Cool to be in Belgium for some weeks (atmosphere and temperature wise). There’s a lot of good stuff going on, and let me share some that I noticed yesterday. “A day in the life of “.

The day started with finalizing the communication for a fairly new venture that just got a round of funding.

It’s a Belgium based but international oriented company. It’s an incredible team, and I’m very excited about what we can achieve, build and mean for people. Can’t disclose now, but we’re going to announce it in the coming days (will post it here).

Next we had some calls, and booked a 4day working trip to France. Digital media and entertainment is at a crossing road, and we’ve worked on a concept that is quite ground-braking in many ways with an incredible team. More in a couple of weeks.

Next off to a lunch with Dries Buytaert. Dries is the founder of Drupal, a leading open-source Content Management Platform in the world. A community of thousands build an amazing product, and have now over 500.000 websites running over their opensource platform (from Sony BMG to Symantec to Harvard to Human rights Watch). Besides that, Dries also co-founded acquia (commercially supporting Drupal, Boston based, 7M USD series A funded, +25 persons) and Mollom (UGC management, Antwerp based). I’m very impressed – one of the most impacting web companies from Belgium.

After that we had a working session, where we had to build a vital pan-European rollout strategy, as well as vital cost cutting excercise. Some years ago, when I was still at Skynet, we also went through some difficult periods. Our CFO at that time was Niko Pinkhof (now Telindus France) and the CEO was Philippe Lemmens. Philippe is an amazing person, and besides that I had the honour of following in his CEO footsteps, he’s probably the best boss I’ve ever had.
Anyway – we insisted on being frugal, which we defined as getting the best possible quality at the lowest possible price. It allows to focus, to make (sometimes tough) decisions, and to move forward. Great afternoon, great decisions.

Next I went to Pitch arena, a new initiative by Didier Vermeiren and partners. We both followed the same venture capital program at Berkeley. Although I unfortunately missed the begin, I was on time to view 5 pitches from young starters – with a mobile core or angle.

Some takeaways:
- happenr (event platform) has a very interesting offering, and a great partner/investor (Corelio , which is currently led by LucMissorten, one of the best media ceo’s of the moment in Belgium). There are some risks when semantic web unleashes verticl search by yahoo or google, but the mobile app, concept and team are great.
- A lot of respect for Sacha Vekeman from Mobiya: I’ve known and followed mobiya since its startup, and the team has now directed it be the leading classifieds site in the UK in a specific niche. Respect!
- And finally, an interesting presentation from IBBT originated Siruna. Didn’t know them, will follow though.

Overall, great initiative, organisation and vibe in the room. Really cool Didier!

Finally, I met up around 22h with a friend who used be work with me at Skynet, and now has a leading global marketing role. Amazing what he’s doing. Great discussion, a lot of ideas, and a hell of a time. Seems like we’re all migrating to the States since Obama got elected :-)
Yep – I love these kind of days. Even if I missed see Charlie all day…

Bart (flying above Paris now)