NEWS > #19

Introducing Luc van Donkersgoed

27 January 2011

Luc van Donkersgoed founded Coding Duchtmen.

1) If you could go to study again, what study would you chose? Why?
I think I made a mistake when I started my study in Computer Science – after two years of programming I found out I was much more interested in people and organization theory. If I could start over, I might study Psychology or International Business. On the other hand, I think my current study has given me the technical skills I now use to communicate with the *real* programmers, so I might not change a thing.

2) What is the biggest mistake you’ve made?
I can’t think of one. I could say I should have finished my Gymnasium high school, but the experience of losing the options I had taught me to work harder for my goals, so I don’t consider being kicked out of school a real loss.
3) What would like to accomplish? What is your higher goal?
I’d like to accomplish a role as concept-designer / manager for myself, being able to think outside the box, design great products, and delegate the actual production to a team.
4) What do you believe to be the biggest hype at this moment? Why?
The biggest hype are without a doubt tablets. They were made hip by Apple, and now every electronics-producer wants a piece of the pie. In a few years – maybe earlier – the market will be saturated, and we might see another bubble bursting. Smartphones will not be threatened by tablets the way laptops and netbooks are. Laptops will not disappear either, so I expect the portable computing market to be shared about evenly between smartphones, tablets and laptops on the longer term.
5) What do you do to unwind?
To unwind I sport a lot – I go running, cycling, wall climbing, swimming, longboarding. Also, I am a great fan of all music. I listen to my iPod Classic (20.000 songs) almost every single minute I’m not sleeping or socially engaged.
6) What question would you like to ask our audience after your talk?
The question I’d like to ask my audience is: there are two ways to reach the smartphone user: by app or by mobile website. Apps are prettier, more powerful, but expensive – especially when produced for multiple platforms. Mobile websites are faster, simpler, cheaper and can be easily adjusted / changed. By what percentage (e.g. measured in hours of usage or data consumption) will the mobile market be shared between the two?
comment  (1) |
Bookmark and Share


Introducing Ville Vesterinen

26 January 2011

Ville VesterinenVille Vesterinen (@vesterinen) is running a very exciting mobile startups called Grey Area that has just released the game Shadow Cities. Next to being a CEO he’s also the chairman and co-founder of Arctic Startup which is said to be “the Scandinavian TechCrunch”. We want to learn more about Ville so we asked him these 5 questions:


1) What field do you think is the most inspiring with regard to the field you’re in?
I think location is really exciting with all the untapped potential. I’ve seen a lot of awesome stuff that’s not yet released that some friends are working on and we at Grey Area have only scratched the surface on what we want to do. Much of the exciting stuff around location is at the intersection of location and social and that’s also what I’m most bullish on.

2) When was fortune on your hand?
Being able to work with all the brilliant people is my lucky moment. They inspire me everyday by their example.

3) How did you end up as the CEO of Grey Area? What were the critical / turning points in this path?
I’ve known the other founders for years and last summer we sat down to talk about what Grey Area could be and we just all got really excited where we could take the company and the product. The product was already quite far at this point and one could imagine how it would change the way we will experience cities. I have always been really interested in rediscovering cities equally for those who live in the cities as well as for those who visit. Already in 2006 I co-founded a new type of city guide concept to explore cities and Grey Area is all about understanding the city in a novel way as a context for entertainment. But the critical piece for me is and always has been the people. I love to work with great people and I couldn’t imagine better and more talented people to work with than Andreas, Teemu and Mikko.

4) How will mobile gaming develop over the next 3-5 years?
I believe it will be much more social and context aware than anything we are currently experiencing in the mobile or even in the browser. Once we start to collect, use and understand the data that mobile phones can offer I also believe the experience will be personal and unique for each gamer much like in the web at the moment.

5) What question would you like to ask our audience after your talk?
I’d like to ask where and when they mostly play mobile games and if they are seeing their behavior changing.

no comments |
Bookmark and Share


Recent Articles

We reached our destination

27 April 2011

Program for #momoams 20

25 March 2011

Introducing Tim Heineke

24 March 2011

Introducing Brian Whitman

15 March 2011

Introducing Duncan Stutterheim

10 March 2011