Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

“Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty. It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other, incites one to dream.
Georges Pompidou

This Sunday Ernst-Jan and I will get on a plane, sleep for 11 hours, and then wake up in San Francisco. We will attend the O’Reilly Web2Expo and every party we can talk our way into. We will be staying at the Handlery Union Square Hotel

Our itinerary on Tripit.com

You can follow our itinerary on Tripit.com. In fact; I invited so many people to my TripIt account (via the one-click LinkedIn import) that a few days ago I could crash the TripIt server just by visiting my profile. This what the Tripit helpdesk mailed some of my friends:

Apparently, someone you know was so gung-ho about TripIt that he started inviting all his friends. :) This seems to be causing real performance issues for the invitees and him.

Forget about the Digg effect, here comes the Boris effect!

Is it Blogable or Bloggable?

To do a little promotion for The Next Web Blog we decided to print some stickers. I made a few drafts and asked everyone in the office to pick out the best one. Everybody liked the “This object has been marked: BLOGABLE” one so I ordered 1000 of those. Then when they arrived someone asked me “Isn’t Blogable spelled with two Gs?”.

Oops…

Since then I have talked to a lot of people and have googled the issue extensively. The consensus seems to be that Bloggable should be spelled with two Gs. Fortunately for me even native english speakers seem divided on the issue so I think I will get away with it. People who don’t notice the spelling error won’t mind. People who do notice it have an extra reason to remember it.

Parties and events:

Here is a list of all the parties and events we are planning to visit. Have an interesting start-up that should be featured on our blog? Don’t hesitate to approach us and tell us all about it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Want to ask me a personal question? Contact me at boris@bomega.com

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Well, you show them the booty…

The story: Daniel J. Ashes was doing a photoshoot in my house with SpaceKees, Turk and Jiggy Djé (Noah’s Ark label) and asked me to entertain them for a minute or two so he could make a few photos of them laughing. I had to improvise but my guess is they enjoyed my jokes…

A few weeks ago I spent a few hours shoeshining (Story and Photos) at the New Tailor shop in Amsterdam. This Friday we are going to repeat the same event but we will start at 4pm and have some drinks with it too.

If you want to join us just leave a comment here so we know how much champagne to buy! And, free shoeshines by me for everyone!

Dutch Invitation:

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten komt schoenen poetsen

In navolging van de eerdere succesvole zaterdagochtendsessies kunt u aanstaande vrijdag 11 april van 16.30-19.00 uur kennismaken met en uw schoenen laten poetsen door Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, serial entrepreneur van ondermeer thenextweb.org, fleck.com en in het verleden V3 Redirect Services en HubHop. Onder het genot van goede espresso, de lekkerste taartjes en een glas champagne vertelt hij graag over zijn successen, flops en zijn voorliefde voor maatpakken van New Tailor. Laat u inspireren en kom langs!

De Amsterdamse vestiging aan de Honthorststraat 2a, tussen de Paulus Potter- en de PC Hooftstraat heeft die ochtend specifieke stoffen van alle Boris pakken voorhanden. Boris staat bekend om zijn gepoetste schoenen, witte hemden en flamboyante maar altijd geklede driedelige ruitpakken.

Boris: “Net als ieder ander heb ik een hekel aan netwerken. Dat schichtige geleur met je visitekaartje op een avond waar de meeste aanwezigen zich het liefst verstoppen achter een glas bier. Terwijl je koortsachtig probeert uit te vinden wat je in godsnaam aan iemand hebt dreunt diegene zijn standaard verhaal voor je af waarna je hopelijk zelf ook even mag. Helaas merk je na 3 seconden al dat je netwerkpartner ongeduldig over je schouder kijkt op zoek naar de volgende netwerk opportunity. Netwerken is net werken.

Me @ work:

Dutch social network received a large investment yesterday. They couldn’t find the founders so the Dutch evening news decided to visit The Next Web Conference and ask a few influential Internet experts their opinion. Guess who they found… ;-)

Good NOS quality version:

Lousy quality Youtube version:

Kevin Rose has promised to grow mustache for the Amsterdam Diggnation show. He just posted that on pownce (“Finished taping Diggnation — Alex and I agreed to grow mustaches for the Amsterdam show… damn it, what have I gotten myself into… ”).

We decided to follow their example. Here is a preview of what you can expect:

Going to the conference too? Grow your mustache too or bring a fake one.

In only 16 days The Next Web Conference will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This means that I spend all my time to prepare for the event. Just posted this blog to The Next Web Blog:

Chris Saad ‘contemplating the future’

Chris Saad is the Co-Founder and Chairperson at DataPortability.org and CEO of Faraday Media and will be one of our keynote speakers during The Next Web Conference. Ernst-Jan wrote about Chris and his DataPortability project here before in a post titled “How to explain DataPortability.org to average users“.

This is how Chris explained DataPortability: “A user would simply log onto a site, grant permission, and their friends, personal details and media - images, video, documents - are already populated and accessible - Nothing more complex than that.”

The day after the interview was the day of Dataportability’s big breakthrough. Since then Google and Facebook have joined the DataPortability movement. Chris will be talking about his vision for the future of the web and how DataPortability will play a role in freeing our data. Chris lives in the South Brisbane Area, Australia and we are honored and thrilled that he will take the time to travel all the way to Amsterdam to talk to our guests.