Last week I realized that I couldn’t remember when exactly I had not been going out at night. Amsterdam is great. So many people to meet and spend time with. Last Thursday I met up with Niels Fermont, whom I hadn’t really seen the last 12 years or so and whom I found on Hyves a while back. It was great to bring back memories from primary school. We had a very tasty dinner. Unfortunately I suspect the forest mushroom pie to have ruined my digestive system up until today. So I wasn’t able to head down to FOSDEM in Brussels. The up side was that I finally had some time to go through my drafts folder, where emails end up that I still have to write.
Besides all that I am feeling mostly happy with my MacBook Pro. There are some issues, such as the lack of decent shortcuts but it’s a relief to not be forced to keep on tweaking and twiddling settings. I hope some company will be able to create a similar experience based on Ubuntu.
This week I’ll be moving to an awesome apartment and tomorrow I’m expecting a friend I haven’t seen for 1,5 years. And Hyves is moving to a new office.
In the beginning of November Robin asked me if I’d somehow be interested in renting a place in Amsterdam. I had been thinking of moving to Amsterdam after Trento, but I considered his question a bit preposterous. Fortunately he rented the place himself and now we’re room mates! During my years abroad I sometimes considered Amsterdam the only place left to live in the Netherlands. Going around here on foot and by bike I learn to appreciate my own country again. The bikes are amazing, transport is so efficient (if you don’t go by car). There is so much freedom and still, it’s not a mess.
Friday I went to a hospitality exchange meeting, which I found kinda weird. People were sitting in their own corner and I hadn’t seen anybody hug. So I started moving around, to talk to more people, ask them silly questions (”Do you like monkeys?”) and even hug them. It was slightly better that way.
Working for Hyves is exciting. The number of website hits is growing weekly and only Google is rating higher in the Netherlands. The complexity of the material is challenging and I’m part of a small team of very bright people. The office culture is more open, dynamic and agile than at IRST in Trento and my number of friends at hyves.nl doubled in no time.
Hyves is a Dutch social network based in Amsterdam. I’ve been a member for a while now and I mainly used it to find people I know from my primary and secondary school. On the 29th of November I noticed that they were looking for people. I sent them a very short message with a link to my CV. Koen, one of the three founders, responded within 20 minutes. Exactly one week later I was in a plane heading to Amsterdam to attend the party to celebrate the 5.000.000th member. Most of these members live in the Netherlands; the majority of young people in the Netherlands have a Hyves account and many are actively using it. Officially I will start working for Hyves on the 1st of February.
There is a Hyves API (currently beta, mostly in Dutch) and will be implementing OpenSocial and some more very exciting technology. I will have to limit the time I spend on other projects but the contract I signed is quite liberal (e.g. compared to this one for CouchSurfing volunteers). On top of that, Hyves actively participates in the development of Gentoo Linux.
This weekend there will be a party in Trento. I’m moving next week, I will attend the first BeWelcome (un)conference in Antwerpen on the 19th and 20th, and I already found some places to live in Amsterdam.
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