A new Hotspot. Amsterdam wants to become Appsterdam.

April 23rd, 2011 • 4 comments Mobile, Underway, Work
Tags: Amsterdam, Apps, Creativity, Development, Experimental, Jobs, Lifestyle, Mobile, People, Strategy, Tech, Trends, World

“If you want to make movies, go to Hollywood. If you want to make musicals, go to Broadway. If you want to make apps, go to Appsterdam.” – Mike Lee, mur.mu.rs

About a month ago I praised the qualities of Amsterdam in an article I wrote for the German ad magazine Page. One thing that struck me in this city is the level of innovation here as well as the city’s clear objective to support new industries and get them to Amsterdam. I have never met anyone from Amsterdam’s city council but in contradiction to many other cities there seems to be a clear vision here on how to shape Holland’s capitol from both, a cultural AND economical perspective. That’s why Amsterdam is also hometown to some of the most creative agencies in the world – the city father simply subsidize taxation here to relocate the right blend of industries on the rivers of the Amstel.

I wasn’t really suprised when I read Mike Lee’s open letter on mur.mu.rs. It’s a call for conquest. And appeal for app developers to settle over to Amsterdam and to rebrand it as Appsterdam. Funny to read because it really reads like a letter from the colonies but at the same time strong and intelligent.

I have traveled the world looking for the most livable city on earth, a place with the ideal balance of quality and price, history and vibrance, culture and innovation. That place is Amsterdam. (…)

The success of Apple’s platforms has been in no small part due to its unique developer community. Our community is unique not just in technology, but in business. (…) We cooperate, because we are friends. If one of us does something to piss the other off, we don’t call out the lawyers, we call up our friend, and talk it over like people. We don’t just attend conferences, we get together at conferences, go out together, and have a good enough time together to generate blackmail material sufficient to nip litigation in the bud.

Mike’s point – a new industry needs a friendly hospitable place that invites them to work together and to exchange ideas. And his call to app developers all over the world to relocate to Amsterdam isn’t just an abstract one…

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Survey. How much can you actually earn as a Planner?

August 18th, 2010 • 1 comment Work
Tags: Agencies, Jobs, Money, Planning, Report, Salary, Strategy, Study, Survey, Truth, World

Finally! An interesting analytical paper about the status quo of planning salaries in planning. My colleague Heather LeFevre from the colleagues at Strawberry Frog here in Amsterdam has just published her Planner Survey 2010. It tries to compare salaries of strategists worldwide to bring some light into the dark. The data was collected via an online survey with 1570+ participants from all over the world.

The effort definitely was worth it. You get a pretty good understanding about what you can expect to earn in NYC in comparison to London. But as usual – salaries don’t say much as long as you don’t integrate real costs of living. Earning and spending 100$ in Frankfurt is a very different thing to earning and spending 100$ in Amsterdam or London.

Anyway, great work, Heather. Thanks a lot.

Purpose. The stuff that drives Motivation.

Juni 7th, 2010 • 2 comments Work
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Motivation, Philosophy, Presentation, Truth, visual, Work, World

I have to admit I am not too much into motivation coaches. There simply are too many prophets out there. Dan Pink is one of them. But he has a clear vision of what motivation is all about. davaidavai.com definitely is no blog about motivation or working efficiency. But it revolves around a dynamic world whose companies have to find new ways to keep track of what happens outside. E.g. how people realize stuff. Pink’s presentation about the stuff that drives us is clear and intelligent (thanks to the toolblog). It takes 10 minutes to watch it. But simply do it. Eye candy is included.

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Strategy. Pinning it down on one page.

Dezember 16th, 2009 • Strategy, We like, Work
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Diagram, Ideas, Presentation, simple, Strategy, Tools, visual, Work

As I am in the process of working on a big strategy project I am looking for good ways to visualize stuff in a simple and intriguing way. Churchofthecustomer (via Bud Caddell) has come up with this nice example of a one-page-strategic-plan. I think it’s rather an internal sheet that you print out and put on the wall to keep everyone on the same page. Plus, it probably interacts well with creative briefs. I love its simplicity but as in good creative briefs – coming up with something so simple, is quite a complex task. (Full graphic here)

The social workspace. Keep on tweeting, peeps.

November 11th, 2009 • Work
Tags: Reports, Study, Tools, Trends, We like, Work, World

Okay, good news for all you guys twittering and facebooking while you work. Personal surfing/tweting/networking while at work does not mean you’re ineffective (yeah, you knew that already).

Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t. “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says. “Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case.” (via University of Melbourne)

Plus, as an article of Harvard Business Magazin explains:

• Millennials will seek jobs that encourage the use of social media: They network 24/7 and expect the company to accommodate pervasive connectivity. As an accenture survey points out the use of various technologies such as instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook and RSS feeds is crucial to how they do their jobs. One participant said “I need to access my Facebook in order to do my job.” Has blocking Facebook today become the equivalent of denying an employee access to a phone at work 40 years ago or email 20 years ago?
• Companies that provide access to social media create a more engaged workforce. Enterprise 2.0 solutions, networking and real time interaction with customers and partners becomes more and more essential. Blocking the access to Social Media sites while leveraging such tools is a contradiction. Global cooperation tools have increased access to experts in the company, reduced the cycle time from discovery of new products to launch of new products, and increased employee engagement and satisfaction in the workplace.