jansn

Thursday we celebrated ‘Sinterklaas‘. As a Dutch tradition we celebrate his stay in Holland every year. Basically it’s for the kids, where they get presents.

As a kid I enjoyed it, now I think it’s yet another commercial holiday which we celebrate in order to stimulate the economy. However it brings people together and that’s good. The non-believers don’t celebrate the traditional form. There are all kind of different forms in which adults celebrate. For example ‘Surprises’ in which you buy someone a small present and write a poem. However the present isn’t just wrapped in giftpaper. The person giving the present creates something personal. For example if you like cars, you get a hand-made scale model made from paper.

With the Enter-priZe entrepreneurs we celebrated it with a game of rolling dices. All participants get some small and stupid presents. Then there are three rounds where the numbers on the dice have different meaning. All the presents are on the table and sometimes you get the chance to pick one from the table. In round two you get to start stealing and exchange gifts from others. At the start of round three all gifts are unwrapped and then another round of switching starts.

We celebrated at our office in the hague. As the pictures show we had some cleaning to do afterwards!

TCE stands for The Creative Economy, a great book by John Hawkins. Inspired by his ‘10 rules for success in the creative economy’ I explore how this affects my daily life and work.

Define yourself by your own (thinking) activities
Do not shape yourself by the job title somebody else gives you. People who are brave call themselves ‘thinkers’. Computer companies try to sell ‘business solutions’ to their client’s problems. In the creative economy we each can think and exchange creative solutions with others.

The power of thinking is an underestimated value to most of the business activities we do today. Most of the times we only see acknowledgement for great thinking by ‘leaders’ of companies. People like Steve Jobs, Barack Obama and Winston Churchill are just a few examples. We see their actions and acknowledge them by thinking power. This is great, but mostly happens because they made a difference.

In our creative economy it’s great we more and more see the power of the individual. Driven by networks like, for example, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter the voice of the crowd gets a saying in a growing amount of important decisions around the world. We see change both big and small.

Combining the power of individuals and a growing set of creative ideas and impulses requires us to channel. We need to conceptualize our ideas in order to make them work and be able to put them out in the open. An idea is worth nothing. Everybody has ideas and it gets easier to put them out there. We need concepts, not ideas. Beautiful names, concrete plans, shapes and designs. Driven by actions is key because most people with the ability to come up with concepts, don’t get the chance to create them.

In my opinion, thinking activities are big pillars on which we can define ourselves. People that are able to create change from their thoughts are the new leaders. It’s an encouraging thought that in the world of tomorrow there will be room for millions of small and individual leaders and not only thousands of leaders that control the change the world is going through.

I was happy to see Rattan Chadha talk about this subject in his interview with KBIRI. He only rarely gives interviews, which is good because most of his time goes to building business and changing the world.

Rattan Chadha “Everytime I go on a holiday, I start new businesses” from KBIRI on Vimeo.

TCE stands for The Creative Economy, a great book by John Hawkins. Inspired by his ‘10 rules for success in the creative economy’ I explore how this affects my daily life and work.

Be nomadic
Nomads are at home in every country. You can choose your own path and means of travel, and choose how long you stay. Being nomadic isn’t about being alone. They are likely to travel in groups. Writer Charles Handy says leaders must combine ‘a love of people’ and ‘capacity for aloofness’. Creatives need to be able to think alone or working together.

This is actually one of my favorites. Maybe a bit strange, I’ve only flew once in my life and probably won’t leave the country on short notice. But I believe being nomadic is more about blending in, not necessarily traveling around the globe.

A nomad needs to be able to acclimatize in groups, changing environments and businesses. This sounds general, but I believe it’s not. In my everyday life I see a lot of people that are in the creative industry and aren’t nomadic at all. They’re lead by the urge to comply to expectations of their environment. Not a bad thing, but limiting at least.

In my opinion people (and creatives in particular) need to be able to adapt to change. This requires you to easily blend into groups, work with new people, processes and even more important, work everywhere. If it might be on the train, airplane or in a crowded office.

Now if we blend that together two things pop into my mind. If you need to be able to work everywhere, determination and focus are key. Second, you need to be able and adapt to change or be able to change things for yourself. Can’t focus? Be nomadic, find another spot to work. Sounds logical, but for a lot of people it just isn’t.

For sometime now I have this big plan to life abroad… Not that average trip to New Sealand, USA and all. But more like how I’m going to combine a style with frequent trips abroad with work and personal life. This can be hard and needs a lot of re-considering and preparations before starting off.

My plans involve at least living in New York. Why New York if I never been there before? Because I think it’s one of the role models of how our cities will become one day. It intrigues me how it develops, appeals to millions of people and grows beyond a size we can think of.

So one day I will be one of those international Nomads. I will.

This blogpost was originally posted on our firmhouse blog.

Triggered by the title? Well, basically that’s what is happening here in the Netherlands on the web. All bloggers (amateur and professional) that embed video or music need to pay a fee based upon the amount of viewers. The fee is depending upon the amount of visitors. But first let’s start with a small explanation for what Buma/Stemra is. From their website:

There are people who make music although you’ll never hear them make a sound: they are called music authors. Their efforts precede the successes of the artists who perform their works. The music that we enjoy is their intellectual property. Just like other authors, they have the right to remuneration when their works are played, sung or recorded. Buma/Stemra takes care of these matters.

So. Buma/Stemra takes care of all interests of music authors in the work they create. Not necessary a bad thing, wouldn’t it be the case that they’ve launched this ridiculous idea(dutch) for charging bloggers for embedding the music of authors.

What’s crazy about this is that YouTube or any other site providing access to copyrighted content should (and in a lot of cases already is) pay for it. In other words, they’re the broadcasters. They deliver the content to my browser. For me to see. A blogger or any other website is just a channel which I’m in which leads me to the content on the network of (for example) YouTube.

In the old world this would mean a manufacturer of TV’s is paying a fee for the amount of viewers that watches content via the screen. Where in fact (and completely logical to me) the broadcasting networks are paying fees for the series, movies and other contents that are being broadcasted.

Can we solve this? Yes we can. It’s not that hard, only it involves more effort from Buma/Stemra. I believe they should be more cooperative and look at how the world is changing. They’re focusing on the downside of the Internet (pirated content) and fighting against it. However they should see this as a big opportunity. You can now promote your artists and drive sales through all kinds of content networks. Artists are more and more using the web to connect and promote their own music. We now see more artist producing music on their own without a label. They own their channel and show what we’ve always known. They love to create music and connect to people that appreciate them for it. How? By listening, buying and maybe even more important: promoting it.

If Buma/Stemra won’t start making more deals with content networks, they face to be replaced. I love to see more self managing artists. Buma/Stemra is in it for the money, that’s why one day they’ll be gone.

This blogpost was originally posted on our firmhouse blog.

Talking to your customers about your product is very important. We’ve experienced that while starting Tweetburner and see it actively happen around us. It’s a big drive for your success. For example, let’s take a look at two big video websites: YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube is the real big guy, while Vimeo is just, well, big. However I’ve never heard people say: ‘YouTube is a great product and becomes more and more relevant for me’. Other people have kept repeating to me how great Vimeo is.

I believe this has to do with the staff of Vimeo being active in their community. Involving your users during development makes them loyal and likely to stick when a YouTube in your market arises.

In the valley, building the next YouTube’s is what they try everyday. I would lie if that doesn’t appeal to my imagination, but think about it. Because VC’s have funds they need to keep alive, cashing out is their goal. If building a bad product allows them to cash out, they will. And if that affects you and your users, too bad. Needs to happen. Your customers know that. It’s like the banking world, it’s all about he money!

When a new YouTube enters your market, you want to be able and say: ‘Our users love us, let’s improve our product even more and show that new competitor who we are‘. You want to be credited for creating a product loved by users, not raising another $20 million dollar of funding.