Frankfurt, originally uploaded by bartvanpoll.

Frankfurt September 2011 – Michael Jackson memorial still going strong

5 days of sunshine, lovely people, great nights out. What a city!

Last week, we were invited to come to the Dutch Media Professionals Rethinking Media “Show me the money” Congress.

I was in the “Kies je niche” (choose your niche) panel with Gonny van der Zwaag en Jean-Paul Horn (iPhoneclub.nl). Erwin Blom asked us how we started up our niche travelblog network Spotted by Locals, and how we made a business out of it. Many good questions from the audience too!

I was here 2 weeks ago:

Really nice congress at V2 with artists, city planners, techies and commercial people talking about Augmented Reality. Also Claire Boonstra of Layar was there. Too bad she didn’t mention our Spotted by Locals Layar application!

Thanks Carl and Kwela of PortalToYourDreams for organizing and inviting me!

Last monday, I went to Cinemanita @ Nieuwe Anita. Great movie about Hunter S. Thompson.

Here’s Johnny Depp (who was the narrator of the Hunter S. Thompson stories during the movie) doing a great imitation (I know now) of him in one of my favorite movies all time: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

Of course there’s also an article with details about the place on Spotted by Locals Amsterdam!

Just got back from Madrid. What a great city!

Check the pictures on Flickr.

Snogging, originally uploaded by bartvanpoll.

Seen in London
(Snogging: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snogging)

Last week we were invited to meet initiator Simone Poutnik of The Hub Brussels and to work there for a day.

The Hub is a fast growing network of collaborative work spaces in the world, with the noble mission “to inspire and support social innovators to realise imaginative initiatives for a radically better world.” At the moment there are Hubs in London, Bristol, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Sao Paolo and Halifax.

Since The Hub Brussels is in a protyping phase and the office space is sponsored by the EHSAL, we were able to use the services of The Hub (A good workplace, fast internet and even nice espresso!) for free. Also Simone helped us a great deal with some nice contacts around Europe.

We think initiatives like The Hub are great for the growing population of”mobile workers” such as ourselves. I would be happy to pay a membership fee to be able to work at places like “The Hub” in all cities we go to in Europe, and to meet interesting people!

The Economist of this week has a nice article about our “Nomadic future”. Last week they also had a great article about the joys (and the disadvantages) of having a mobile office as part of a “special report” on Mobility. So it’s a really hot topic!

If you’re in Brussels, are working on an interesting project, and need a place to work, drop by at the Stormstraat!

(also published on the Spotted by Locals Corporate Blog)

It’s been about a month, but I didn’t write about it yet: Spotted by Locals Amsterdam, a new citblog by Amsterdam locals, is live!

Five very cool and enthusiastic local Amsterdammers are going to take over from us and write a lot of new postings, while we’re going into Europe to meet new local bloggers in other cities. Keep tuned!