Shoeshiner Boris

Last Friday I went to check out Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten at the New Tailor shop in Amsterdam. Quite an unusual event, because the host spends his time shining the shoes of his guests. After reading the invitation on Boris’s blog
I figured, what the heck, let’s go.

I had a chat with a few people who, apart from being a bit older, also appeared to be twice my size. Nonetheless I had a lot of fun and met some interesting people.

Boris and Me. What do you you think, 30 centimers ?

One of the people I met was Paul van Veenendaal, blogger @ Marketingfacts, works at LaComunidad

It’s pretty funny to be able to suddenly meet someone who’s articles you have been reading for some time. I have followed the Marketingfacts blog for quite a while now, but never payed a lot of attention to the names behind the blogposts.

You can imagine I was pleasantly surprised that the man in front of me, Paul van Veenendaal, was the actual blogger behind “Viral Friday”, a weekly highlight of the most interesting viral marketing campaigns.

Onto the shoeshiner
Of course I also had a brief chat with Boris, who seemed to be very open-minded and a great guy in general. When we were talking about ideas and the protection of them, he told me something very interesting.

Normally when I have a fantastic idea, I keep it to myself. I am someone that trusts people alot, but sometimes it just feels safer to keep inventions locked up in your head.

Boris however, said that you should always tell everybody about your idea, and that this is the best way to protect it. This makes sense: If people hear about you working on an idea, they will probably refrain from searching a new business-model in that direction because they know you are already on it. Also, if people around you know what you are working on, nobody will ever try to copycat it from you because of the obvious damage their reputation will get.

I found this perspective a really refreshing one. No more secrets, I like that. Maybe I’m still a bit hesitant to apply this in the field, but it definately does make sense.

Thanks Boris !

PS: There wasn’t a lot of shoeshining involved, I was wearing sneakers :)