Yesterday was BlogCom night. Getting there took me ages since the train I took had a five minute delay in Leuven (where I work) and the other train I needed a connection with was kind enough to leave on time, so I was stranded for over half an hour in the middle of f*cking nowhere (aka Aarschot). Then when I got home (finally) and took the car to drive to Antwerp, I was stuck in a traffic jam for over 8 kilometers. Fashionably late I made my entry somewhere around 8.15 PM. More than an hour later than I wanted to. Thank you, public transportation. Thank you, old man who drove first in the single lane traffic jam, fearing the number 30 and everything above that on the speed-o-meter of his car. I stick with the point that there should be a rule that forbids owners of license plates with 5 digits instead of 6 to come out between 4 PM and 8 AM. Those people are clearly afraid of traffic (maybe because of their age) and should be protected by grounding them. But anyway, BlogCom… that’s where we were.
I shared a table with next to me Bruno from B.V.L.G. and the guys from the Tech podcasting crew Absurdnet.com. At the same table where Dries (i think) (who used to work at i-merge before they moved to the place where I work at now) and a nice lady who blogs at a fruity place called GeleBanaan (yellow banana). The other head of the table (I sat on one end) was Pascal Van Hecke, who sat right in front of me. [There were some other folks at our table as well, but I didn't get the chance of talking to them, which is way too bad.]
Jeroen organized it quite well, again, and maybe it’s time someone else did a third BlogCom in another city so he could actually enjoy it as well instead of running around like a madman, trying to get it all worked out. Great job dude!
I had a nice talk with some people I already knew like Robin, Clo, Luc, Rik and James, and I got the chance to meet some new bloggers like tantieris and the blokes from Appelogen, an arty project featuring Doctor Wolf, YourMama and Chris Dust. Doctor Wolf, as his name might indicate is ummm… an impressive man to say the least. Those three guys… :) Really :) Wow.
I also met the team behind TenderFeelings and HungryFeelings, and I’m quite impressed about the results they made with their out of control hobby project. I’ll try to keep an eye on that more often.
Somewhere later in the evening, Kris Hoet from MSN managed to drop in on his way home from his trip to Amsterdam and also the most famous chest in the blogosphere, Schenkr, and the sophisticated Mister Druppels arrived to have a little chat.
Amongst other people that were there were also the Netlash team, MouseOver, Asfaltkonijn on a marketing frenzy with balloons and Pietel.
Last but not least, I had a really interesting chat with Stefan Kölgen about how f*cking hard it can be to produce something that Coolz0r would blog [not hard at all, just send email :) ] and about the importancy of the upcoming event they’re organizing next Friday, which I’ll have to pass on to my colleague Tom over at i-merge, because someone should really be there.
I’m really glad I went to BlogCom to network and meet some new people. That’s the good part of it: you come home with a bunch of links and you have a few extra feeds to start reading (or podcasts to listen to). Fresh input, new opinions… That’s a really positive thing.
Lesson of the evening: good mothers always bring the power cables to the Nintendo DS gadgets when bringing along the kids. It’ll make sure you’ll get some peace and quietness, for as long as level one takes. :)
The full list of participants is after the jump.
