Category: Amsterdam

Een lang en grondig interview met Cody Hochstenbach over de wooncrisis in Nederland. Studio Tegengif is een favoriete podcast wat een soort Nederlandse versie van The Weeds lijkt te worden.

Daar ook genoemd dit gênante bericht over hoe in Nederland de dakloosheid blijft stijgen, een door en door door de politiek gecreëerd probleem.

https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/onderzoek/artikel/4775611/economisch-dakloos-thuisloos-werkenden-zonder-huis-opvang

Lifestyle Liquidations

https://www.groene.nl/artikel/broer-ik-heb-mijn-9mm-helemaal-geleegd

A very revealing article about the liquidation wave in the Netherlands of the past years. Some of the interesting points:

  • Things started going off after the police decided not to spend too much attention on victimless crimes (drugs) anymore. This allowed the drug trade (mostly cocaine) to get out of hand without too many people noticing it.
  • A lot of kids are at risk to roll into this world because they have a bad start, problems at home and at school and they want the fast money that crime offers.
  • The people you see driving around the big cars or on Instagram have probably never had a regular job in their life.
  • One way for a kid to make headway into the organization (and also financially) is by doing a hit which nets around €50-60k.

Not enough popcorn in the world to read this exposé on Booking.com.

Let’s just say that if almost everybody tells you not to write your website in Perl and you still insist on it, then you deserve all of the consequences of that decision.

But they seem to be making so much money than most of the dysfunctionality in the article does not really affect the company.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2019/oud-werknemers-over-booking.com-het-is-een-grote-chaos/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fpinboard.in%2Fu%3Aalper%2Funread%2F

Talk at Emerce Tech Live in Amsterdam

Last Tuesday I gave a talk at EMERCE Tech Live on the main stage of the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. It was a lovely event and it was fun being back in Amsterdam however briefly.

It was a business focussed practical riff on my ‘Designing Conversational Interfaces’ talk that may have blown some people’s minds. So it goes!

Tech Live! 22

Tech Live! 24

A post shared by Alper Cugun (@alper) on

Now on stage @alper on conv interfaces. The good and bad. The power of simplicity #tel17

A post shared by Iskander Smit (@iskandr) on

A post shared by Iskander Smit (@iskandr) on

ThingsCon Amsterdam 2016 Talk

Week 328

Travel is making it hard to keep up writing these notes weekly (or write anything for that matter). So this blog is turning into an expensive affair.

Today's office. Off to Munich in a bit.

Way back when this happened I was in the Netherlands for an appointment that was cancelled and because of that I had to fly to Munich from Amsterdam for a day of workshopping. The next night I flew back to Amsterdam to spend the rest of the week at Hubbub HQ in the Netherlands.

Dutch life

We did our strategic sessions about which I probably have written elsewhere already but this was as good a time as any to revisit this brilliant interview with Jack Schulze. They don’t make them like that anymore.

No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think. No one cares what you do, unless you think about what you do. No one ever really cares what you say.

Advice to frame and put above your desk.

Got it explained: gay cover band of Black Flag

Today's office

The last day I did a coffee tour of Amsterdam, which is in utter bloom at this moment with Third Wave coffee places opening up literally left and right. I paid a duty visit to BrunsNiks which is one of the best up and coming design firms of that city where most stuff is bullshit.

Today's office

What is also brilliant are the new Hackers and Founders offices of the eponymous meetup group. My old office in the Volkskrantgebouw got evicted because they are turning that into a hotel (like pretty much everything in Amsterdam) so they got together with the neighbors of Bottlenose and some other friends and rented a nice floor smack in Amsterdam city centre. I can’t take any credit for what they did but still I’m half proud of what that turned into.

It is the birth right of every Amsterdammer to cycle underneath the Rijks and that's what I just did.

And that segued nicely into the speaker’s dinner for our Hack de Overheid event (which got a nice press release drop over at Wired thanks to Bruce). The event, the next day in City Hall, was one where all of the founders were present at one and the same location. That already was amazing. After the day was finished I spent the evening talking philosophy with Simeon.

Probably my favorite new addition to the Amsterdam coffee scene. #nofilter

And the next day it was back in the train to Berlin which has added a whole hour because the flooding has damaged a bridge and caused a large stretch of tracks to be dislodged. Deutsche Bahn says that reconstruction will take until December. That may be just in time for next year’s flooding.

App demoes

Week 324

Bicycle madness

Two weeks ago I headed towards Amsterdam where I’ll be the week after next again. I did a massive sprint on Cuppings and prepared my presentation for Sign of Times in Pakhuis de Zwijger.

I worked on a bunch of projects over at Hubbub on Tuesday and on Wednesday I was there again but then to prepare my presentation. That talk went really well despite the torrential rains of the day and I had a great time catching up with the people who had showed up.

I caught up with Daphne on Thursday and wandered around the city a bit looking for good coffe which I found at the newly opened Head First.

Well executed artisanal coffee/roaster play

I finally ended up at the presentations of the Liquid Journalism masterclass and got to talk with Alexander and Laura.

On Friday Kars got married which was the other main reason I was in the Netherlands for.