The word impossible is not in leaders...

“Why build 40 mosques for 1000 persons each, if you can also build 1 big one for 40.000? Look around, space enough!” I’m in the 6th largest mosque of the world in Abu Dhabi, where the guide answers my question why it was necessary to build such a huge building like this and not divide it up into smaller, more spread version. His answer was characteristic for everything I’ve experienced in the two weeks I’ve visited Dubai and Qatar. While Dubai itself has no money, but is heavily sponsored by the United Emirates capital Abu Dabi, it’s...

Pre-emptive love

Am I in your last words? The most heard reply when I told my friends I was going to Baghdad, Iraq and would help out with organizing a TEDx event over there. After a long time of working on this amazing project, it looked like I was wearing blinkers, booked my flight and flew to Baghdad at the beginning of November 2011. We were honoured to stay at the Guesthouse of the Prime Minister of Iraq, mr. al-Maliki, in the Green Zone, besides the Iraqi Parliament, which was again besides the Al Rasheed Hotel, in which TEDxBaghdad would take place. The drive from the airport, at...

The TED virus

After watching some TED Talks online, I was proud to co-organize my own TEDx Event. After this successful gathering, I subscribed for both TEDxBerlin and TEDxAmsterdam and -surprisingly- got selected to be one of the happy few to attend these events. Together with Tobias Jaeger, I visited both events. Both events were worthwhile visiting, but I have to say that the guys of Amsterdam did an amazing job, keeping people inspired and busy from 8am to 11pm. The lineup was incredible, all the goodies, experiences and especially the crowd was great! Nice job guys! I added an...

Event time!

During my daily life in Maastricht, I meet too often people who only like to downgrade my idea’s or are negative about my entepreneural spirit.  Visiting events is always an eye-opener for me. Not only for idea generation, but also to connect with people and get inspired of their work. During the last two months, I attended several outstanding events. TEDxEutropolis After almost a year of preparations, the first edition of TEDxEutropolis took place on the 10th of September at the Parkstad Theather in Heerlen. The Social Beta foundation obtained an official license...

Little Germany

Dutch politics haven’t been that interesting as the past months. The elections in June turned out very positive for the PVV, led by Geert Wilders. This political party’s most important and most discussed theme is the integration of Islamic people in The Netherlands. Because of his severe tone about this issue, Geert Wilders is boycotted by other parties, heavily discussed in the media and even seriously threatened. The issue on integration in The Netherlands  has never been so active. Today I was studying in ‘Little Germany’; the nickname of Dutch...