Bubble Foundry

I am looking for an intern to help me organize various events for the Dutch startup world such as more Lunch 2.0s, another iPhone Dev Camp, and a trip to the Slush Conference in Helsinki in late November. I believe that it would be a great opportunity for a student interested in event planning and technology to learn about the Dutch technology startup world and about event planning. The internship would be one day a week at my offie in the Volkskrantgebouw in Amsterdam and would last for at least 3 months. Please email me at thefoundry@bubblefoundry.com if you or anyone you know are interested.

This Friday sees Lunch 2.0 visiting Utrecht for the first time, where will be hosted by iDiDiD. On August 22 we have a Lunch 2.0 at Sogeti in Diemen. Finally at the end of the month, I am hosting an iPhone Dev Camp on August 30 at my office. We’ve had a huge response to the Dev Camp idea, so if anyone has any routers, tables, chairs, projectors or other gear they’d be willing to lend me for the day, it’d be much appreciated!

Finally, keep November 22 open in your calendars. Together with Joris Machielse, I am organizing a BarCamp-style event around creating startups. More information to come in early September, but if you have any people you’d like to meet or things you wished you knew before you started your business, please leave a comment below or email me at peter@bubblefoundry.com.

Thank you to everyone who came to the first Lunch 2.0.nl last Friday at Hyves. We had a great turnout and I think we are at the start of something good. To see more, I am uploading some photos to Flickr, as have many others. Merieke Hensel videotaped the Hyves presentations.

PS My apologies to anyone who tried to email me at peter@lunch20.nl on Friday afternoon. The address is working now.

I am pleased to announce Lunch 2.0.nl, the Amsterdam branch of the Lunch 2.0 series of lunches at technology companies. Please check out our website for more information and to sign up for our first events, which are at Hyves and eBuddy. Thanks to Robert and Mathijs for their help!

Every week I attend a get-together here in Amsterdam called OpenCoffee. The regular crowd includes people from Fleck, Wakoopa, IRL, and more. It’s a nice scene and everyone there has caught the entrepreneurial bug and is looking to develop web companies. However, one significant challenge that many face is getting their ideas built. This is not for lack of skill or drive but simply the fact that programmers are few and far between. Or rather, programmers in Amsterdam who are interested in joining start-ups for an equity stake are rare. This is a significant restriction on start-ups here, as it makes bootstrapping quite difficult.

There’s no easy easy solution to this problem but one way I can help is true try to broaden the entrepreneurial community to include more of the tech world here. To that effect I am starting the Dutch version of Lunch 2.0, a regular serious of social events at technology companies. We should have the first events finalized in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more information.

Update, 2007-12-17: Lunch 2.0.nl is now live!