Hi, I’m Roel van der Ven. I’m a Senior Product Manager at Spotify with 20+ years of experience across media, music, and platform technology. I write about product management, technology, bread baking, and life in Berlin.
You can still hear the echoes! Noortje and I did some urban exploring and found ourselves on the Teufelsberg mountain to inspect the abandoned NSA spy station from the Cold War. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/mtHF_NkoCI/
After a splendid Music Hack Day London in 2011 we were lucky to be invited to a small tour in the National Physical Laboratory of London. Ian Butterworth was so kind to show us around and illustrate the impressive effects of the acoustic chambers they use for testing. These recordings have been sitting around on my SoundCloud account for ages and I am finally posting them here for you to enjoy. The quality is not great since I recorded these with an iPad, but you should be able to get a pretty good impression.
Photo by Ian Hooper Ian, Carsten and Roel went climbing at Bertha Bloc in Berlin. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/kbszxhqtjI/
A photo of Roel’s sweater with the Star Wars logo. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/jyZKYHylQuUVT7v3TOzrOrftPjhTtN1f6pV6g0/
We rented a moped and explored the island together. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/iYvxGzSlc2iflzdFMICn7AHVs86Cdl6uVxuSw0/.
This cat is named Apie. When he is happy he drools on you, true story. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/g8vugXylf3YvY0xQO98ghjev2IdBm_nnMCHT00/
Yesterday Atoms for Peace released the music video for their track “Before your very Eyes”. Mister Thom Yorke can be a music industry defeatist all he wants, but I’ll be inspired by his works forever. Enjoy.
A while ago I selected a bunch of articles that have impressed or inspired me and I thought would be useful sharing. At that time I figured I could regularly post an article with resourceful or inspiring articles but I didn’t realise I needed the time to read them all myself and let them sink in so I could think about the actual value. Starting with this post I want to theme this series with a certain topic, which helps me to maintain the quality of this series but also enables me to create a valuable resource of knowledge and learnings that will hopefully be useful for you as well.
Roel at a DIY standing desk at SoundCloud. Working with creative people has its advantages. Here I was trying out a DIY standing desk at the SoundCloud office. The photo was shot by Phil Calcado. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/eusby6kqrH/
When working in a great team you work with great people. Folks like Jami, who escalated his music hobby to a serious career next to his dayjob as product manager at SoundCloud. He recently released his first full length album called Quarters, which is a great listen. Check out the music video for ‘Rilo’ here: And listen to the full album here: If you buy the full album at Bleep.com you’ll get an exclusive set of postcards showcasing the 4 locations where the album was made. I think it’s incredibly inspiring but also comforting to see Jami release his music. He has done quite some shows and has kept steadily working on this, while also embracing the internet as a platform to distribute his work and engage with fans. His album was released via an exclusive feature over at HypeMachine, he has been posting updates on his Tumblr and Facebook fanpage about the progress and when you buy the record you’ll get an exclusive addition which tells you a bit more about the back story of his work. Not all musicians are this internet-savvy but it shows me that if you have the drive and can find the fans to feed that drive you can enable yourself to create great things. I’m sure this won’t be the last the internet will be seeing of Jami.