the beginning: if you are to late at a meeting, 1% of your share goes down every 15 minutes. If you are not there at all, you lose 5% (aswell as if you come but did not do your homework). This means you have to work harder as a team, but If you perform alright nothing happens and you will only gain percentages...

Werdet aktiv ?

Standing and waiting for the bus late at night my eye glimpsed on this 'advertisement', which made me think. You can find this post in a bus stop infront of a high school in The Hague (displayed next to the bus timetable).

It is saying 'beat the system, and become active' in somekind of matrix style, which isn't that herassing. But what did is the man portrayed on the right, totally in black as in some kind of secret cult... as well as that the whole thing is written in german... which is... well you get the picture...

The Big Box Mystery

On my way to school in the morning I walked into something which wasn't there yesterday. Still in my morning trance I gazed at the object (ofcourse helping me to miss the tram) for a few seconds... what is it and what does it do?



As you can see the object is quite big, it is solid metal and closed from all sides. It is quite overwhelming when you get to this in the early morning as you might understand, though I did not at all. It was as aliens suddenly dropped it out of the sky.


I guess the object was there waiting for it to be deported, nevertheless it stayed there waiting for over a week which made me kind of curious. Present it has been removed but isn't it a pretty sight ? Lots of people walk by, looking at it but walking straight by it. I'm pretty sure it had to with the construction sight near it, and that it is some kind of shipping container or it is a thing that should be underground (like a huge trashcan) normally.

PICNIC 2008

Last week the third PicNic took place in the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. Students from Concept Development (a specialization of Communication & Multimedia Design on the College-University of Rotterdam) were invited to join the last day on the PicNic Academy!

For this I would like to pick out several speakers; starting with Michael Tchong a widely known trendwatcher and founder of UberCool.

He pointed out several 'uber'-trends which I would like to annotate;

DWT is the new DUI
(Driving while Texting is the new Driving under Influence)

Unwired
Creating a lifestile which is highly mobile independent

Time Compression
The acceleration of life, an average adult sleeps 2 hours less than hundred years ago
evalution is also accelerating, baby's sleep 90 minutes shorter already!

Energy Drinks
Coffee is becoming the worlds largest food chain

Generation of Ecstacy
a highly experienced environment, you want to be remarkable?

Fountain of Youth
everybody wants to (or tries to) be young again

Besides that the huge environmental 'be green' trend was continuously present at the whole conference, not to mention 'do the green thing' who explained that people WANT to change, but don't know HOW... so they launched easy and enjoyable entertainment for those who want to be green and need that little push in the back. They are launching a nice video campaign as well to make short movies of how to be green, which in I surely will participate with Windy Windmill !

And if you know trends... don't be shy to post them on Trendonomy.Net !

DesignThis! Major

Develop your own project within Communication & Multimedia Design! For the major of this year called "DesignThis!" you are supposed to develop your own project!

Well; to make things short; I am going to develop a handbook, guideliness for an internship / course of third year students. Not that it is not there, it is not there like i want it to be; simple, easy, understandable... Lots of students get stuck in the huge pile of information, how? What? How much? Where...

Let's make life easier!! Just look for yourself ;)

http://wereldstage.wordpress.com/

Garbage Fun

How can you make the most fun out of putting a huge amount of trash outside ??

Well, simply with a lot of people you can make a lot of fun by putting your trash outside, but where I get my pleasure is the reaction of the men who are picking the trash up. To make their job a little more fun we made some nice drawings on a poster seen on the picture with a 'Thank You!'-letter on it...

I am Chiquita Banana! And I Have Come To Say...

Last week assignment was to pick a brand and research it's identity, how does the brand express itself and how does their appearence shows up in their products. Not only in how their products contain their values from the company, but also how does the targetgroup understands those values.

Picking a brand out of a hundred (which is funny to do aswell; research yourself of how many brands do you know out of your head, and why can you?) I've came up with Chiquita. My Brand for 'Bananas' as it is for so many. But why is that? Why do I think of Chiquita when I think of Banana's?

Well at first you have to research the brand values, besides of having your own ideas of course, it is good to see how well their value's are expressed by themselves. Chiquita's values amazes me, especially because they seem to have other values on their corperate and national webspaces; in the Corperate they speak; "Integrity, Respect, Oppertunity and Responsability" though the Dutch website more aims at "Sustainability". You can see their Corperate values on their space aswell by the way.

But how does it feel for me? Well, my values, or more of thoughts is not like the impression what Chiquita tells to me on their informational corperate website. When I personally think of Chiquita, I'm more thinking of...

or to be serious:

Bananas! Exotic! Latin America!

Interesting, my own impression on the brand does not really correspond (except for the banana thing) with Chiquita. Going on to the last part of the assignment, to add a new product to their productgroup I researched Chiquita's products.

At first I was stunned by the fact Chiquita had more than only Bananes! Open Sesame! As well as the fact that they are doing a lot for locals and nature, so their "Sustainable" value comes forward here. Because of course; "when I want to buy Chiquita Bananes, I would want to be sure that they were delivered to me by 'trustable' company, right?".

On their Dutch space you can play (very cool) games, get recipes, find information and see their newest commercials. On their corperate website you can find their whole productline. But as well the 'Chiquita Shop'. And that is exactely the one I would like to pick up.

You would expect from a Chiquita Shop some really cool products which are in line with their Brand Values. But, no way Jose, the Chiquita shop really... is... desperately, a waste of time, tasting brick in an apple pie. Damn!

The same old boring products, a Chiquita T-Shirt, a Chiquita Umbrella, a Chiquita golfbal, a Chiquita Balloon and even more desperate; a Chiquita keyhanger... !

C'mon People! Is that the best you can do according to your own values, and proclaiming 'sustainability and being good for the environment' but selling easily plastic bags, balloons, useless keyhangers and 'non-recycled yellow paper (with a fullcolor chiquita print on it) ? How "responsible" is that ?!

So... coming to our last part of the assignment; giving shape to products according to the Brand. As I did not have 'sustainable' or 'healthy' (well partly) in my own brand interpretation, I worked out some possible Chiquita Products, according to my brand values;

The picture maybe isn't that great but I hope you get what I mean;

- Chiquita Hammock!

- Chiquita Condoms!

- Chiquita (summer) Clothing!

- Chiquita (summer) Slipper!

- Chiquita Helmet it seems, but I mean Chiquita Hats / Carnaval - Party Hats, like wouldn't it be cool if you could order those nice latin american party hats like in this movie:

designing 'design'

"Wat is design?" The key question of the lesson of the minor Concept Development (on the College University of Rotterdam) on the 5th of September. Discussing not only the term, the personal factor plays also a very important role; what is design 'for you'. Several opinions were shared, with 'design' as in a drawing, a sketch, a plan, a structure and so on. After hearing all the different arguments I took the statement that 'design' is just the English term for the Dutch word 'vormgeving' which consists out of two parts; 'vorm' meaning 'shape' and 'giving' meaning 'giving'. Literally translated: 'giving shape' with a material or substance what so ever.

In my essay which is downloadable here I try to prove my statement;

http://student.cmd.hro.nl/0766740/minorpd/vormgeven_van_vormgeving.pdf

Looking for the hands of Escher I found this great interpretation made by Shane Willis, a photographer using the fun of photoshop, for some more pictures of him;

http://photo.net/photos/radioactive

5 Countries in 4 Weeks

And we're back. This year we managed to cross the border of 5 countries in nearly 4 weeks, though we cheated a bit... by putting those mopeds on huge floating machines, called boats, but yes, we had to, they don't float really good by themselves.

As you can see we headed to Kiel, Germany the first week and took a boat to Goteborg, Sweden where we drove around the Svanern lake, passing Orebro, almost made it to Stockholm (but we took a left heading for Karlstad...)

A few days after Karlstad we passed the 'Riksgrans' from Sweden/Norway, heading for Oslo...


In Oslo, we took a boat to Copenhagen (we didn't go there on the way up here, so why not on the way back) where we drove to the west, camped on the Samso Island beach and a day after that we entered:

OMG! That was so much fun... you can read all about it in a journal (I will put it online as soon I finished it) and a few days after we enjoyed ourselves playing with Lego we went to Esbjerg, where we took a boat to Harwich, England. After spending some time in English pubs we went back taking a boat from Harwich to Hoek van Holland !

Curious about previous trips? Check the previous post:
http://sanderwesterduin.blogspot.com/2008/07/mopedtrip-iv.html

Windy Windmill (3)

On Tuesday the 28th of October the Windy Windmill team had a meeting with the communication & strategy department of Eneco. It seems the story will get a follow up...

To make a long story short, Windy Windmill is a conceptual character for children, along with Zeta Zonnepaneeltje (Seta Solar screen) and Wilbert Waterrad they save the world from evil like Olga Oil and Ali Atom.

See also my previous posts about windy windmill...

The concept was developed in a battle for Eneco (Benelux Power provider) within BattleofConcepts.NL and won 2nd prize, which should be 1st according to Eneco.
This week there are several new meetings coming up with interesting parties where aswell my possible internship would appear. Cool!