Patrick de Laive

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Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

Yesterday, while Dave Sifry was signing my suit a asked him which book he was reading at this very point. He grabbed a book out of his suitcase and said: “The Starfish and the Spider“. And guess what…. The author was attending the conference as well! His name is Rod Beckstrom and he is a very nice guy. We chatted a little bit and since my dinner date (Felix Petersen -Plazes-) already left the conference we decided to have dinner with two great Germans (who knew their way around in Munich).
It was a really nice dinner, we chatted about his new ideas for his books and Rod bought me a bottle of champagne to celebrate my 28th birthday (which is coming up tomorrow).

Rod is a very inspiring guy and I can recommend reading his book (that’s what I’m gonna do in the train back to Amsterdam as I got a signed copy of his book!)

Thanks Rod, a pleasure to meet you.

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Ok I’m a young guy and like to have fun have a laugh and jump from one toppic to another. DLD is a great conference, everything is arranged perfectly, speakers are treated as stars, attendees are well treated (kind of like groupies). The food is great, the people are amazing, the content is ok. With ok I mean that I believe that they can get more out of this enormous impressive list of speakers.
A lot of monotone speeches. I’m missing the: I love the web and I try to change the world and this is how we’re going to do this. I think I miss the startup vibe.

Altogether, I think it is a very good conference (I met a lot of interesting people) and I’m really glad I took the train!

Andy Wood, just gave a glimps of what must be the future of digital movies.
It is really interesting to see how this works. They change human expressions into a mathematical equation and from there on they can put any actor / person into any avatar / person….
Hmmm this is hard to explain, the best thing to do is see for yourself!

pretty cool huh?

This morning I left Amsterdam to go to the DLD conference in Munich. I booked a flight with Virgin-express (the cheapest of the cheapest) from Brussels to Munich. When I say that I have a habit to forget stuff it’s an understatement. Boris always makes fun of me when a re-enter the room (like the detective colombo and Steve Jobs) and say: oh One More Thing… I forgot my keys, money, jacket, computer, iPod, helmet, etc.

I was a little bit late and before me there was an American (John) buying a ticket to brussels and wanted to pay with credit card, which wasn’t possible (off course! Hey we’re talking about the Dutch Railroads here. The least innovative company in the world!), so I decided to pay for his first class ticket and for his wife; in total 214 euros (otherwise I would mis my train!) I gave him my card with my bank account number on it, so he could transfer the money back to me. So that was my good deed for the day. In the end I was just in time for my train that would drop me at Brussels Airport one and a half hours before departure. Once I was at the airport a strange feeling came up in me, I knew I forgot something, but this time it was different. It felt like a REALLY forgot something, but I didn’t had a clue what…. And then it came! I saw the hostess of Virgin-Express and immediately I could feel my hart in my throat, I knew it!!!

SHIT I FORGOT MY PASSPORT!

Bye bye Munich, there was no way to get in the plane without the original papers. My roomie faxed me my drivers license and my passport (thanks), but it didn’t matter. The plane took of without me. I felt like a big time loser! I wanted to get back in the train to Amsterdam (3 hours) lock myself up in my room and stay there for at least a week without a phone or my computer.

So what should I do…? I re-manned (that’s not an english word I believe) myself and got into the train. The destination: Munich!

Apart from the fact that a train is 3 times more expensive than the plane, it is not a bad option, it has a bar and you can charge your computer, phone and iPod under your seat! I worked the whole way
I’ll arrive at 2 o’clock at night in my 13 euro a night hotel. I hope to get some sleep and then tomorrow…. finally DLD
I feel a lot better already (although I’m traveling without a passport, cannot go back by plane, I can get caught for not having any ID on me )

I tried to meet all of them for some years already, but for one reason or the other they are never where I am, not even in my favorite coffee bar!
But, my luck might be changing!! I got an invitation for the DLD conference (Digital Life Design) in Munich this weekend. And guess who will be there as well…..?

Good guess!

Unfortunately I’ll miss the performance of Nicolas Negroponte because the cheapest airline I could find only goes once a day at 16:20 hrs.

I have some ideas for some cool podcasts live from the conference, so it is time to get myself an audio recording device. The problem is that my birthday is just after the conference (the 24th) and I can’t afford one at the moment…
So the question is… Who is willing to lend me (or even better buy me) an audio recording device this weekend?
How about this… if you can lend/buy me the device I’ll make each one of them say your (company) name
I’m pretty exited to go and I’m looking forward to meet up with Tariq.

Marketingfacts is speculating that Myspace has plans to enter the dutch social network market. MySpace is looking for a designer in Amsterdam.
But if I may speculate I think that MySpace will not be the new hyves killer, I think they’re buying it! For the last year more and more rumors of a sell were buzzing around. But let’s take a short look at possible buyers….
- KPN? No way, the’re to big and bureaucratic to maintain the freshness of hyves. Hyves will get sucked up into the corporate culture and BOOM no more hyves.
- VNU I sure believe that they want to. They probably ringed the doorbell at Hyves HQ multiple times, because there afraid there not getting a piece of the pie (and they know they cannot build a social network that can compete with hyves themselves).
- De Telegraaf? Another publisher. Same story.
- oh and I even heard a rumor that ABN AMRO was interested!!! But let’s forget that immediately
The problem is that if a Dutch company takes over Hyves, it will lose all its charms within a blink off an eye. everybody will say that the founder we’re looking for cash and don’t care about what will happen next to the company.
I believe that hyves can only be bought by a company from abroad. Yes, I’m talking Yahoo, MySpace here. And let’s be honest, these are the only ones who will know how to handle hyves, who can stay innovative and cutting edge and who can deliver new features for its users.

Ok, Myspace normally don’t buy a local company and just starts its own local Myspace (as they did in Germany, UK, and last week France, Ireland, Italy and Spain). But The Netherlands might be just a little bit different for an outsider. We are Dutch, we like to be proud of what we do or produce, we drink Heineken if we’re on holiday and we certainly will not switch social network just because MySpace says so. No we are proud of our Dutch Hyves entrepreneurs Floris, Raymond and Koen and we will stick with them.
I believe that the reason that MySpace didn’t introduce a Dutch version last week has everything to do with the fact that they understand that we Dutchies are different and that they consider buying Hyves (besides the facts that some hyvers have been seen on the Zuid-As (read Corporate Finance city).

I might be wrong, but it makes jsut no sense for MySpace to enter the Dutch market.

Today must be my lucky day! I won a million euros in the European Lottery!!! and there is more…. I won it not once but 5 times! What are the odds of winning 5 itmes a million a day!

Sir/Madam,

CONGRATULATIONS: YOU WON 1,000,000.00 EUROS.

We are pleased to inform you of the result of Euro Millions
Sweepstake,which was held on December
16, 2006. Your e-mail address attached to e-ticket number: 05-32-44-45-50
(01-07),with Prize Number :
106000007 drew a prize of 1,000,000.00 (One Million Euros). This lucky draw
came first in the
2nd Category of theSweepstake.

I must be the luckiest guy in the world.

They told me also that I couldn’t tell anybody until I received the money (ooops)

Awaiting how I can collect this five million……..

It’s official!

The Next Web Conference will be held on the first of June in Amsterdam.

The Next Web is for technology entrepreneurs, VC’s, industry journalists, influential bloggers, Top Notch developers, forward thinking CEO’s and though leaders only.

At the beginning of February we will open up registration.

Yesterday we reloaded Macrumors 895 times within the hour to stay up to date on the announcements of Steve Jobs during the MacWorld Keynote 2007. It was a great experience, although there was no live stream we we’re very happy with our page every five seconds strategy to get up to the second information on what Steve was saying.

Steve rose in my top ten heroes with ease to the second place (after Johan Cruyff). Wow what is he good at that stuff!

Next to the five second reload strategy we opened up a real time connection with Yahoo finance to check the stock quotes of Apple, RIMM (creator of blackberry), and Palm. It was amazing to see how fast the information was incorporated in the stock prices of Apple and Rimm (Palm followed a little later).
Check out the three graphs for the different stocks. (first is Apple, second RIMM, third Palm)



The Keynote begun 15 minutes late at 12:45 pm Just before the start people were dropping Apple stock, probably because they were afraid that Steve couldn’t live up to the high expectations. RIMM investors were already having a hard time, because rumors of a blackberry killer spread throughout the internet. So the tendens of RIMM was downwards as of the opening.

12:45pm Jobs opens the Keynote stating that: “Today we’re going to make history together”
Apple jumps 2.5% immediately | RIMM falls 3 dollars in a split second (about 2.5%) to 135 dollar | PALM investors are still sleeping.

12:47 - 01:10pm Jobs introduced Apple TV. Nothing to be really exited about.
Apple stays around $88 | RIMM feww… its only TV nothing to be worried about. stays at $135 | PALM “huh, is Steve Jobs doing a Keynote?” no movement there.

01:11pm Jobs announced 3 new revolutionary products:

“The first is a Widescreen iPod with touch controls! (big applause)! The second is a revolutionary Mobile Phone (Crowd get wild!!!) The third is a Breakthrough Internet Communications device (small applause)! An iPod, a phone, and a internet communicator… An iPod, a phone, are you getting it? These are NOT 3 different devices this is ONE device and we are calling it iPhone (Standing Ovation)! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”

Apple ‘no stocks for sale, it’s a buyers market’ Boom up two dollars! | RIMM with the word Mobile phone there was no more support at 135, the trend was down. Down boy down | PALM ‘oh my god JObs just blown us away, we can pack our bags’ SEEELLLLLL!

01:38pm Finally Jobs gives us the prices! $499 for 4GB and $599 for an 8GB iPhone in combination with a two year subscription with Cingular!
Apple: KABOOM this will really boost revenues! up 8.3%! | RIMM and PALM keep on sinking to the bottom (respectively minus 7.8 and minus 5.7 percent off their market cap.)

02:00pm No more news, the show is over. Investors calming down and settling the prices.

At the end of the day Apple gained over 6.1 Billion in market cap. RIMM lost 2 billion and Palm only lost 800 million of their total market cap of 1.42 billion!

So it would have been a nice strategy to go long in Apple and short in RIMM and PALM, right?

See also:
Tracking 2007 Macworld Keynote and stock price AAPL
Engadget

Auch, the design of my blog hurt my eyes! And I wasn’t the only one who was complaining. Boris asked me the other day to find a new wordpress theme and he installed it with all the nice looking stuff in it. A lot more eye candy. Thanks Boris.