…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…
While I was in London Friday and Saturday for a number of Qelp business meetings, I selected these days in particular to be able to join Andrew Snoad and Tony Bicknell in celebrating the 10th anniversary of their firm Decision Tree Consulting (DTC). 
They invited all those who worked with DTC in the first 2 years of starting their company for a dinner tour on the Thames. Andrew refreshed my mind telling me that in fact I was their first large customer. I had them conduct a survey in 24 countries about the decision making process for videoconferencing equipment in multinational companies. I was working for Sony in those days, setting up their European business for videoconferencing systems and combatting with PictureTel who was the market leader. Sony had spotted videoconferencing as a potential mass market( it’s still a niche unfortunately), but had little experience in the telecoms market which is why I was brought in. DTC won the assignment for the survey while in competition with Anderson Consulting and Coopers who should have been able to leverage their international presence but didn’t.
Earlier that Friday I met for lunch with Osman Mardin, who supported me while I was conducting a tough financing round for ThreeFive Photonics in early 2003. Guess what? He reminded me that I was his launching customer after he left investment bank Robertson Stephens and started Sardis Capital, his current financing firm. Do I have a preference for selecting start-ups? Not necessarily –although I sympathize greatly with them- but if you award them the business you are more likely to get the undivided attention of the entrepreneur which can lead to more value for money. You don’t forget your first date, you don’t forget your first customer – it does create a special bond.