Bart's thoughts

Gala-evening at the Avernas Golf Club

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:32:05 +0000

Well, as a new member of the Avernas Golf Club I wasn’t sure what to expect from the gala-evening that is organised every year by the Avernas Golf Club. I heard a lot of great things and we were able to get rid of the kids (maybe that’s not the best way to say it, let’s just say that Kristan and Natalia were very happy to stay with their cousins that night). Anyhow, the evening started quite calm and relaxed with Valérie making me drop my glass of champagne on the floor and with the casual chit-chat with the members. Alex was running around taking care of the guests and Chantal was keeping an eye out to see if everything was running smoothly. Pierre and Toma were “very” busy in the kitchen preparing the buffet. Anyhow, we had a great evening with Tanguy, Jean-Pierre, Daniel and all the other people we are getting to know now. Big thumbs up to Pierre and Toma because they did an AMAZING job in the kitchen. Funfact of the evening : Valérie won a very nice putter with the sweepstake .

Below you can see the pictures of the evening :

in short : a very niiiice evening

Speaker at the 9th edition of the M-Forum from AWT/Proximus

bartvdk — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 07:51:39 +0000

On december 15th I was invited as a speaker at the M-Forum at the AWT (Agence Wallonne de Télécommuncations). I had the opportunity to speak together with Steve Deplacie from BNP Paribas Fortis about the challenges we encountered during the developpement of the new Fortis Mobile Transactional Banking site (m.bnpparibasfortis.be). It was a very interesting conference and I was interviewed afterwards by AWT TV. You’ll see me appear around minute 5.

Community management…when someone make a “not so nice post” on your facebook page.

bartvdk — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:08:23 +0000

Well, this morning I had the opportunity to go into the theory of community management with the executive committee of randstad Belgium. Of course we made a quick scan of their existing facebook-pages. By coincidence some guy just put a “not so nice” post on their facebook wall. The post was in German and actually accused Randstad of being modern slave-traders. Kaboom… Anyhow, the page is probably maintained in Holland or in the UK so a post in German might take some time to understand. Randstad however managed to answer within a couple of hours in perfect German with a very clean and diplomatic answer. Thumbs up for the community manager (internal or external) but this is the way to do it. Below you can see a screenshot of the post :

Kristan goes Moto GP…

bartvdk — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:50:33 +0000

Well, seems my son likes driving a motorcycle. I have a bit mixed feelings about it because that little bike goes easily 60 to 70 km/h so it is a bit more risky than playing with lego…

And some more pics from the party here :

SEO for Mobile

bartvdk — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:44:46 +0000

Well, I have been into Mobile since a while and I made a small presentation about Mobile Search Engine Optimization. Normally I’m not really into the hype and I firmly believe that if your site is well balanced and has the right content, SEO will follow (meaning that you will end up high in Google). For mobile I’m not so sure because the big search firms are still working on finding the best way to index mobile pages. The biggest problem is : how can a crawler know that a page is optimized for a mobile device, and if so : which one (iphone, HTC, Nokia, etc…). In this particular case it is best to help the searchbot a bit by respecting the guidelines that you can find in my presentation. Nothing special you know, just some best practices. Funny thing with mobile is that I find myself back in 1997 when the browser and OS war was still raging and where coding standards were still (or almost) non existent. A bit the same now with mobile but worse… iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, Android, RIM, Symbian to name just a few of the OS and this combined with Safari, IE Mobile, Opera Mobile, RIM-browser and so on. Let’s hope that we get some standardization there because now it’s a living hell to develop a generic Mobile site. Ow, here is my presentation :

Mobile SEO

Article about yours truly in Het Laatste Nieuws

bartvdk — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:02:32 +0000

Well, it’s a rather old article from a two months ago when Valérie and me participated in the 10 Miles in Antwerp but it’s rather hilarious. So here it is (in Dutch) :

New office for Early Stage

bartvdk — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:57:37 +0000

Well…some of my friends thought that is was an April-fools joke when I told them that one of our offices is now in a castle. Here is the picture to proof that I was not bullshitting. The guy next to our company standard is not our personal butler but my good friend Laurent Kinet (co-founder of Early Stage).

Château Nagelmackers in Angleur

We are already working at our new office there but the official inauguration will be on the 6th of May. Give me a sign if you want to join us then.

Ski-vacation in Orcières-Merlettes

bartvdk — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:08:40 +0000

Some cool pics from my vacation with my nephew’s Family (Kris, Mieke, Ellen and Wim) and the Moonen family (Bart, Inge, Aster and Felien).

Sun, Snow and Fun, what do you want more?

Hottest toilet in the world (literally)…

bartvdk — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 05:50:49 +0000

Sometimes life surprises you with a fun fact you didn’t expect…How about a toilet with 60° C water in the closet. We just encountered it in our hotel in Grenoble. Due to a distracted plumber the hot water tap had been connected to the toilet. The result is that we have steaming water in the toilet…funny but don’t flush the toilet when you are still on it (especially not when you are a man ).

13,175 km at Tihange

bartvdk — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:36:35 +0000

Well, Valérie (my wife) and me just did one of the nicest joggings we have ever done. We participated in the jogging Tihange 2010 and it was a blast. Mostly we are running in the bigger joggings (the Carefour runningtour for example) where you have in general more than 1000 participants so we were a bit reluctant to go to one of the smaller happenings in our region. But what a surprise : super organisation, subscription fee only 3 € and all the things we got…a T-shirt, snacks, drinks and lots of sponsored stuff. The jogging itself was beautiful with runs through the woods, especially opened private parks and gardens and off course the very nice region of Huy. Not very easy though and we were, let’s say, closing the ranks . You can see the level difference on the image below :

Jogging Tihange 2010

For the jogging fans amongst you : a really nice jogging that will perfectly train for a 10 miles or the 20 km at Brussels. And the fun fact of the day : 700 meters before the arrival all joggers were offered a “Peket”. If you don’t know what that is : Google it…