Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

A friend of mine just told me about his meeting with Steve Ballmer a few weeks ago. He works at a very innovative start-up and Microsoft was interested in their technology. You’ll forgive me if I don’t mention the name of the company or my friend.

They met Steve Ballmer during a breakfast session and were given 30 minutes. They prepared a presentation which highlighted the technical aspects of their technology and were prepared for some tough questions. It turned out that Ballmer was only interested in the big and broad vision and hardly in any details. Ballmer talked for 29 minutes out of the 30 they were given and hardly asked questions.

My friend wasn’t disappointed at all and I think he might do a good deal with Microsoft some day. I just thought it would be a good thing to know if you are ever going to meet Steve Ballmer for breakfast too…

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Tommorow I will be a keynote speaker at the Week van de Ondernemer in Utrecht. There will be two 20 minute sessions where I will get a chance to impress (or bore) quite an audience. I have been told that only CEOs and people who own companies will be there.

I always look forward to performances like this and already feel a strange kind of excitement when I think about tommorow.

A few weeks ago I posted about this conference and asked for tips, questions and suggestions which I can use to make my performance better. I received a few comments and a few emails with subject and advance questions. As you know I enjoy feedback immensely so if you are going to be there and have a question please let me know.

I’m scheduled in a session together with HP and KPN titled ‘Time is money’ which is held from 11.55 - 13.10 and again from 14.10 - 15.25.

UPDATE: that was fun! Patrick had a keynote in Rotterdam that same day.

Here is the thing: I have an email address (boris@ipan.nl) which works fine. Saskia also has an email address (saskia@ipan.nl) and that doesn’t work fine.

Some people (30%) get an immediate error from their SMTP or MAIL server. It says:

Cannot send message using the server mail.xs4all.nl
The server response was: 5.1.1 <saskia@ipan.nl>… No such user

The interesting thing is that the mailserver seems to reject the emailaddress right away without even accepting it. Normally email just gets delivered at the server where the domain is hosted and rejected there with a nice bounce mail.

But not with saskia@ipan.nl. Even MacAffee marks the emailaddress as invalid in your emailapplication. My hosting company doesn’t understand it and neither do I.

Who does?

This Saturday at the Web2.0 meeting in The Balie I said “Privacy is overrated” and got some good laughs from the audience.

Just now I read something that takes the fun out of that remark.

Kathy Sierra received death threats on her blog and via other blogs and has canceled her public performances. Scoble has decided to stop blogging for a week.

I wouldn’t think of stopping in a time like this and would rather blog twice as much to show my outrage. But I do respect Scobles initiative and hope more intiatives will follow.

UPDATE I: I have been reading the comments under the article on Kathy’s blog and although Joey doesn’t make a strong case I did remind me that people should be considered innocent until proven guilty. The web easily turns into a lynchmob and that ain’t right either.

UPDATE II: Check the blog of Michelle Malkin who offers another insight and shows that things might not always are what they seem. The original post by Kathy now has more than 1000 comments. I don’t think I know of any blog post that generated that many comments…

In about an hour there is going to be a public discussion here in ‘de Balie’. The other speakers are Ine Poppe, Tonie van Ringelestijn, Trebor Schultz, me and Joop Laan.

Mark Deuze wil join us from SF via iChat. The evening is sold out. Not bad for a saturday evening.

I hope I can keep awake because I took all the drugs I could find to get me through the evening. My ears still hurt and I feel feverish.

UPDATE: here are a few links to blogs and photos from the event:

Blueace (Sjors Timmer): De achterkant van web2.0; Een verslag
Frank-ly: De wilde web 2.0 wereld was even 1.0 vanavond
Sjors on Flickr: De achterkant van Web2.0
Molblog: De achterkant van web 2.0
KnowledgeCafe: GeenStijl: De Bruine achterkant van Web 2.0

Last week I wrote about the word Monocarpic which means to bloom once and then die. How sad.

This week I heard someone use the term ‘Scotoma’. I decided to look into it because it is a nice illustration of a common Entrepreneurs problem. But first:

Scotoma
An area of diminished vision within the visual field.

You might not know it but everyone has a Blind Spot, which is the popular name for Scotoma. Your eyes don’t actually see everything in front of you. There is a black spot somewhere but your brain fills in that gap for you.

Don’t believe me?
Here is a test:

This whole fenomena reminded me of the blind spot entrepreneurs (including me) have for the weak spots in their own businesses. I am often surprised at how we can collectively fool ourselves when it comes to new businessplans. Even some of my own plans, in hindsight contained clear errors, or blind spots, which are now suddenly very clear for me.

As an entrepreneur you learn to ignore your weaknesses and concentrate on your strengths. This is only logical and even good sometimes. But it can also become a problem if you fail to see real problems and shortcommings in your ideas and plans.

You have to find a balance between believing in yourself and questioning your own logic.