On June 1st the Tuschinski Theatre in Amsterdam will host the second The Next Web Conference. Besides announcing the winners of The Next Web Awards (where TipIt is nominated) there will also be an opportunity to attend interesting talks by speakers like Dick Hardt (Identity 2.0), Saul Klein (Skype, OpenCoffee), Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog), Felix Petersen Plazes) and many more. I was informed by the guys behind the conference that they had to really turn down many sponsors to make sure that the conference would not be a big PR-talk filled day. I expect the conference to be a great success of high quality, and I’m still doubting (money wise) if I will attend myself as I will be in The Netherlands anyway at the beginning of June.

Tickets for the conference are limited and cost €550 ex VAT. There is a student discount of 50% with only 15 passes available so I think I have to decide quickly. For people who don’t have the money or time to attend the conference there is a OpenCoffee Amsterdam meetup just the day after the conference (June 2nd).

This article is a bit late because Wordpress ate Version 1. Please mind if it’s a bit raw.

I attended another OpenCoffee meetup this morning and again I met some nice people with some special ideas. I was amazed that I didn’t see many of the same faces I had seen last week, which means that the OpenCoffee crowd is very dynamic. I must note that with the hot weather they might have to consider a StarBucks with airconditioning to keep people coming.

There were some very interesting concepts at this OpenCoffee and I exhanged quite a few of my Moo cards (which I brought with me this time). The first person I spoke with was Jonathan Greensted from SportsDo who provides a service that allows you to track your sport activities much like the Nike+iPod system. It runs on most mobiles, uses GPS, and doesn’t need an iPod or Nike shoes. It does costs £49.95 for the mobile client and £50 for access to their online portal but then you do get a lot more than the Apple/Nike thing does.

I also had a talk with Stephan Tual from TeraPad which is basically a hosted platform for creating a site plus blogs, shops, photos, CMS, etc. I couldn’t really understand if it just focuses on professional users (small businesses) or also on individuals. The clear advantage is that it provides all the service on one hosted platform, but I wonder if that would attract many locked in individuals. In the end I think the tool is definitely very interesting for medium businesses who don’t want to do their own hosting, etc.

As usual there were also some people who didn’t know what they did, couldn’t tell what there product was because it was a “secret” (I am not kidding here, this person was there), or couldn’t show anything yet because they were still in private Alpha. One of them did really stood out though, which got my attention though still being in private Alpha. The tool is called Rememble and besides having a catchy names it helps you keep track of all those small, (un)important thing that you might want to remember.

“Rememble is an easy place to put stuff you’d like to keep even if you don’t know exactly why.

It’s an online service that empowers you to create, view, enhance, share and even co-create digital memories. You do this by adding membles to a timeline representing your life.

Membles are text messages, emails, images, video, audio clips, etc., that are stored on PCs, laptops, mobile phones, smartphones, digital cameras, and even other web services such as Flickr.”

As usual there were also the odd ones out: those people doing a non tech startup. This week I had a nice talk with Daniella from Luento Santoro, a chocolate emporium. Although not really selling her goods online she was interested in concepts like building a webprecense and blogging in a professional perspective. In the end, now that I think about it, if she ever wants to really build a webprecense with a blog she might have to look into TypePad. Maybe I should bring these two together, or maybe the already have? For now I am looking very much forward to next weeks meeting and maybe you will join me?

Following the tradition set by the OpenCoffee meetings in London and Amsterdam, we thought Delft with its large amount of technical professionals and web agencies could use something similar.

Now with summer approaching, I think we can take it outside by doing an Open Beer event to close off the week. So the plan is to take an hour between 18.00 and 19.00 on Friday as the first stop of your weekend. We’ll meetup, have a beer or two and discuss anything that comes to mind.

Who? Web professionals and independents who want to be connected.

Where? Trappistenlokaal het Klooster (Google Map), a bit small but with a decent beer collection, WiFi and a nice outside area.

When? Every Friday from 18.15 until 19.15.

Stay informed Join the Open Coffee Delft Google group for regular announcements on the next event.

We’re going to make this a regular event (as per the Open Coffee format) so if you cannot make one occasion there is always a next. Sustainability is not so much of an issue, as it is only one hour of your time and one of us will probably always be there.

Sign up here or on Upcoming. Spreading the word and bringing along interesting people is very much appreciated.

Last Thursday I went to London’s OpenCoffee Club Meetup. OpenCoffee is organized by Saul Klein and is basically a weekly social meeting in a local StarBucks . It was started here in London in March and since then the concept has been spread around the world in more than 30 other places including Amsterdam.

As this was my first time at OpenCoffee I was totally unprepared as I was the only person in his t-shirt. Even worse was the fact that I forgot my Moo-cards so I couldn’t spread the word about FourStarters and teachr.tv (more about this soon). Luckily most other people did bring theirs and I managed to keep in contact with them.

One of the most interesting people I spoke with (and strangely also the first ones) were the guys behind Yuuguu. Yuuguu is a cool desktop sharing program that has a lot of potential and I think it might even be interesting in an educational context, so expect something in the teachr.tv podcast soon. I also had a nice word with David Terrar who (next to running a very interesting blog) is the only Brit I ever met that knows Frankwatching.

Funny enough I was not the only Dutch person there as I met the guys behind Meganova (Dutch incubator) and The Next Web Conference (more on this later, too). Standing next to Boris and Arjen Schat I did feel more and more out of the ordinary in my t-shirt. I will definitely go more often now but next time I will definitely go in suit. Anyone joining me next Thursday?