Peter van Dongen's BLog

Today, the CEO of Etam Groep, Beatrice Macdonald, made the following announcement:

Dear colleagues,

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Peter van Dongen as our new CFO and Director ERS.
Peter starts on the 1st of August 2009, and will report into me.

Peter is a chartered accountant (CPA), with twelve years experience in public accounting with (a predecessor of) a ‘Big Four’ firm and 17 years in finance management, 9 of which as CFO with a family owned company (Audax B.V.), similar in turnover to Etam Groep, but which includes both retail (AKO, 103 stores) and wholesale companies. Audax operates a complex, high-risk supply chain, recognised as state of the art in today’s market. Besides Finance, Peter has been responsible for IT management and for the implementation of large IT and Logistics projects such as SAP.

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Twitter is hot. Twitter is growing with more than 1,000%. Twitter is everywhere. Twitter is becoming a part of life. Why are people willing to share everything they are doing? Is it a quest for ‘ancient’ times using modern technology?

I think that modern society is becoming more and more individual. That is not really big news, but is this individuality bringing everybody perfect happiness? Probably not. The human being is not created to be on its own. You cannot create successful organisations with individuals; teams are needed and coordinated cooperation. So how are these individuals coping with the lack of team spirit, the lack of having the possibility to show themselves, the lack of a warm welcome? They find other kindred on the Internet. They throw some words into the air, hoping that someone is picking them up. Someone in outer space. Someone who is willing to respond. Someone who wants to team up. They twitter.
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For the people that do not know exactly what World of Warcraft is I can explain this in a few characters. It’s a MMORPG. And these characters stand for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. OK Massive I can understand, more than 12 million people worldwide are playing this game. Multiplayer is for sure, you’re not alone Online. And OK you play a role, but don’t we all in real life? World of Warcraft (WOW) is sometimes compared with Second Life. They both are MMORPG and another thing they have in common is: MONEY.
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1 Billion Copies sold! Every publisher would be out of his mind, when he could write this in his annual accounts. But Apple succeeded to do this in only 9 months time: 1 billion applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch through the iTunes on-line store. And what about all the other publishers selling their Windows Mobile Products? Of course, the price per copy is higher, but how many copies are ‘sold’ via the bittorrent sites, newsgroups and other ‘social networks’? Are these the secrets of Apple: low pricing and a way to prevent pirate copying, by installing the software through their own iTunes Store? (more…)

Is is true, that men never grow up and that the difference between men and boys are the size of there toys? Most of the people consider all those gadgets that can be bought today as toys to play with, but I do not agree on that! I think the modern manager needs those new devices not only to keep in contact with the ever-changing environment, but also to manage his own time and agenda. The modern manager is not only expected to work day and night, but also to have a more than high output level. How can he do this with just a pencil and a writing pad. How can he stay in contact with all his friends, colleagues and (more important) clients and suppliers? (more…)

Ascension Day is always a day off. And it’s always on a Thursday, so together with the Friday you can have a long weekend. Some nice spring weather is most of the time also a part of the deal. So what can go wrong on a day like this? Everything! Today the Rotterdam Football club Feyenoord lost from NAC Breda! 0-4 Feyenoord will not be part of any European League next season. And the financial problems for the club will probably be bigger. The new coach Mario Been has to do some miracles, although I just heard on Dutch television that he is not Ti Ta Tovenaar (Famous Dutch wizard from the seventies).

And last but not least, we said goodbye to Gerard Meijer. He worked for 50 years at Feyenoord. He took care of all the Feyenoord players all these years. Not only during the games, but also outside the stadium. A great thank you is on it’s place.

Can anyone comment on the newest Canon SDLR, the Canon 500D. Why do the manufacturers want a perfect photocamera like this to shoot movies? It’s just like to teach a fabulous football player to do some basketball too. It should affect the quality of the camera as a whole I would say. But I hope anyone can post something on this. Use the comment. Thanks in advance.

As I was born in Rotterdam and still live there, I have searched for a BLog theme, that would give me the opportunity to put a nice picture in the heading. I succeeded on that and put a picture of the beautiful Willemsbridge on top. Of course the Erasmusbridge is much more popular, but that’s why I have choosen the Willemsbridge. I hope you like it. Tomorrow another day, maybe some changes on the Blog and maybe another silly post like this one. Do not expect any really interesting post in nearby future, as I am still building this site and discovering all the possibilities of WordPress. But to compensate, here is a nice picture of Rotterdam:

Getting things starting up here at my new Blog. This is more difficult, than I thought it would be, but I choose to have my own built Blog and not just a standard from Google. That means , that the layout and the possibilities of this site can change and probably will in the next coming 2 or 3 months. Put a RSS on this site and do not miss anything.