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…