6 August 2008
I’m a fan of the Rolling Stones. I went to their “Bigger Bang” concert in Budapest and had a blast. One of my friends knows about this strange worshiping of sixty year olds. To celebrate this somewhat freaky phenomenon, she once bought me a Stones tie. This garment was supposed to give me a rock ‘n’ roll appearance. Truth be told, I hated the thing. Only wore it once, for guilty consciousness-minded reasons.
Why did I hate that piece of merchandise? Were did it go wrong? I realized the tie represented imitation instead of inspiration. The tie transformed me in ‘just a fan’, rather than somebody who wants to do great things himself as well. Continue reading →
4 August 2008
I’ve been blogging on dutchproblogger.com for five months now. I’m delighted by the amount of comments and inspiring discussions, yet I’m not completely satisfied about a couple of things:
- Too personal – although this is my personal blog, I still want to offer more information that is relevant for every reader. Thus I’ll post more blog tips and less personal stories. Moreover, I’ve highlighted the last blog tip by featuring it on the frontpage
- The frequency of posts – sometimes I wrote two posts a day, yet there were also weeks that nothing was published. I’ve decided to look for a standard frequency and hereby promise to post two blog tips each week.
I took these two changes in account and added the ebook and blog conference I’m working on. These developments called for a new and more professional design. Continue reading →
29 June 2008
Lenny Kravitz used to be my music hero. When I was seventeen, I had all his albums lined up in my CD rack – knowing them by heart. When I missed a holiday flirt, I used to listen to Again and when high school drove me nuts, Fly Away was the logical choice.
But during the last couple of years, this love has faded a bit. I started listening to music that can be qualified as “less mainstream” and forgot about the rock star.
Yet when I saw an announcement on ticketmaster.nl saying Mr. Kravitz would perform in my country the coming summer, I – without a doubt – bought a ticket. He would rock the Goffert Park in Nijmegen and I was surely gonna be there.
Yesterday was that day. Although his songs had lost their privilege to feature on my iPod and I hadn’t bought any of his latest albums, an old music love did revamp. This guy is a rock star, a real performer, and a musician who knows everybody loves him and isn’t afraid to hide that.
So may I advise you, dear reader, to go and check out the tour dates of the band of your youth. I won’t disappoint you. It’s as running into the ex you still fancy a bit. Really.
18 June 2008
As you might have read on my Twitter page I’m currently in San Francisco to attend the Supernova 2008 conference with Patrick and Arjen. After my visit to the Web 2.0 Expo I didn’t expect to be here so soon again – yet as you can imagine: I don’t really mind!
Supernova is a conference that really digs deep in the theories behind the network age. That attracts an interesting crowd and I got to meet some people who I only used to know from their excellent blog posts. Like Hugh MacLeod from Gapingvoid, a blogger, cartoonist and thinker I really admire. I had an interesting conversation about creativity with him, together with Scott Beal from Laughingsquid and Lori Dorn. Continue reading →
30 May 2008
Ladies and gentlemen, here’s some music for the weekend! The Rumble Strips! My weekend actually hasn’t begun yet, as I’m working on the first chapter of my ebook about blogging. Earlier today, I interviewed Edwin van Mijsbergen from ZBdigitaal about the archive function of blogs. He said some interesting things, which I’ll share with you later. For now, I wish you an excellent weekend and hope to contribute to it by presenting this indie sensation from British town Tavistock. They’ve found an almost perfect mix between ska, pop and rock, so they’ll probably spice up your weekend. Continue reading →
28 May 2008
Yes that’s right, I’m working on an ebook and a conference about blogging. Both will be in Dutch, as I think the English speaking people have enough resources on their hand. Most Dutch people also speak English, yet I feel a local approach is the right way to go. There are major differences between the US and Dutch blogosphere, only the differences in size would be enough reason to go Dutch. Most of the ebook and conference coverage will be in Dutch, yet I’ll write some English articles about it as well. You never know, it might inspire a German or a French blogger to do the same thing in his country.
So yesterday I left a comment on a Marketingfacts article about the most important Dutch blog sites. I mentioned About:Blank and the blogging category of Marketingfacts, but also said I was working on an ebook and conference. It stirred quite a reaction, as I’ve received some emails and Twitter messages from people who wanted to know more. Ton Zijp from About:Blank even blogged about it. I figured I might as well share some info on this blog, so here we go. Continue reading →
26 May 2008
Yesterday Edial Dekker and me had a couple of beers in Amsterdam’s most interesting cafe, De Engelbewaarder (The Angelkeeper). We were discussing our upcoming blog conference BLOG08 and tried to think of original ways to promote the whole thing. In order to get a good brainstorm vibe going on, I made two groups of four coasters and asked Edial to write up four PR ideas. I did the same thing. After that, we presented the ideas one by one and perfected or rejected them. It was incredibly effective, so I thought I might as well share it with you. If you have any brainstorm ideas, even if they’re just a twist on an existing on – like mine – you’re very welcome to share them in the comments.
5 May 2008
Although I don’t know one word of Japanese, I did get an article published in the April 9th Edition of Fuji Sankei Business-i newspaper, which is being circulated to 200,000 readers a day nationwide. This is how it happened.
At the end of last March, I received an email from Masaru Ikeda. He’s running a system integration company in Tokyo and writes a weekly column about Internet innovations for the Sankei Newspaper. Masaru mailed me that he’d love to come to the Next Web Conference – which my partners from The Next Web Blog organized – but he had to stay in Tokyo for “business reasons”. Therefore, he asked me to write a column that he would translate in Japanese. And so it happened. It wrote the story, Masaru translated it, and he was so kind to sent me some copies. Continue reading →
4 May 2008
As promised, I sometimes just cover random blogging thoughts here. Like things I stumble on when working, reading, or – most of the times – when relaxing. So today I realized that the most self-destructing thing you can do as a blogger is writing when don’t feel like it. Here’s why.
Let’s start with one hell of a cliché: blogging is about passion. Sorry, you may have heard that a hundred times now, yet – as always with clichés – it IS true. You might blog for the money as well, but it doesn’t lead anywhere if that’s the only reason. Blogging takes too much effort to make it a logical way of earning money. Continue reading →
