Soundbyte 343: King’s Day

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I hope you enjoyed the long weekend as much as I did. Our national King’s Day somehow forces us all to be outside and mingle, and that’s a good thing. It’s also a great day for kids to discover their inner entrepreneurs. Turns out those music lessons do come in handy when you want to make some extra money. Or, barring musical talent, meticulously going through your old toys and selling them. It’s one of those national holidays that the kids actually look forward to, and I’m glad this year the weather was mostly cooperative.

Currently I’m working with a team that’s partly in India. It was very entertaining to see one of the teammembers describe King’s Day in an email to them, justifying why we were all off-duty last Friday. Try explaining ‘koekhappen’ to someone halfway across the globe without sounding like you’re pulling their leg.

(Yes, this is our actual king engaging in ‘koekhappen’.)

Or, explaining the fact that almost everyone is dressed (partly) in orange. Oh well, it might still be less strange than explaining you don’t work because it’s Labour Day, like some of our neighbouring countries next week. At least the Indian developers are informed now and won’t end up like some of the clueless tourists with outdated guides telling them to visit Queen’s Day in Amsterdam on April 30th.

The day before King’s Day I visited the TeqNation conference in Utrecht. It was very nice to attend a conference without having to speak, for a change. Angelo, Ronald, and Piet did a great job representing Luminis with their sessions ‘Down and dirty on the network: debugging the IoT with Wireshark’ and ‘The Internet of Drums’. There were other inspiring talks as well, revolving around the IoT and machine learning themes. What struck me on the exhibition floor, however, was the lackluster presence of many companies. Obviously they were trying to recruit, but none of them seemed to be able to signal what really makes their company tick. Luminis didn’t have a booth, but it’s definitely something to ponder. How do we genuinely communicate that Luminis is about open innovation, sharing of knowledge, and empowering our clients through technology?

Let’s close with some music. The following instrumental song called ‘Rev’ is a jam by some of my favourite session musicians. Enjoy!