What's in the box?

What's in the box?
http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4

Do you know what's in your knickers?

Working 8 Hours Overtime

Today is the day. On 17:30 the doors of Hangar 36 will open for those who participate in 8UO *which stands for ' 8 uur overwerken'-translated working 8 hours overtime... *.

The alderman of culture and finance will open the event, followed by the foundations presenting their 'case'. The goal is to work 8 hours overtime (charity); Solving a problem where the foundation in question, is dealing with... Presentations afterwards are given in the night around 1/2 pm...

8UO is given now for the Third time in The Hague, and works alongside the Delft Centre for Entrepreneurship (TU Delft, university), and is a project of the ' Nieuwe Garde ' -New Guard (http://www.nieuwegarde.nl).

The assignments are diverse into thinking of a commercial to whole promotional campaigns... participating foundations are amongst others; the red cross, the richard krajieck foundation, KNCV tuberculosis foundation, andPrinses Beatrix foundation.

For more information go to:

http://www.achtuuroverwerken.nl/

tags: #8UO #achtuuroverwerken #nieuwegarde #NG achteruuroverwerken acht uur overwerken 8uo 8UO nieuwe garde binck36 hangar36 binckhorstlaan

Did You Know...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8

Eneco Internship

Today I have officialy started my Internship at Eneco. I will be doing research, work out marketing plans, and writing my thesis on creating more support for wind energy...

Last year I won 2nd prize in battle of concepts, with a concept called Windy Windmill. Till now I have been several times active in communication with Eneco, which resulted in an internship!

See also my previous posts about Windy Windmill

Friday Morning Evaluation

Within the minor Concept Development I had to specify my learning goals using the Smarties procedure, which comes from the SMART abbreviation often used within concept development. The three letters added stands for inspiring, effort and ‘solution’.

The personal learning goals I wanted to work on were:
- Time for Creativity
- Deal with Handicap
- Listening & Understanding

See also this page

Evaluation:

Making choices is probably one of the most hardest things in life. In the following text I will try to explain the following choices I had to make, and evaluate the concept development lessons in general ( I will try to give some good feedback) as well as reflecting on my personal learning goals which we made at the beginning.

At first I would like to start off with that I enjoyed the Friday morning specification Concept Development a lot, inspiring, exploring and growing all the time. The lessons given put me in order, reflected my beliefs, made me think twice, made me think different, put out my weaknesses, and I think most important; putting out my strong points; finding out, confronting and confirming what I’m good at, and what I would like to do.

Doing that, and reflecting those with my personal learning goals I have to admit I have on one hand severely lacked following my goals, on the other hand I made major improvements.

Firstly, I have to say that making more time for creativity comes, I guess, in phases. I know until where I can go, and now I think I can be creative in all kinds of ways, or at least putting my creativity in multiple things. Though this changed already while doing my internship in a foreign country, which obviously changed my perspective on things a lot. But I think this perspective has been broadened, even more important; made more of use now. For instance within brainstorm sessions I noticed I can think extremely ‘out of the box’ but also function as a great mediator, and afterwards reflecting neutrally. Setting up documents, giving structure, convincing and making other people enthusiastic, taking leadership, taking initiatives, empathic values, and looking for opportunities, are competencies that I believe has been improved a lot.

I know now that my strong points within this work field came from concept development, participating and guiding the beginning starting until the part where it comes in the hands of product realization. Open minded and idealistic, but also rational and realistic. Reflecting this personal goal negatively I can’t see I made ‘extra’ time. I think I can only make it more efficient, and using it in an other way. Which brings me to combining this with dealing with a handicap that I can see now is nothing more than my body telling me to spent my time differently.

Listening and Understanding is something I really worked on a lot, and to be completely honest I sometimes still lack in concentrating on people, though towards colleagues and clients I continuously try to evaluate and asses the team working, improving working with other people all the time.

NNSafe (2)

Third place we ended, in the online battle, but today we achieved the 'best presentation' - prize on presenting our concept at Nationale Nederlanden HQ in Rotterdam!

We had developed a concept called NNsafe for an insurance company called Nationale Nederlanden. Customer insights of current and future customers is essential to deliver high quality service. Our concept focuses on risk prediction of future customers, based on the behaviour of current customers. With this concept we ranked third on the Battle of Concepts website. See also my previous post about NNSafe !

VOIZ Politics Discussion Platform

Wouldn't it be cool if you could see the plans and steps of your local city district - government? Wouldn't it be cool if you could interact with those plans, create some bonding, interaction with civilians, participating in and with your environment.
Last friday we have presented our end concept VOIZ. We had to came up with a trend (we chose 'crowdsourcing' and 'citizen involvement in politics'), an idea (a way to attract youngsters to politics), and a concept (an online platform where current discussions, polls and games give youngsters influence in politics).

This you had to work out, with full design, a guerilla campaign and a business model (as shown in the presentation). We were second place out of four teams in class!

Download the presentation:

http://stud.cmd.hro.nl/0773253/jaar4/minor/voiz_presentatie.ppt

Pomegranate Phone

Looking for new developments like Instant Voice translation we stumbled upon the Pomegranate Phone. At first we were shocked; wow what a wonderfull design, and 'more things that you could ever think of ever fitting into the palm of your hand'. Everything build in; phone, camera, full internet browsing 'and that's just the beginning' as the trailer tells you...

But then...

... well just look for yourself...

http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

And for more information, and a nice review about the Nova Scotia Viral go to:

http://issmatblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/nova-scotia-pomegranate-phone-great-viral-but-is-it-effective/

NN Safe

Third place, on Battle of Concepts (www.battleofconcepts.nl), with a concept for Nationale Nederlanden (www.nn.nl/), one of the biggest insurance companies in Holland. Their problem? The immense overload of data. How can they use this data for risk management?

NNSafe is an application developed for NN to calculate risks amongst their target group in actual, recent but also for future insurances. How does it work?


Mainly, the application researches the current database of clients, and connects to the major popular social networks like Hyves and Schoolbank. The application corresponds their own clients with users on those platforms, by simply matching names, resulting in the public details, which consists out of ‘places they visit’ and ‘groups they belong to’. This information can be very much useful for this kind of risk management; because you can count the amount of groups, places, hobbies, sports and interests by seeing in how much they are representing in a certain field of behaviour. For instance, you can see that a client with a high risk behaviour is likely to be somebody who comes from a certain place in town, or has a special taste of cigarettes, likes to play dangerous sports, or belongs to groups of rebellious soccer supporters...

Dutch on Ice

How cheesy can it be? It’s a few days below zero and everybody suddenly wants to skate. And so do I, how Dutch. And even if I did not have skates, and even if I did not skate for years I managed not to fall down at all.

It’s Saturday morning, early as I biked through the streets of The Hague, on the way to a friend of mine where we would gather up.

It’s minus five I guess, but I’m prepared (with Mongolian trousers included). And my skates of course, found and got them within a few hours on the online market place, picked them up for a dime in Delft on the way home from Rotterdam yesterday. It’s hard to find skates now, and on the news they are even mentioning traffic jams all over the place because of the sudden immense interest to ice skate.

“It might be your last.”

And how lovely, a few hours later we were on the ice, somewhere on the fields outside of the big city, where the Dutch landscape truly comes alive. We passed the old farmer mills and children selling coffee and hot chocolate on the docks, hundreds to thousands people were on the ice.

On the way we stopped in a village, ice skating through its channel. We heard folk music and saw a lot of people gathering up in the centre, where everybody was on the wooden flounders entering the local bar.

The smell of hot stew (yes, the famous pea soup) combined with thick hot dogs was nearly unbearable, as I sat eating saying: “I hope they’re not going to play Frans Bauer…” But they that the moment I said it, a tune of him, one of the most famous and traditional Dutch folk music artist, started.

I guess you just have to love it. I did.

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.