Just returned from a pre-launch party organized by the Sandfire team. Sandfire brought the city of Utrecht and Microsoft together, culminating in a green spotlight for the Dom of Utrecht symbolizing the Xbox 360 launch on December 2. In Utrecht you can get a bachelor in games design, the city is now even positioning itself as "the gaming city of the Netherlands". Combined with the national games days currently taking place in Utrecht, Microsoft could have picked a worse place for its long awaited launch. At the party in gallery De Kunstsalon, painter Adri Dijkhorst put his version of the Xbox 360 on display, which quickly became a collector’s item at Microsoft NL offices - he was asked to produce a second one. There were two Xbox 360 machines present at the gallery and I tried the Project Gotham Racing 3 game for a few minutes, crashing every 10 seconds (my car, not the Xbox) despite the amazing graphics quality and advanced remote control. Spoke with 22-year old John Jonk, who is a professional game player. Professional means crossing the world to participate in game matches and making thousands of dollars per event. Some gamers make a living out of it, earning even more dollars. My kids at home have been complaining that "its about time we get a PlayStation 2 at home, everyone else has one". I have set a milestone before we go and buy one. When they heard about my invitation for the pre-launch party, there expectations rose. However, as there are a lot more (kids-friendly) games available for the PS 2, we won’t opt for the Xbox 360 (yet).
It looks like the Dutch parliament is putting its arms around a Dutch Small Business Act now, a discussion I ignited with my June 21 press conference and the subsequent reaction from the Dutch Minister of International Trade. Today I received an email from Dutch member of parliament (MP) Mr. Jan ten Hoopen (CDA) that he now submitted a formal request to the Dutch government through a "motion". In his motion (click here to download as a PDF in Dutch) he requests "to develop a facility similar to the Small Business Act in the United States" "…with a government target of 23% of all procurement of products and technologies…" requesting a response before January 1, 2006. Taking into account the support earlier expressed by the political parties PvdA and VVD, this is likely to become a serious debate in Dutch parliament.
Yahoo seems to make the first move in the mobile race with Google I blogged about earlier. Today news leaked (?) out through the Wall Street Journal that a Yahoo branded mobile phone is underway to the market, apparently for the US only initially: "SBC executives said the SBC-Yahoo phone, which will be manufactured by Nokia Corp., is expected to be available as soon as early next year and will cost $200 to $300. Operating on the Cingular Wireless network, which is co-owned by SBC and BellSouth Corp., the phone will also be an MP3 player, a 1.3 megapixel camera and will have a removable memory card." So let’s see now how long it takes for Google to announce a counter attack. If they want to outperform Yahoo, their phone should be manufactured in Taiwan by HTC based on Google’s specifications, support WiFi (enabling surfing on the San Francisco city network Google is bidding for), have a QWERTY keyboard like the Treo 650, cost less than $200 and become available in Europe simultaneously… Looking at Yahoo’s product announcements lately (widgets, RSS etc.) it almost looks as if they spot Google’s next move and then ensure they come with a product announcement earlier. I can imagine Yahoo nor Google wants to be portrayed as a follower in the current combat.
Update: goes without saying that both phones would sport new mobile advertising functions of course! Like a SIM-lock for Google AdSense ;-)
The Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade Mrs. Karien van Gennip sent a letter this week to Dutch Parliament, answering MP-questions resulting from my June 21 press conference.
In summary her letter covers three topics (to download the Dutch letter as Word document, click here):
1. The Minister agrees that European SMEs cannot compete on equal footing with American SMEs due to a WTO-GPA agreement in place since 10 years.
2. To reverse the preferred treatment American SMEs are getting under the WTO agreement, the topic has now been put on the agenda of the current WTO-negotiations by the EU, supported by the Dutch government.
3. The Netherlands has started a trial with a SBA-pact for SMEs, a so-called SBIR arrangement which awards government R&D projects to SMEs.
The good news is that the Dutch government explicitly recognizes the unfairness of the issue and now actively supports the lobby to renegotiate the WTO-GPA agreement. I am glad my lobby effort and press conference in June on behalf of SUN&SUP had some impact. What I am less satisfied about is that the Dutch government feels it’s already doing something to support SMEs with government projects. The fact of the matter is that these SBIR-projects she refers to, total only a few million Euros, which is nothing compared to the 23% of public procurement the US government awards to American SMEs annually. Government procurement in the Netherlands totals 30 billion Euro (…) annually. Imagine only 10% of that, 3 billion Euro, flowing to Dutch SMEs every year. Wouldn’t that be a true impulse for employment growth and innovation among SMEs, the European Union is so desperately pursuing with it’s Lisbon agenda? I’ll try to get this point across.
…through innovation. Thursday I attended Joris Craandijk’s seminar "Innovation, the new Passion in Business", where he looked back as project leader of the now highly successful Heineken BeerTender product. 
For his seminar Joris had lined up a number of interesting speakers. Some were able to refresh parts of our mind that other speakers cannot reach. Herman Wijffels, chairman of the SER (social economic advisory council) when he spoke about the economic innovation needed in the Netherlands: "Our current leaders are system managers of institutions that were effective in the past decades, but no longer are in today’s economy" and "The western world is in a state of confusion currently, it will take time for a new direction and new leadership to emerge". Or Eddie Obeng, Founder of the Virtual Business School while jumping around the room: "The pace of change is outperforming our speed of learning". Joris Craandijk closed the session presenting his BeerTender case, which convinced him that the beer industry "…cannot live for another fourty years on what’s been there for fourty years". About the Netherlands and innovation "We cannot compete on price with India and China in the Netherlands, it should be our country’s cutting edge to mobilize expertise available here and elsewhere". Thanks a lot for the invitation Joris, unfortunately I had to miss the final and most refreshing part of the agenda: Biertje?
(the headline of this post refers to Heineken’s successful marketing campaign in the UK)
On Friday evening we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Erik & Hillie’s place. Only two weeks left before they will move to their new house with a view something like this. There’s no reason to expect Friday’s strawberries dessert will be our last course together, hopefully :-) We’ll continue “Demmeren” every first Thursday of the month with the other guys. “Next time Demmeren in Brussels?” Erik suggested on our way out. Be careful Erik, your quotes now become public…
There’s a saying in Dutch “Better a good neighbour, than a remote friend”. We are going to prove this saying to be wrong. And, we’re sort of still neighbours at 15 kilometers distance only.
We did not meet in cyberspace, but in zoo Dierenpark Amersfoort this Sunday, sort of in the middle between the villages where we each live. 
We met through the Internet since we are both holding a domain containing our last name: www.deelman.net (Bert) and www.deelman.com (me). It was quite funny to meet another Deelman as it’s quite a small family and we do did not have any direct ties. Sort of like the excitement of an Internet date I guess? Well, we each brought our kids to the zoo as ice breakers. We both share an interest in blogging, anything related to technology and Internet, we both measure approximately 2 meters and we are both interested in acquiring www.deelman.nl which is still unused. Perhaps we should create a Deelman foundation (or business ;-) for that domain, offering each Deelman in the Netherlands to have his or her own email address and blog space…