Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 1st May 2009
2 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Hugh MacLeod by Anne Helmond
A few months ago I hosted a dinner at my place where Hugh MacLeod was a guest. His “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” are beautiful and world famous. A few of my friends have drawings made specifically for them. Unfortunately I don’t have one.
That evening, as I was cleaning the room I found a ripped up business card underneath one of the dinner plates. It turned out to be a discarded drawing by Hugh MacLeod. I hid my treasure on a shelf somewhere and cleaned up the room.
Then I forgot about it.
Yesterday I was rearranging some stuff around the house and found a stack of ripped up papers. I threw the whole batch in a trash can. As I did that I suddenly noticed a familiar pattern on one of the snippets I just threw away. It was the MacLeod drawing!
I turned the trash can over and collected all the snippets from between the rubbish. Then I sat down at my desk and rearranged the snippets back into shape so I could see the drawing. I also made a quick photo with my iPhone. This is it:
[Hugh MacLeod: Penis 2.0]
This morning I wanted to take the drawing to the office to take a better photo to publish here. But it seems that this image just wasn’t meant to exist.
First MacLeod destroyed it.
But not good enough.
Then I forgot it.
But I found it again.
Then I threw it away.
But I recollected it from the trash can.
This morning the cleaning guy threw everything away thinking it was just old paper. he also took the bags out an they were taken away by the garbage men before I realized what had happened.
The whole story might almost be good enough to inspire a new cartoon.
Hugh? Please?
Written on 24th November 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Hugh MacLeod has recently published a few cartoons in color and I’m liking it. Especially when they’re as catchy and sharp as this one. If you’re also NOT an addict, check out the Apps section of the enormous Twitter Fan Wiki.
Chris Messina started the page in April 2007. Since then, hundreds of Twitter junkies have added their favorite apps to this list. Browse through it for and find the perfect shot in the form of an application.
To help you select the best apps, let’s all mention our favorite apps here. Mine are Tweetdeck, Twitteriffic, Mobypicture (photos), Tweetburner (track url’s), and the Wordpress plugin Twitter Tools.
Written on 11th November 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I’m touring around China with bloggers. I hope to give you as many updates as possible about this land of endless opportunities. Thanks to Spil Games for sponsoring me.
In March I wrote a post about the fact that Facebook means “doomed to die” in Chinese. I also mentioned some other East Asian misunderstandings. While I’m touring China, I see tons of other cultural differences that make the interaction between China and the west even more interesting. To give you an idea, I’ll highlight some examples the coming days.
Blogger and writer Shel Israel experienced one of those cultural differences first hand. He now has two sets of business cards – of which one is for Chinese people, as his normal business cards have lead to some misunderstandings while meeting web professionals here in China.
The card I got says “Writer. Speaker. Nice Guy” as his title and has the following Hugh MacLeod cartoon on the back:
But that’s not the one Israel hands out to Chinese business relations, he told me. “They don’t have the same kind of humor”, Israel says. “I had to explain what lifestyle I referred to and then they still didn’t get why anyone would put that on his card.” Joking around with your job title also didn’t have the planned effect. Some people actually thought that being a nice guy was an actual role in the American corporate world.
So take this lesson from Israel. If you have an original business card, think about the effect it can have on people from a different culture. Same goes for your personal branding online, of course.
Written on 27th October 2008
11 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last Friday, Amsterdam was the scene of Holland’s first international blog conference BLOG08. Pete Cashmore (Mashable), Loren Feldman (1938media.com), Hugh MacLeod (Gapingvoid), and Scott Rafer (Lookery) all crossed the ocean to tell the European crowd how they could turn their blog in a successful one. Two of them, namely Cashmore and Rafer, focused on monetizing blogs.
Nobody wants money?
When the Mashable founder asked the crowd about monetizing, something noteworthy occurred. Anne Helmond reports:
When asked, hardly anyone in the room actually wants to monetize its blog. Pete is kind of surprised, especially if he asks the same question in the US where everyone raises their hands.
Language barriers
At first, I wasn’t really surprised. After all, most BLOG08 attendees report for a rather small group compared to bloggers who write in English. A Dutch blogger for example, only has an audience of 17 million people. Americans have a crowd of at least 300 million readers at their disposal.
What did struck me as odd was the reluctant attitude of most visitors towards money. Like it’s some kind of crime.
More revenue means more time for blogging
I’ve been blogging for a year before I made some money out of it. And ever since I started doing that, my blogging skills improved. More revenue means more time for blogging. I was able to quit my sorry day job and spend more time on reporting about tech.
A precondition on making some money with blogging is writing in English. Simply because you can reach a larger crowd. That’s not something I came up with. No, one of Holland’s most remarkable journalists, Nico Haasbroek, once told me that.
Write your articles in English, German, or French, so you can sell them to any magazine or newspaper.
Content producers should not be involved with advertising
Sure, my English isn’t perfect yet. But thanks to the euros earned, I can soon start following some English lessons. While I’m doing that, I keep another rather important lesson in mind. As read in Michael A. Banks’ Blogging Heroes, stated by Ken Fisher from Ars Technica:
Content producers should not be involved with advertising, to avoid even the appearance of advertised-influenced content.
So, work your ass off, create great content, and find an advertising partner like Federated Media as soon as you can make money out of your blog.
[Photo credit: Floris Dekker]
Written on 15th October 2008
4 COMMENTS
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.
1. We have great and inspiring speakers who all master a different online publishing skill.
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 16th June 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Sometimes it’s frustrating being an Internet entrepreneur in Europe. It has all kind of advantages – such as the localization, small and easily accessible communities, and more that I probably don’t have to tell you about. But there’s one thing missing, the magical vibe of San Francisco and the Valley – the “we’re changing the world” kind of thing. As the European industry is fragmented in a dozen cities or more, yet in the Valley everybody’s gathered in one creative focal point. So for us, Europeans, there’s a limited community experience going on.
Esther Dyson talking to Clay Shirky (photo by
Geodog)
And now I’m in San Francisco at Supernova 2008, where “CEOs and bloggers, entrepreneurs and academics, practitioners and visionaries, policy experts and industry thought leaders share insights and build relationships.” See? That’s the “we’re changing the world”-mentality I was talking about. I’m surrounded by influentials and leaders like Esther Dyson, Hugh MacLeod, Clay Shirky, Bob Iannucci, Scott Beale and Jeff Clavier who are shaping and defining the future of our beloved industry.
I think we – meaning European web professionals – can learn a lot from conferences like these and I’m looking forward to the day we can welcome such a conference in Europe. For now, I’ll live blog the key notes I think are particularly interesting for you. Would you like me to cover a certain speaker? Go ahead and ask me in the comments or on my Twitter account.
By the way, you might also want to follow Hugh MacLeod’s Twitter feed.
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 off, the future of the Web. (More info 
