Netlog customers said they used the side to maintain the friendships AND to connect with new people (to date). Since Facebook strategy is connect friends, Netlog wanted to connect daters and TWOO.com was born to serve this unserved audience. Only one year old, but growing fast, TWOO.Com reaches 6 millions visitors monthly, which is already 2/3 of the number 1 worldwide Match.Com. Bogaerts, founder of both Netlog and TWOO.Com, aims to be the biggest soon….since they realy aims at customer satisfaction (something different from only connection people). TWOO.Com applies the fremium model, which offers a free service for everybody and lets you pay for extras.

With a clear focus and good strategy I believe they can make this happen. TWOO does have the 8 principles of a succesfull e-business (‘as described in my course’) to make it happen….looking forward to the next month!

As I promised,I’ve uploaded the class powerpoints on to SlideShare. I’ve embedded them all in this post, so you can find all together in one place.

I’m looking forward to your portfolio’s. Keep in mind the due date is February 19th, 2012.

But first things first…what is privacy? I don’t want to take the dictionary a tell you a unique definition. For most people privacy starts where personal freedom ends. You want to be in control, and want to share people The stuff you want to share.

Apparently in the digital era there seems to be a double problem, because most people only see this definition as a definition of privacy…but there is a second approach to privacy: who owns your ‘data’? Because what you share on digital platforms isn’t yours anymore most of the time. The platforms own it, like Facebook keeps track of all your data, updates, photo’s,…. Most people don’t know this, few people care about it, but some people make a fuzz out of it. As the video bellow shows, Facebook knows a lot about you…but that doesn’t need to be a problem, what Facebook does with this data is the real question. They use it make personnal one-2-one advertising possible through Facebook Ads, and probably they will sell your date to who is willing to pay.


This seems to disturb some people, although it’s nothing new….who doesn’t own a loyalty Card from a supermarket, shop, …. they do exactly the same. They hold your data to profile you, so they can offer your needs and possible needs in a shop near you.
Who doesn’t own a debit card from a bank (or 2), together with your credit card my bank knows what I’m buying, where I am, what my spending pattern is, … hell they probably know me better than I know myself!
So I truly don’t see the problem in who owns my data in this digital era, since I’m the one who’s giving them my data.

If it comes to sharing, this is a different story. People should be aware that privacy is something you need to work on in the digital world. What you share with who should always be a well-considered decision since this might work against you in one way or another. Look at the people who got fired over a Facebook status update or disturbing online pictures.
The digital and online world is a public world. So don’t do anything online, what you don’t do offline. I’m not running around totally wasted/drunk/stoned/nude/… at work/in the street/…. Do you?

And there is the sharing of information act vs the privacy act if I want to use pictures online which I took myself, I have to make shure everybody who can be recognized on those pictures has given their prior consent to put the picture (with them on it) online….
Ok, out of privacy Reasons I understand this….but in an era in which millions of pictures are made every hour and shared every minute thanks to our amazing mobile devices this seems rather irrelevant. Did you ask permission to everybody who is on your Facebook photo(book)?
Be aware they can sue you for violating their privacy!
This is what I call 18th century thinking! We are in need of an adapted legislation which understands this sharing society, but shows respect to abuses!

Who not uses facial recognition on a big scale to scan all online pictures to alert people their picture is online. So people can determine for themselves if they want to leve it out their or not….and yes abuse should be prosecuted, but with the actual legislation who all are guilty (As charged….regarding privacy)

Jamie Anderson (@ProfJamieA) took the stage  on stage, and gave quite a rock’n roll performance on GaGanomics. I got his message on Creativity World Forum, but he added some nice Lady Gaga Movies to show strategy doesn’t have to be complex. Her connection with her little monsters, the GaGa-fans, is a small thing, but has a huge impact. Lady Gaga owns her own social media channels, but works with 4 people who make her social strategy (not complex you said?)…so she can keep up with the clock speed of the music industry (+/- 6 months <-> 2 years in the 80-ies). Thanks to social media you can create mass intimacy!

After the rock of Jamie Anderson came the most authentic guy I ever saw on an international congress, Jef Colruyt (@Colruyt), director at Colruyt (a soft discounter in Belgium). After Jef Colruyt took the stage, I completely understood the Colruyt philosophy…Great to see how down to earth authentic he brought the Colruyt story. First quote he said: ” Change if you don’t like what you’re doing” – and that sums it up….
Colruyt always tries to act according to what they say, so failure is always looking you in the eyes. But failure is necessary (I heard that once before….could it be Creativity World Forum?!) to create vision and strategy. Create an environment in which your people get the change to grow and be part of your vision and strategy.

After I missed out the first afternoon, it was Dan Ariely (@danariely) who kicked off the second day. Dan Ariely was great on playing with our minds…since they can’t be trusted anyway.  My favored tweet said: “Don’t trust your mind, because it’s troubled with your thoughts” summed it up. this means you got to keep on experimenting to get as much information as possible to get a true view/idea on what people want. People are lazy by nature….so you have to tickle them/stir them up to get their mind going. This means people don’t have responses to your questions, they responds with the ideas you implement in their head! Even intuition can be doubted….because of the environmental noise!

Then a sheep took the stage…or where the sheep watching Jef Staes (@JefStaes)? I still don’t now for sure…but Jef got our minds going. In his own authentic way he stirred things up. His message was easy….our society creates sheep, we put them behind a fence. So the role of HRM – department is the role of sheep – management or shepherd. Our society doesn’t need sheep, it needs people with passion and talent otherwise our information society will lose its value. Up until this point I couldn’t have agreed more with Jef!
To solve this Jef Staes want 3 revolutions: No Degree Education in which you  can develop your (individual) passion and talent, No function-driven working and a pension free society.
On the second part where he gives the solutions I’m a bit sceptical….in an extreme bottom line he’s right, but getting this done in true life looks a bit over the top. But then again Jef got us (re)thinking our education, work organisation and our society! Jef Staes a man with a true passion (out of the kempen).

Before lunch Steven Van Belleghem (@steven_InSites) took the stage. I’ve seen quite a lot of his presentations the last months, but now he’s a got a new one, with an added value message. He gave us small pallets with like on one side and fail on the other so we could provide instant feedback on his talk (instead of using the twitter channel). Good idea…but this audience wasn’t ready yet to give this instant feedback (but what the hell, when Steven posed a question these pallets came in handy!). Steven has always been quite visionary on things like this…so probably next year we’ll all be doing this at each congress, talk, keynote we’re attending. That’s womma & social in real live! But back on topic….
The insights Steven gave us today where quite inspiring. He took his ideas up a level (or 2) and told us co-creation wasn’t enough.  Up until now, we tried to listen and co-created with our customers, but this isn’t enough we need to take away the fence and really start to collaborate with our customers. Outsource items to your most engaged customers (hell most of time your customers outlive your brand managers – so they’ll know a thing or two about your product). This means you got people working for you without having them on your payroll (interesting and cost efficient!). This collaboration needs to be structural, honest and open and then chance can really happen! So he’s taken his own conversation model one step further…can’t wait for his new book in 2012: The conversation company.

In the afternoon some young inspirational speakers took the stage for 9 minute speech….two things struck me; we had to wait until the second day late in the afternoon for a woman to take the stage (aren’t there any female marketeers out there who got a story to tell?) and we have the young Zuckerberg living in Belgium by the name of Davy Kestens (@davykestens). He’s only 23 years old, but he took the stage and told all 1000 marketeers present, he didn’t need them to grow his business! That’s real guts!

Futurist Mike Walsh was the last content speaker who took stage, talking about future trends.  Nothing really new, but then again he got our attention to the things that will matter in the next years. The new generation is native to technology (and no I’m not using digital native) in a way we never have been! The clock speed of our society is going faster and faster thanks to our asian friends who can develop and deliver within a month (instead of a year). So innovation is necessary, and will happen not in a clean lab-environment but innovation happens when consumers break the rules. And everything will be brought back to data….so the true question is not what did you sell your customer, but should be what data did you get from your customer. Data as the new oil….

So a nice first meet with this international marketing congress…already looking forward to the next but I truly hope they change the technical guys because they really sucked (2 days in a row! – bad sound, wrong timings, a lot of the speakers in the dark, ….). Maybe change venue (small hint)?!

On December 21st, 2011 University College Karel de Grote is hosting the first (ever) Big Brains for Life event on Digital reality. This event is in support of Studio Brussels Music For Life charity. All revenues are in favor of this charity which supports Red Crosses kids diarrhea program in Nepal.

We host 3 keynotes:

• Jo Caudron (@jcaudron)on the radical impact of Internet, social media and mobile. (Dear Media – author of Media Morgen)
• Clo Willaerts (@bnox) on We live in public – Identity, privacy and reputation in the digital world (Sanoma Magazines – Author of The conversity Model)
• Elais Veris (@eliasveris) on The new customer (Insites Consulting)

And afterwards you can enroll an ‘intimi’-session on a specific topic with:

• Chris Demeyere (@chrisdemeyere)on Always on the road – Mobile society (ex-mobile vikings – A Little conversation)
• Bart De Waele (@netlash) on Online (Netlash/BeSeen – Talking Heads)
• Yves Van Seters (@YvesVS) on Communication in a digital era (IBM)
• Steven Verbruggen (@minorissues) on Digital Marketing (VVL-BBDO)
• Pieter Sprangers (@edushock) on Education in the digital era (Teacher @kdghogeschool – Domo de refontiro – Author of Edushock)
• Pedro Debruyckere/Ben Smits (@thebandb) on Digital youth (Teacher @Artevelde – Author of ‘De jeugd is tegenwoordig)
• Erik Roger (@erikroger1) on Personal Effectiveness in the digital era (FranklinCovey)
• Tom Palmaerts (@Palmaerts) on Future Trends (Trendwolves)

A cross networking event in favor of a good cause….only for 200 EUR (and with the possibility to use ‘opleidingscheques’ if you live in Belgium)

More on this event at www.bigbrainsforlife.be

This round-up is a get together of quotes and a summary of great speakers as Jimmy Wales (@Jimmy_Wales), Peter Hinssen (@hinssen), Alexander Osterwalder (@business_design), Keith Sawyer, Malcolm Gladwell, Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky), Jamie Anderson, Garr Reynolds (@presentationzen) and Oliver Stone.

• Failure is necessary
  failure is the key to a creative success. If you never fail, you can never be creative.
• Collaboration drives creativity
  Working in a team gives a more creative outcome then working alone.
• Tweak instead of invent
  Don’t be the first on the market. It’s better to learn from other ones mistakes and make them better….be creative with existing stuff.
• Organisation is necessary for creativity
  Organise yourself, your work environment to be creative…bring structure into your creative process.
  Surround yourself with creative inputs/actions
• Disconnect to create
  Log off, go analog and disconnect from the online world so you can create in real-time (f.i. with pen and paper, post-its, …).
  Log on in a second phase of the process
• Keep it simple and visualize it!

Next years Creativity World Forum will be hosted in Rio De Janeiro (Brazil)…see if I can get tickets for this as well!

Let me share some of my inspirational quotes of this evening!

1. Social responsibility & credibility
   Social media is power to the people, like may ’68 but then for real.
   Consumers always asks: “what’s in it for me!” So both sides have to deliver, consumer and producer each share this social responsibility & credibility.
   Act first, then talk instead of making promises first and act later.
2. Strong roots in a turbulent market
   Brands are just a replacement for human beings….so a brand needs to take a position as well.
   The new communication model is not a dialogue, it becomes a dialogue after the company’s monologue.
   When a company cheats on me, it’s out….only when I have a strong and loving relationship with this brand it gets another chance.
   Consumers want to be involved, nothing less, nothing more…they don’t want to take the lead in the creative process or other!
3. Transparancy
   The informed customer!
   The more complex a topic gets the less people are willing to be informed, then they use trusted filters (like media and friends).
   Online information overload…..where are the trees!? We are in need of a good network of trusted peers, but make shure your filter bubble is large enough.
4. “Indignados”
   Social media is easy to share indignantly, but what’s the alternative/solution?
   No single leader makes this a difficult organisation which starts with one “lone nut” who gathers “evangelists”/followers.
   Traditional media play a big role in augmenting this movements/actions.On a side node Clo Willaerts still looks for a random act of kindness from Cote d’Or since she outed herself as chocolate fan
5. Making profit in money and happiness
   Happiness is genetically determined for 50%…marketing makes the other 50% (more and more through an emotional appeal)
   Generation (wh)Y wants to have an impact!