“LEAP is the business community for women in acclaimed organisations who aspire to maximise the efforts and impact of female talent.” At their event last Monday I was asked by Erica van Ooyen to share my ideas on leadership values. It was during a panel session together with Jos Nijhuis (CEO Schiphol Group), Peter Molengraaf (CEO Liander) and Carla Smits-Nusteling (CFO KPN).

It was a nice opportunity to give some background on my personal motto: “Dream Big, Work Hard, Be Nice”. I had been receiving a lot of questions about it since it appeared on my Twitter profile.

Dream Big has everything to do with vision. You have to know where you’re going. And you don’t have to be scared to share your dream. If people share that vision they will follow you on your quest. The destination might be different than what you once envisioned, and that’s the whole point. You will find people who are much better at what they do than you are. You’re the one who walks in a storm and says: “Follow me boys, we can’t be beat”.

Work Hard is often overlooked. Nothing comes easy. If you know what you want, you should be all-in. It can never be a side project; you can’t ‘juggle’ with ambitions. Hard work also means: not taking the easy road. Sometimes the easy way is tempting, but it won’t bring you where you want. Sending one e-mail to a hundred people is easy. Sending one hundred people one e-mail is hard.

Be Nice has much to do with who you are and how you act in social relations. Leadership is not something you force upon, it’s given to you by others. Peter Molengraaf made a strong point by refering to the golden rule, e.g. “Don’t treat others as you would not wish to be treated yourself.”

People should like to work with you. And you know what they say: A leader without followers is just taking a walk.

Samen met Rob Prass heb ik de afgelopen jaren veel workshops gedaan met erfgoedinstellingen. Nergens heb ik meer passie en betrokkenheid ervaren als in die sector. Toch kunnen veel musea, archieven en onderwijsinstellingen wel wat meer aandacht gebruiken.

Daarom waren we op de Digitaal Erfgoed Conferentie uitgenodigd om een aantal learnings met de sector te delen.

DE conferentie 2010 – Slotkeynote Jim Stoltze & Rob Prass from Digitaal Erfgoedconferentie on Vimeo.

During the evening session of TEDxAmsterdam 2010 I got the chance to answer the question that was asked the most: Why did you sign up for the TEDx-license in 2009? A small personal story, followed by three examples of turning “ideas worth spreading” into “ideas worth doing”.

While we’re on the subject: Bill and Melinda Gates are looking forward to your suggestions! If you have any ideas on the ideal line-up for TEDxChange you can submit them before January 20th. When you do this, there is a chance that you’ll be invited to watch the exclusive live-stream from TED2010 next month!

Since my initial experiment in 2008 I get a lot of messages around the world from people who are doing similar projects. These projects vary in size but they have one thing in common. “What will happen if you unplug?”

Last week I spoke at Eday 2010 and I gave an update on these interesting projects:

Jeroen van Loon
To graduate without the computer at a digital academy of art? Is that at all possible? Jeroen van Loon started his project: “From Digital to Analogue”. He worked for several months on this projects and sent out offline blogposts and created a fantastic visual art piece in the end.

The New York Times
(These) technologies have become so constant in many of our lives we can’t see ourselves without them even as the impact of them on our personal and professional lives — and even our brains — is being discovered. The Times is starting a video project asking readers to see what happens when they give up technology. We’re looking for volunteers to unplug temporarily and tell us about their experience.

Zeit Online (german)
Zwei neue Selbstversuche, offline: Christoph Koch und Alex Rühle beschreiben in ihren Büchern das Leben ohne Netz und digitalen Boden.

Slate – James Sturm
“I have been offline for almost four weeks now. I imagined by this time I would have all kinds of dramatic stories about resentful co-workers, domestic tension, and feelings of isolation, but so far the biggest surprise has been how uneventful it is. The benefits have outweighed the hassles.”

Do you know of any one who should be mentioned on this blog? Please let me know. And by the way: here is video of my talk at TED2009 about the topic “Can you live without the Internet”.

This week The Gates Foundation and TED released their website for the TEDxChange. Events that will be taking place across the globe this year on 20 September. It’s my pleasure to give you some more information about the Dutch chapter of this event:

TEDxChange in Amsterdam
A life changing dinner party with an unforgettable exchange of energy

On September 20, to coincide with the United Nations summit on the Millennium Development Goals, there will be a global event organized by TED and the Gates Foundation. In Amsterdam, a remarkable group of individuals will join the live video broadcast from the Paley Center in New York and after participate in a TEDxChange event. This will be an interactive dinner with 8 people who, with their businesses or projects, are working towards achieving the MDGs in their country. They will share their desires and passions, their ideas and achievements, and then ask for support. The event will be a massive call-to-action to back these people and their businesses. Money will not be requested. The currency at this event will be skills, knowledge and time.
The handpicked guest list to this event will consist of one hundred people who are chosen on account of their ability to effect change and bring unrivalled skills to the table.

Part 1: Listening
This extraordinary event will bring together people who want to be inspired; who are ready to make a difference – young innovators, and established, successful businessmen alike.
Many emerging countries are growing faster than ever with young, dynamic local business-people building up their economies and creating jobs. The event will focus on the energy, positivity and creativity around change in developing countries. There will be inspiring stories and triumphant tales from people who are making a difference.
In 3 minute mini-talks, 8 guest speakers will lay out what their businesses needs to grow. This could be help with business modeling, building a website, getting in touch with universities, setting up a communications plan, accessing an effective international network or securing an introduction to relevant stakeholders – anything is possible.

Part 2: Participating
After hearing these requests, the guests will have an opportunity to dine, in groups of 10 with the speaker they were most inspired by, or feel they can most contribute to. The meal will be an opportunity to hear more and actively match requirements with skills. By the end of the evening, guests will leave having made a pledge of action, knowing their next steps and that they have already made a positive difference. The person behind the best idea/action will even get the opportunity to share their progress at TEDx Amsterdam on November 30 2010.
And, of course, in true TEDx style there will be plenty of opportunity to meet fellow TEDsters, be entertained and on this special occasion, dine on delicious food.

Quote from the organizer:

Jim Stolze, the event initiator says. “Instead of talking about what’s not working, our team is focusing on the people who are already bringing the MDGs closer. During the Amsterdam segment of TEDxChange we are focusing on the true beneficiaries and looking for ways to stimulate the exchange of ideas, knowledge and business.”

Want the opportunity to participate in this groundbreaking event?
Are you a successful and established businessman with a many years of experience and wisdom behind you? Or perhaps you are starting out; full of energy, new ideas and a knowledge of the latest technological advances? Or perhaps you are at the helm of a company that wants to expand its corporate responsibility? TEDxChange would love to hear from you if you have the time and commitment to make a difference. Please visit www.TedxChange.nl where we invite you to complete an application form. TEDxChange will then evaluate the applications; making initial, possible matches and to create a diverse skills and experience base.

Last week I was in Berlin attending and speaking at the NEXT-Conference 2010. Other speakers included Stowe Boyd, Andrew Keen and Cindy Callop. I was in the track “openess” together with Steve Rubel.

Some of you may have watched the live-stream but I got some questions about the slides, so I put them up on Slideshare and wrote down a version of the transcript: .

It’s an honour to be here on behalf of the Virtual Happiness Institute. I have a short presentation. Gonna give you some updates on our research and then tell you how we can prevent the next epidemic. But first, I may not be the next Uri Geller, but I know what’s on your mind right now: “Why would we need an institute for Virtual Happiness? ”

And the answer is so obvious! Just like the government of Bhutan uses Gross National Happiness (instead of GPD) to measure the success of its policies, we –as an Internet community –should focus on our digital well-being more than ever! The Virtual Happiness Institute keeps track of this research in Internet psychology. Basically what we do is to write about anything that a blogger finds too boring and study everything that a scientist finds too much fun.

It’s all based on a simple research question: does the internet make us happy?

We asked people how they would rate their own happiness . And it turns out Western Europeans are moderately happy. They rate it a 7,11 on a 10 scale. In the American system this would have been a B right? But how would this live satisfaction change when they had to live without the Internet for a full month? And then you see their happiness drop straight to a 6.3.

After we published these results we got some complaints. People said: “Well this sounds nice, but there something wrong with your method. You can’t live without the internet, so that’s not an option.” So we designed a new experiment. We found someone (me) who was quite an internet fanatic (yep, that’s me) and we persuaded him to go unplugged for more than a month. Mind you. Until then this hadn’t been not done before. The experiment has had a lot of following , but until then this was the first time.

So, I went completely offline for a whole month. Nearly 40 days without the Internet, no Google, no Email, no surfing, no twitter, Nothing. The most fun thing I ever did, at least in the first week. During this period I kept a diary. (you all know what that is right? Sort of an offline weblog) And this was eventualy published as a book in Dutch with the title “how to survive your inbox”. Because my conclusion at that time was that living without the internet was awful, but living without email was fantastic.

After this experiment studies came out that underlined this principle. A survey conducted in 2008 took 18.000 respondents from 25 European countries and questioned their lives on aspects like income, health, education and so on. The results showed that “people … connected to the Internet are considerably more satisfied with their lives.” Many surveys and studies later. We believe that we have found the answer to the question “does the internet make us happy”. There is proof that it’s indeed social interaction that drives your virtual happiness: the ability to connect to friends, family and of course attractive stranger .

And what interferes with your happiness is our in-ability to comprehend digital information. There is no information overload, that simply doesn’t exist. That is a problem of our generation. We treat digital information as if it were physical objects. We you entered the job market, mail was physical. It came in once or twice a day and it landed on your desk. When the pile got too high, you simply got an assistant. But nowadays, there’s no way you can see if your mailbox is too full. And there is no way that you will get an assistant. Digital information shouldn’t take in place, neither on your head, neither on your desk. It’s in the cloud, leave it there.

The consequences of this thinking can have great impact. (Not everyone seems to understand this: A study found that 95 percent of those questioned check their business e-mail outside of work, 78 percent while in the bathroom and 11 percent during “intimate moments.” This by the way gives a whole new meaning to hotmail don’t you think?)

We’re now in the unique situation that children in classrooms today have access to more information then their teachers do. Yet, these teachers are educating them the way we were taught to use the phonebook. It’s physical thinking, which means it’s linear and it’s based on an hierarchy of authority. Where it should be digital thinking, wich makes it asyncronous and based on a network of reputation. I’m saying that we should treat digital media literacy with the same urgency as we do obesity.

Internet access is now a birth right – that’s a given. But so is a Big Mac and Coca-cola. If we want to stop our children from becoming ‘infobese,’ then we need to educate and guide them in their online habits.
That’s why I’m calling upon on you. You are gamechangers. I urge you to have a conversation with you local school about the way they teach media literacy. And help them.

Don’t let infobesity be the next epidemic, our future Internet happiness depends on you.

This week I will be at the NEXT-conference:

Europe’s leading Internet conference will be held in Berlin. The motto of next10 is “Game Changers”, and the conference will offer 40 hours of events with international speakers over two days on three stages at STATION-Berlin.

My talk on Wednesday will be an update on the Virtual Happiness Project, which was launched on the PicNic-Conference in 2008 (Does the Internet make you happy?) and about which I spoke at TED 2009 as well (Can you live without the Internet). My theme for this year will be “How can we avoid the next epidemic?”

It’s basically the end conclusion of the project. We’ve gathered enough information to know what drives virtual happiness (online social interaction) and we know what frustrates our virtual happiness (the inability to handle digital information we were used to in the fysical world). So, what is left is a call for action to take way this last barrier towards a better online well-being. Let’s see if we can stop the impending epidemic of infobesity.

More information about NEXT10
“Over the course of five years, the next conference has become the most important European conference for the digital and creative economy,” said Matthias Schrader, founder and CEO of interactive agency SinnerSchrader. “We are coming to Berlin to take the next step in our development, and we’ve found the right partner in STATION-Berlin, the organiser of the international PREMIUM fashion fair.”

Two keynotes will open the conference at 9 a.m. on the day before, 11 May. Peter Lovatt, aka Dr Dance, used to be illiterate and is now regarded as the founder of modern dance studies. John Rogers is reinventing the automobile industry with Local Motors. At 11 a.m. there will be a presentation by Louis Rossetto, the founder of WIRED magazine who is now revolutionising the production of chocolate with TCHO.

The second day of the conference will open with futurist and hacker Pablos Holman, co-developer of the world’s smallest PC. MP3 inventor Karlheinz Brandenburg will present a keynote at 1:30 p.m. on the topic of “How to be a Game Changer”.

Click here to see the the nextconf programma. See you in Berlin!

Last week I was one of the keynote speakers at InCTformatie, the annual conference for publishers in The Netherlands. As part of my talk was this video about “the end of publishing”.

Lot of people felt inspired by this clip, so I would like to share it with you also. Please watch the entire three minutes

The video allready spread some time ago thanks to Twitter and it inspired me to make my presentation a “mirror image” also. Here are the slides (Dutch only).

This week at a partnermeeting I had the pleasure to announce that the second edition of TEDxAmsterdam will take place in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam. On 30 November 2010, the stage of this beautiful city theater will be reserved for the new ideas of revolutionary thinkers and innovators in the field of technology, entertainment, design, art, science and business. For one day, this monumental city theater turns into “a theater of the mind”.

In the words of Sasha Naod: “TEDxAmsterdam was the city’s sleeper hit last year. The conference attracted much media intention and there was a waiting list of more than 4500 people.” We were indeed surprised by the amount of positive reactions and the great interest. This is why we are moving to a larger location and also having some new surprises in store. Including a special children’s TED conference, similar to TEDx but for and by children.

At this same meeting Monique van Dusseldorp then revealed this years’ theme: “Science & Fiction”. Her interpretation:

Mankind is able to imagine great things which push the limits of science. Through the interplay of fiction (a dream that makes the world better) and science (the actual test-run and execution), we are getting one step ahead. “Science & Fiction” is therefore the central theme of the second edition of TEDxAmsterdam.

Top speakers from various disciplines will discuss their innovations, visions, perspectives and realizations in the area of technology, urban life, nature, the human body and more. Marian Spier then went on about how the whole TEDx Amsterdam Crew (30 people) is coming up with creative ideas to explore this team further in a new program book and a few surprises.

Melle Daamen (director of the Stadschouwburg) confessed that he has been a real TED-fan and I’m very grateful that he helped us tremendously so far. In his words: “We are very delighted that TEDx Amsterdam has chosen for our big monumental/grand hall this year. TED is a great format and more than perfect for a theater. Also in keeping with our policy to let our theater be more part of the city. And for the greatest thinkers and doers we happily are opening our doors.”

More information about the guestlist and how to attend will follow in the next couple of months. I’ve been working fulltime on TEDx allready since January and I can’t wait to see how we can stirr up our little country once more.

Photo credits: Maurice Mikkers (mauricemikkers.nl)

This week I was invited to give a presentation at Social Strategy Talk in Amsterdam. The theme was “bizarre stories” and I was amazed by the inspiring (and personal) stories that were shared by my fellow speakers.

I chose to tell 5 little anecdotes and then end with a worry. The five stories obviously had to to with my favorite topic “Living with or without the Internet”. Here are my slides:

If you are a returning reader of my blog then you probably knew these 4 stories allready. But the fifth one is the one that keeps me busy at night. The fact that the amount of information we produce and consume goes up and up… is inspiring for any online professional. But that at the same time the numbers of our National Productivity haven’t changed during the last 10 years should worry that very same professional.

After my talk people asked if was familiar with the work of Linda Stone, and of course I know Linda’s excellent thinking about continuous partial attention. But I like the Tim Ferriss version (Weapons of mass distraction) even better. Another person said that I had given my own version of “Does IT matter?” which is also a nice way to look at it.

I can only hope that we’re experiencing aspects of a learning curve. When people in the 19th century were laying the rails for the trains of the future, it also took years to benefit from these investments. Therefore I wish that in 5 years from now the productivity (in any kind) does go up and that we re-invent to singletask at the same time!

Thanks to Menno and Rutger for the invitation!