Becoming a father a.k.a domain squatting starts early.

Landing page teunvanderven.com

Since a couple of months we’ve been anxious, excited and proud. A new human was about to be born, but most importantly; it would be our human.

We quickly learned that the old-school Dutch name “Teun” is a little complicated to pronounce for non-Dutch speakers. Luckily we could do something about that. Borrowing some code I’ve previously wrote on Music Hack Day projects, we’ve whipped up this little landing page to help people to learn how to pronounce his name.

Of course we’ve registered his name as a domain. So, a little landing page, a little domain, here’s to you little man: https://www.teunvanderven.com.

The Media Manifesto (2007)

My early learnings as an online media consultant still seem valid. As the current market is changing at a maddening pace I thought it relevant to write a retrospect.

In 2007 I had my first job at a publisher, Techmedia. It was a small company (±6 people) and we worked with a network of freelancers to publish a young brand called Bright. We worked on a magazine, weblog, video podcast and even a TV show. I was really excited about the market we were in, traditional publishers were just starting to understand what was coming and we had the opportunity to alternate between these two worlds: online and traditional media. We were creating branded entertainment, sponsored stories and set up barters with similar outlets in the market.

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On diversity and the stories we’re being told

I’ve always been fascinated by stories and what they do with us. Our thoughts, our characters, our experiences. Stories shape who we are and who we’re becoming. I was really inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who opened my eyes with her talked on the danger of a single story.

A single story emphasises on how we are different, rather than how we are similar.

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