Tomorrow Dutch Internet Service Provider XS4ALL celebrates their 15th birthday by holding a one day event about internet and society. 15 years ago, XS4ALL started making the internet available to everyone in Holland. Their motto for dealing with the Internet and technology and the impact those can have on society is “Fear It? Fix It!” or FIFI for short. That is also the name of the conference.
FIFI will be a great conference about internet and society. Creative users, internet entrepreneurs, scientists and government officials will all come together to speak and listen, debate current affairs, participate in workshops and download inspiration. Even the world’s first cyborg will be there.
Dutch members of parliament Alexander Pechtold, Hans Franken and Arda Gerkens will discuss new visions on privacy in an interactive debate in which the entire audience can participate using Synthetron’s interactive brainstorming tool. Hackers will perform a social engineering hack live on stage. There will be a hardrocking robot drummer, Giant Levelhead, a workshop Ikea hacking and much, much more.
Much more? Yes. From their press release: “Internet entrepreneur and guru Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten will tell us about how the internet makes us omnipotent and immortal”.
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Written on October 15, 2008 – 9:47 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Maybe you’re still in doubt whether you should come to BLOG08. Or you might need to convince your boss or fiancée? The five reasons will make it easier for you.
2. Super vloggers Gabe Mac (Mobuzz) and Loren Feldman will spice up the place with live shows.
3. With all this financial crisis sensationalism buzzing around, you NEED a break. Get out of that office, get inspired, have fun, meet new people, and do business.
4. It will be a conference unlike any other conference, with a lot of surprising stuff. Trust me, it will be an experience that sticks.
5. This is the chance to meet cool bloggers (Pete Cashmore, Hugh MacLeod and a lot more), serial entrepreneurs (Scott Rafer, our own Boris), crazy vloggers (see point 2), inspiring attendees, journalists and speakers. All in an intimate but kick ass setting.
Bonus: Because you rock!
Tickets are 195 euros, grab one now. I look forward welcoming you in Amsterdam next week.
P.S. Really, the one reason I can think of when it’s OK not to go would be when you had those Morgan Stanley stocks and are now chilling on the Cayman Islands while reading this post on your Kindle.
Written on October 6, 2008 – 9:06 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
As you might know, I’m co-organizing BLOG08 - the international blogging conference in Amsterdam on October 24 (see button in the sidebar). Edial Dekker and I have invited famous blogging heroes like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Gapingvoid’s Hugh MacLeod, and CEO of Lookery, Scott Rafer to inspire (corporate) bloggers all around the world. So far, people from Poland, the US, Sweden, Estonia, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands have purchased tickets.
Nobody from France yet, but this might change as we recently ran into French hero Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur. Business Week just called him one of the 25 most influential web people. We couldn’t resist the temptation of interviewing him. He talks about why he started blogging, how his blog developed, the Les Blogs conference, and that we should focus on micro- and videoblogging.
By the way, if you want to come to BLOG08, buy your ticket before October 10th with the “thenextweb” code. Not only will you get a 45 euros discount (price: 150 euros) but you also have the chance of winning an invite for the speakers dinner at Boris’ place.
Written on October 3, 2008 – 3:50 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Amiz.fr, a French social network with over two million members has been acquired by French Steek SA. But the buying party isn’t all too interesting if you take the selling guys in account. Two Dutch fellas, Sebastiaan Moeys (19) and Tijmen Crone (20), founded the network in the summer of 2006 - right after highschool graduation.
The service offers its members various ways of communication and self-expression through messaging, blogging, pictures, videos and music - the usual social network stuff. But like more national networks - StudiVZ in Germany and Hyves in Holland - it grew rapidly to the before mentioned two million users.
Rumors about a possible exit buzzed around on TechCrunch France last Wednesday. In a press release, Moeys confirmed them today. He told me earlier that they had been facing scalability problems but that users kept coming back anyway. Moeys: “”The network wasn’t sold at its peak traffic. But given the large base of members, the service obviously didn’t go for free”. It didn’t make him a millionaire though. Exact financial details were not disclosed.
The release also mentions that Hyves and Netlog were also interested parties, they didn’t make the cut though.
Written on July 11, 2008 – 5:54 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Your blogger waisted six hours of his life on a friggin’ phone today. The only Dutch operator that offers the iPhone 3G couldn’t handle (Dutch link) the data load the activation process required. The result? Every single iPhone had to be registered by calling up the T-Mobile headquarters. When you take in account that all the iPhone-selling stores had to do this, you won’t be surprised to hear that waiting times to get a hold of a T-Mobile HQ employee were as long as 80 minutes. That crisis resulted in a very bizarre daily schedule for me:
The line at T-Mobile store, hope you dig my yellow shoes
7 am: Getting up - jumping on my bicycle to go to Amsterdam’s largest T-Mobile Store in the Kalverstraat. 7.30 am: Arriving at the store, a forty-year old Apple fanboy hands me a coffee. There are around 30 people waiting. 8 am: Store manager hands out numbers, there are only 35 iPhones available. Just enough for the people who are already waiting. I have number 24. 9.30 am: Store opens: first lucky seven enter the store. 9.35 am: System crashes. From now on it takes around 90 minutes per customer. 11.00 am: Most of the people who were part of the first round have left the store. 28 people and I realize we’re here for quite a while. Especially as T-Mobile employees help out four friends who have just arrived. When customers tell the store manager this, he acts like he has no idea of what’s going on. 12.15 pm: The store manager now makes the same mistake and helps out a friend of his. He then disappears. 1.00 pm: Finally! There’s my number. Let’s buy that shiny object. 1.45 pm: I’m lucky since the guy who sells my iPhone manages to reach T-Mobile HQ pretty fast. It only took me thirty minutes to buy the phone. Pity that I had to wait for five hours and thirty minutes to do so.
O2 also suffered from technical glitches - causing waiting lines of 90 minutes. Mobile Computer interviewed visitors no. 2 and 3 at the London Regent Street Apple Store - who left early because the whole buying process took to long:
Update: there’s a new gadget around, called the iBrick.
Written on June 17, 2008 – 8:25 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Today is a good day. From now on I can use broadband Internet wherever I am in my city. Even when I’m riding my bicycle or chilling in my favorite bar. As Worldmax - partly funded by Intel and Greenfield - launched a mobile version of the Wimax standard today.
CEO Jeanine van der Vlist told Reuters that Worldmax is aiming to roll-out a nationwide network, which will require 30,000 sites. The costs of this ambitious project will run into hundreds of millions euros.
Worldmax will charge around 20 euros per month for a subscription, which will grant laptop users unlimited use of data. As you can imagine, mobile operator won’t be happy with the arrival of this new player. Since they have already been desperately trying to prevent people from using VOiP and other services that threaten their revenue sources.
Holland isn’t the first country that welcomes Wimax, as Vodafone already offers the service in Malta. However, these Wimax sites don’t allow browsing on the move - as a laptop has to be stationary to connect with the web.
Written on June 12, 2008 – 11:18 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When I visited San Francisco a few weeks ago, I noticed that people got really excited when I told them I’m from Amsterdam. Not for the obvious reasons - “oh you guys smoke pot all the time, right?” - but just for the reputation of Holland’s capital. When I got back in Amsterdam, somebody told me we partly owe this reputation to Mediamatic, a cultural organization that organizes exhibitions, presentations, workshops, and more things on these lines. They’re now organizing an evening about DIY and the web, which appears to be pretty interesting. The event goes by the name of “Say Yes / No to the Internet” and is part of a series of evenings on The Power of Negative Thinking.
According to the people from Mediamatic, there’s a yes-yes-mentality today:
Everyone seems gay these days. This lack of conflicting emotions fails to arouse alternative passions. Here, every critical position dissolves.
So by organizing evenings as “Say Yes / No to the Internet“, Mediamatic wants to stimulate you and me to break from this positive consensus. We must make negative statements about anything and in this particular case, the web.
Three speakers address examples of Do it yourself and the web. Brian McKenna’s talk has the title “Proprietary Hardware Do It Youself vs. the Ever Elusive Potential of Software”, Harm van den Dorpel discusses life changing experiences on the web, and Roald de Boer will hold a lecture about porn on the Internet. De Boer will look into the history of porn, especially porn movies, and the amateurish aspect of porn. He will show how images evolved and tries to answer the question whether Internet created a new pornographic language.
So if you’re in the neighborhood and not into football (Holland will defeat France that night), you might want to drop by the PostCS building in Amsterdam. It can be inspiring and refreshing to hear a more philosophical talk about the web, instead of all the start-up bla bla all the time.
Written on April 8, 2008 – 1:55 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
This week we’re interviewing Marco Menato, CEO of Wauw! Wee. This start-up presented at The Next Web Conference , which got them a write-up on TechCrunch. One problem though: Wauw is a Dutch version of Wow and non-Dutch speakers don’t seem to get that. TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld called it Wuaw! consistently. Commenter Matt said what the guys from Wauw! Wee probably experienced: “Imagine the excitement over bieng in a TC post… then to see your brandName misspelled at every… single… instance…. ouch”.
Wauw! Wee makes it easy to upload pictures and text to your site and networks by using your mobile phone. Read here how they got the idea and how it went from there.
How did you come up with the idea of Wauw! Wee?
“24access Solutions had been in business for a few years when I arrived 6 months ago, and they had brought good product to market, including Mobile Media Center - a PC download that offered to shift several entertainment media from PC to mobile handset. When I was asked to take the role of CEO I was impressed by the technical know-how in the company but realized that the product was highly reliant for its success on mobile operators, their infrastructure and pricing policies. The idea for Wauw! Wee was really borne of observing several trends in PC/mobile convergence, appreciation of the company’s legacy know-how in mobile handsets, as well as pragmatically adapting to the networks’ current ability to support mobile streaming. (more…)
Written on March 31, 2008 – 8:47 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
This Thursday something special is going to happen. At 6pm Amsterdam time Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht will enter the main conference room of The Next Web. There they will record Diggnation episode nr 148 on a white couch in front of an audience of almost a thousand people!
We’re going to have a lot of fun. The recording can be attended by all attendees of The Next Web Conference and Diggnation fans (who do not attend the conference) can join us for free in the Transformatorhuis in Amsterdam. We’ll open the doors 5:30pm. There is limited room and if it is full it is full, so be on time.
As not all fans live in or nearby Amsterdam, we’ve come up with a solution. We’re going to live stream it. We’re serious here, this is not a live stream with a mobile client using Qik or Ustream, no this is the real stuff. We’ve teamed up with NOS, Cross Media Ventures, Team.tv, and TechCrunch (media partner), to make this stream available for thousands and thousands of people, no matter where you live. The infrastructure used here is similar to the infrastructure used for massive events like upcoming European Soccer Championships and the Olympic Games, so we’re prepared for huge crowds.
You can tune in here or at revision 3, but if you want you can be part of this as well. We’ll provide an embeddable code for your blog, leave a comment with your blog url and we’ll ping you when the embeddable player is ready (some hours before the start of Diggnation).
If there is a world record for watching an internet event via a live stream, I’d say, lets digg it… I mean break it!
Amsterdam (The Netherlands) will be buzzing on April 3, 2008 when Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht will present and record their famous Diggnation show during the third edition of The Next Web Conference.
Diggnation is the biggest weekly online TV show averaging 500.000 viewers per episode. It is highly popular and influential amongst internet professionals. This will be the first time that Diggnation will be recorded from the European mainland and The Next Web Conference is very proud to host this unique event.
Diggnation is breaking new grounds for web-based video and as a testament Virgin America has recently announced that they will include Diggnation in their entertainment systems. Diggnation has sprung out of Digg.com and discusses the most funny and bizarre news of the week on the web.
Diggnation is one of the shows of Revision3, founded by Kevin Rose, David Prager and Jay Adelson, is the internet TV leader for the next generation.
Written on November 27, 2008 – 4:35 pm
Tomorrow Dutch Internet Service Provider XS4ALL celebrates their 15th birthday by holding a one day event about internet and society. 15 years ago, XS4ALL started making the internet available to everyone in Holland. Their motto for dealing with the Internet and technology and the impact those can have on society is “Fear It? Fix It!” or FIFI for short. That is also the name of the conference.
Written on October 15, 2008 – 9:47 pm
The service offers its members various ways of communication and self-expression through messaging, blogging, pictures, videos and music - the usual social network stuff. But like more national networks - StudiVZ in Germany and Hyves in Holland - it grew rapidly to the before mentioned two million users.
CEO Jeanine van der Vlist 
“24access Solutions had been in business for a few years when I arrived 6 months ago, and they had brought good product to market, including Mobile Media Center - a PC download that offered to shift several entertainment media from PC to mobile handset. When I was asked to take the role of CEO I was impressed by the technical know-how in the company but realized that the product was highly reliant for its success on mobile operators, their infrastructure and pricing policies. The idea for Wauw! Wee was really borne of observing several trends in PC/mobile convergence, appreciation of the company’s legacy know-how in mobile handsets, as well as pragmatically adapting to the networks’ current ability to support mobile streaming. 
Written on March 31, 2008 – 8:47 pm
We’re going to have a lot of fun. The recording can be attended by all attendees of The Next Web Conference and Diggnation fans (who do not attend the conference) can join us for free in the Transformatorhuis in Amsterdam. We’ll open the doors 5:30pm. There is limited room and if it is full it is full, so be on time.
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
