Patrick de Laive

Dit zegt genoeg over de Google…

Originally uploaded by sandervdv.

We’re (The fleckers) in Berlin at Web2.0 Conference, produced by O’Reilly. Yesterday we arrived at the venue (which is around 20 km outside of Berlin) after an all night long Road trip in Boris’ car (really fun).
I’ve been to several sessions and one of them was about OpenSocial, given by Google.

I’ve seen multiple talks of GOOG representatives and they all had one thing in common: They were all boring. I think the reason for that is that they always talk about things everybody already knows and do not elaborate about the future of Google, their strategy and thoughts. They do not inspire the audience.
Yesterday it was the same all over again. Google talking about OpenSocial sounds really interesting and inspiring, but I didn’t hear one thing I didn’t know, not one thing that made me think, not one thing that grabbed me and gave me an excuse (if you need one) to discuss things after the session with other participants.

Disclosure: I fell asleep during the session, so I might have missed the interesting parts

I love to cook, but lately haven’t found much time to do so. In my search for new good recipes I found this talented cook (age 2) making the best dishes ever. It is really funny and as it turned out (by a real coincidence) that this is my 2 year old cousin, I checked with the mom and she secured me that it was 100% safe…

So enjoy the next Jamie Oliver, his (stage)name is: Le Petit Chef

I already heard rumors that Le Petit Chef is in the making of his own cookbook

Next week I’ll go to Parma and Florence. In Parma (Thursday) I’ll meet David Weinberger (my favorite author on technology and business) and will go to Florence to work there for 2 days out of some local quality coffee bars.
If you have tips for Parma or Florence, please let me know. Also if you know of any cool startups there, I’d love to meet up and hang around (or work at their office for a couple of hours). My network in these cities is very limited, so every help is welcome

I’ve been asked to write about and review business books on expertlog.nl. Today my first book review was published including a video interview with the author (recorded in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley).

The review also ended on the front page of Sprout as well with a great title:

“Decentrale organisaties zijn onverslaanbaar”

in English: ‘Decentralized organizations are unstoppable’

I’m working on my second book (and interview with the author). If you have suggestions, know an author of a good businessbook, or are the author of one, feel free to leave a comment (or ping me).

I included the video interview here. Check the article at expertlog

Here you can see me fail on the bowling lane

Afterwards a short interview about bowling (Cruijffiaans).

Well, at least for Patrick’s Dating Show.

After my previous post on my new dating concept where I use Facebook flyers to market the concept , the founders of Hyves reminded me via email that it is possible and cheaper (well, that is something to be seen) to put up targeted ads on hyves as well.
And as they really likes the concept they even upgraded my account with some virtual euros so I can have the first 20000 views for zero real euros (still get it? ).

I immediately put up the same add as I did on facebook, targeted at girls between 25 and 30, living in amsterdam. The only difference is that I cannot target the ads to single women, but that is just a minor difference.

This is really getting to be an interesting experiment and I’m getting a little bit nervous as well… The possibility that people I know will see the ad has increased exponentially now that the ad is up on Hyves. At first it was a nice little innocent experiment, but now it is really for real!

So I think it is time to add a tagline to the concept. How about this:

Patrick’s Dating show
Girls from Facebook vs Girls from Hyves

I was having troubles with getting an ad on facebook for my dating show (still having fun with this brainwave ).
I wasn’t the only one, it appears that facebook is only accepting American Creditcards (or at least no Dutch ones). Probably because they cannot verify contact addresses outside of the US.

I know a lot of people who tried to get their ad on Facebook, and they all faces the same problem. Dorothee came up with the idea to use a US credit card and yesterday I was having a meeting with Travis Choma (he’s Canadian) and I asked him if he happened to have a US credit card… Turned out that he did. He put my add on Facebook!!!

And it seems that I’m one of the first one in the Netherlands running an ad (That is so cool!)

I’m paying 5 cents per click with a max of 5 euros a day. Let’s see how this goes.

Lennaert, the lead developer of fleck, did an interview about his project (with Bram and Boris) Twittermail.
It is a pretty nice video interview on nu.nl

Two months ago, the founder of Twitter (Biz Stone) was in Rotterdam and at a dinner at Boris’ parents place he met the Twittermail guys. I happen to have “exclusive” footage

See Twitter vs Twittermail video below.

I will not say that we (the meganova team) are favorite to win the highly valued Blue Bowlr Ball, but this piece of bowl art of Boris shows that we’re up for it.
And this was only the first training session coached by Tony van Wezep!

Fun

Originally uploaded by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten.

This morning the 801 office (Fleck, Wakoopa, Twones, Meganova) went to Knijn to train and scan the venue for the Bowlr event (I know, still a bit early ). We had lots of fun and learned a lot. As always… “het venijn zit ‘m in de staart” in the 10th frame, Sander and I both threw a TURKEY!

Tony van Wezep, our bowlr coach made this picture with boris’ camera