Written on April 19, 2008 – 9:02 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
“Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty. It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other, incites one to dream.
Georges Pompidou
This Sunday Ernst-Jan and I will get on a plane, sleep for 11 hours, and then wake up in San Francisco. We will attend the O’Reilly Web2Expo and every party we can talk our way into. We will be staying at the Handlery Union Square Hotel
Our itinerary on Tripit.com
You can follow our itinerary on Tripit.com. In fact; I invited so many people to my TripIt account (via the one-click LinkedIn import) that a few days ago I could crash the TripIt server just by visiting my profile. This what the Tripit helpdesk mailed some of my friends:
Apparently, someone you know was so gung-ho about TripIt that he started inviting all his friends. :) This seems to be causing real performance issues for the invitees and him.
Forget about the Digg effect, here comes the Boris effect!
Is it Blogable or Bloggable?
To do a little promotion for The Next Web Blog we decided to print some stickers. I made a few drafts and asked everyone in the office to pick out the best one. Everybody liked the “This object has been marked: BLOGABLE” one so I ordered 1000 of those. Then when they arrived someone asked me “Isn’t Blogable spelled with two Gs?”.
Oops…
Since then I have talked to a lot of people and have googled the issue extensively. The consensus seems to be that Bloggable should be spelled with two Gs. Fortunately for me even native english speakers seem divided on the issue so I think I will get away with it. People who don’t notice the spelling error won’t mind. People who do notice it have an extra reason to remember it.
Parties and events:
Here is a list of all the parties and events we are planning to visit. Have an interesting start-up that should be featured on our blog? Don’t hesitate to approach us and tell us all about it. (more…)
I hope you like that post!

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Written on April 13, 2008 – 2:38 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I bought a white suit yesterday. For those of you who don’t know why, I’m glad to tell that it’s one of the most infamous clothings in the Valley. Ask the San Jose Mercury News, ask Micheal Arrington, ask Wired. They’re all familiar with the meaning of the suits: entrepreneurial trouble from Amsterdam. And now they’re coming back, with a slightly different team and a different mission.
This time we want to put our European Web 2.0 blog under your attention, let’s discuss the European start-up scene and its influence on the technology industry.
We’ll show up at the Web 2.0 Expo (April 22 - 25) to cover and learn about the latest developments in our beloved industry and especially to meet people who also think outside the Valley. After all, that’s what our blog is about. So are you a social media watcher whose also interested in Europe, building a start-up that aims for the European mainland or do just want to learn more about our wine-and-cheese lifestyle? Then look for the guys in the white suits.
Boris and I are looking forward to meeting you and have a good and interesting time!
Written on April 12, 2008 – 11:49 am
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
As the Web 2.0 conference in San Fransisco is approaching, I thought to take on a look how many ‘female Steve jobs’ will appear on stage. By counting the list of 200+ speakers, 20 are women, so that’s 10%. Among them is somebody whose according to my definition a female hero, Tara Hunt, CEO of Citizen Agency.
Interesting is that of those 20 women, at least 10 still need to submit their bio (10 days before the actual conference), while of the male speakers about 99% have their bio submitted. Come on women, write down your achievements, or if you are to shy, hire a personal branding agency.
Of the keynote speakers, I only counted 2 women. One of the underlying ideas of these series is to promote that more women put themselves, or are asked, on stage. Not only could these women act as role models for aspiring Internet entrepreneurs, another effect of making women visible in the Internet industry from the beginning, is that it may prevent devaluation of the industry at a later stage. Indeed, what has happened in some industries when women entered or became visible at a later stage is that the whole profession started to devaluate, in status as well as money wise. This happened, for example, when women entered the education workplace or became judges or doctors. But since the Internet industry is only 5000 days old…, an thus we are at the beginning of an era, it is in the interest for men and women not to let this happen in this industry.
So, as a tip to the organization of Web 2.0 expo San Fransisco, here are a few American female heroes from my database: Patricia Gallup , CEO of PCConnection. Jean Armour Polly, founder of netmom.com, and the first woman elected to the Internet Society board of Trustees, currently working on connecting rural libraries to the Internet. In this time of social networking by kids a valuable contributor to the discussion. And just to name a few other American female heroes: Nancy Cruickshank, CEO of Videojug, Michelle Pelluso, CEO of Travelocity, Dawn Lepore, CEO of drugstore.com, Rebecca Blood, author of a weblog handbook, Janet Hanson, founder of network 85broads.com, Lisa Sounia founder of Dopplr, Joyce Chung, early stage investor at Garage Ventures, Peggy Liu of Mustang Ventures and Joanna Rees, also an investor. Who else is ready for last minute booking?