Knowmadic Heroes: Sandra Miegl

This week Knowmads pleasurably hosted my dear friend Sandra Miegl from Start Vienna for a little over a day. Sandra is truly a change maker and one of the most ambitious people I know. Whether busy with a project, a conference, making new friends or everything at the same time. Talking with Sandra is always worth postponing other things and so is planning and doing projects with her. She truly knows how “to make things happen!” With her endless energy and perception on on the world around her, she left her final impact on our tribe with these words: “Thank you so much! these were an intense 36 hours and I wanna send a deep hug to the group! Thanks for taking me in and for your warm welcome! Will stay connected and we all will build something great together!”

Knowmadic Heroes: Patrick van der Pijl

It was back in November 2009 after a long talk about generating business models when Andreas Röttl from Start Vienna sent me the link to Business Model Alchemist to introduce me to their approach and the book Business Model Generation. The website provides you with a comprehensive preview of the book although I decided to order it because besides being great in terms of its content it also looks good on the coffee table.

At Knowmads (after some discussions) we started the great initiative to have lunch dates every now and then to informally meet people and introduce them to our way of dreaming and doing. Usually this is the very first meeting of the team and the person invited. A little chitchat to get a feeling for each other while exchanging experiences, opinions and ideas on future cooperation.

Since the curriculum for week 4 in the Knowmadic calendar provided for entrepreneurship and new business design our lunch date on monday was based on this subject. I did not pay that much attention in the beginning because Sandra Miegl from Start Vienna was still with us until I discovered one of my classmates reading a book that I identified as Business Model Generation. WOOOOOOW! This definitely got my attention. Putting 1 and 1 together, I realized our lunch guest had to be from that company. Patrick van der Pijl from Business Models Inc. told us about the whole project and of course we planned future meetings to develop and define our own business with his help. Looking forward to this and to everything we will make happen together in the future.

It’s all about differentiation!

Consider this as my latest comment to the discussion about marketing and advertising:

Man in a Chicken suit plays “What is Love” on Pianica from Ring Mod on Vimeo.

First steps towards something new

So this is it: my very first blog post! Still can’t believe that I’m doing this after  all the discussions I had about all the blogs the world does not need… So why the hell am I starting just another blog? The answer is, I’m selfish – I’m doing it mostly for myself. It’s not so much about if anybody will ever read it, but just a try to keep track of the topics I’m dealing with and my personal development. Exciting times are in front of me: I will soon move to the Netherlands where I will join the Knowmads Team for one year, maybe even longer. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this! A new country, a new city, new people, new experiences, a new language (watch out for my first blog post in Dutch!) – in short a brand new start!

I will focus on my learnings and doings at this blog and I will mainly write in English (although this will be a challenge), every now and then in German and maybe one day in Dutch too. I can’t tell you now where all of this will end up and to be honest this is the best thing about it. It’s not that I have a fixed goal to reach within the next year, it’s more a journey connected to a broader vision, that I have for my future. Maybe you want to accompany me on a little stretch of the way, possibly even the whole time… by all means you are more than welcome!