Projects That Didn’t Work Out As Planned

Sometimes I start a project with a certain vision for the project and some kind of result in mind, but then life happens like clients asking something different in that project. I can think out a project, but if it doesn’t sell it means:

• the project had no market 

• the timing was not ok! 

This means I can cancel the project when a certain time passes, because it didn’t bring the money I wanted. Or I can change it a bit and sell a lot of it. Sometimes just a twitch is needed to make the project something the clients or the market wants.

Wandelen Met WordPress

Together with Wandelen Naar Inzicht I set up the project Wandelen Met WordPress. Together with Wandelen Naar Inzicht I made a budget, website, selected routes, and menus to surprise and spoil the customers. The intention was that Wandelen Naar Inzicht would coach the potential customers during hikes, and I would help them before and after the walks for a week to develop the idea they had come up with into a website that would give body to their project, including the social media that would match their personality and needs. Me and Wandelen Naar Inzicht came up with this project during a hike together because many of her customers needed a website and I had already sent a few of my fellow entrepreneurs her way. In the end there were 4 potential customers who wanted to join us. Unfortunately 1 too few to make Wandelen Met WordPress profitable for me and Wandelen Naar Inzicht. The project was put on hold. Later I did carry out a variant of this with Herstelreizen by going on a walking holiday with mental health peers on the Wadden Islands of The Netherlands for a midweek. During this midweek I walked with them every day and there was also a workshop every day to motivate them to give meaning to their further lives. I wrote the blog ‘And then I was a tour guide’ about this experience.

WordPress Met Kids

I came up with the project WordPress Met Kids (WordPress with kids) with a client for which I made a website. She coached children at school and was a former primary school teacher. She saw that her own son wanted to learn different things than was taught in school. Technology and other innovations that had not yet been given a place in formal education was the starting point. It had to be a combination with what they learnt in school to make it later on available for workshops in the formal primary education. She also entered into other collaborations as learn to code for kids at Seats2Meet. The collaboration with me was about WordPress. The children had to make one website in two groups. To make the website they had to agree on what would be on the website, determine the structure of the website by using mind mapping and also think of color, etc. Me and the former teacher carried out this project by promoting it in her network. 2 workshops were test run with children from primary school age. The youngest being 8 years old. Upon arrival, the parents were introduced to me. All the 4 website groups surprised me with how quickly they mastered WordPress and how they worked together. The end result of the test run was four working WordPress websites completely made by the kids, which could be shared with others. Unfortunately I noticed that running such workshops was too much work for two people. A third person was needed, preferably with WordPress knowledge, because then workshops could be given in the future with the result that every child would go home with their own website. I noticed the latter was very important, because each of the kids had a topic that was very important to them that they wanted to bring attention to. By choosing a website for each child, the child would also be encouraged to delve further into the subject of their interest. The parents were very enthusiastic when they picked up their kids, especially when they saw the working website and heard that I had to call my hosting company twice, because the kids had found a bug in WordPress.

Access Lessons With Access Files

In the first years of Databeet I gave several individual Access courses. I also worked a lot with Access during my 'loondienst' years and noticed that the knowledge was often lacking among those who had to work with it. Access is especially popular with research, as it is often standalone and not connected to the internet. Making Access slightly more protected against hacking. This is especially important if personal data or other sensitive information is being stored in it. After hiking Camino de Santiago in 2016, I thought that there was a market to continue with Access. I came up with a workshop, where the participants were taught individually or in small groups and would work on their own Access database that they used in their work. This Access file would be put on a stick to make it extra safe. This project required pre-financing for the purchase of Microsoft Office including Access for all participants and a stick with enough gigabytes for each participant. I submitted my idea and budget (begroting) to UWV Arnhem, the city where I lived at that time. Unfortunately I couldn't get the financing through them and wasn’t able to finance it myself. A few months later I moved to Eindhoven and worked as a volunteer on the project Buurt & Bloei, where they wanted to use Excel to store data in this experimental project. I recommended using Access as Access was a better database for what they wanted. It became Access and I got this gig as an entrepreneur. Later, when Buurt & Bloei was no longer an experimental project but integrated into WijEindhoven, I was called by the IT department for more explanation about the construction of the Access database, so that they could now integrate it into their own systems.

Excel Collaboration

My first attempt at working together was in my freshman year as an entrepreneur. I met Ter Zake Excel at one of the Open Coffee Network for entrepreneurs. Meeting with the owner of Ter Zake Excel was a way to know what Ter Zake Excel was doing with Excel and could I and Ter Zake Excel work together. I met a few times with the owner of Ter Zake Excel, but came to the conclusion that I wanted something different than Ter Zake Excel. I wanted to teach Excel to small groups and especially beginners. I was already teaching Excel at Buurthuis Rosa in Utrecht and entrepreneurs. Later on I got the opportunity to teach several levels of Excel to both teachers and other staff of a ‘scholengemeenschap’ in Veenendaal and surroundings. During the lockdowns of COVID-19 I also tested an online version of my Excel lessons not being able to give Excel in person anymore. Despite the failure of this collaboration, Excel is one of Databeet's most successful products.

Reality Keeper

Reality Keeper is an app that originated from my own experience with mental health and social media. Through this project I reduced my social media use to the social media that suits me, X (formerly Twitter). The Reality Keeper idea got a project plan during the Dutch Health Hackathon in UMC Utrecht. The Reality Keeper app was one of the last projects where I collaborate with Anoiksis and Adstructie. Together with these organizations I made a budget and a project plan. These were submitted into the program ‘Verward gedrag’ of ZONMW. Ultimately, Reality Keeper was granted 3 subsidies from ZONMW and won a prize with Dela. The Reality Keeper app allowed me to check on daily bases how social media made me feel. There were three questions in the app, and each user could set how often they wanted these questions. All data was stored on the user's mobile, so no Big Data, but personal data was collected on the user's mobile. Before construction, during construction and after the first version of the Reality Keeper app, potential users were able to give their opinion about what the app should be able to do and what their purpose was with the app. The app was built based on the information obtained through surveys and focus groups. The use of the Reality Keeper app also created space to give workshops on social media behavior to the once using the app. Potential users could download the app Reality Keeper for free in the Apple and Android app stores. ZONMW had also devoted a large article to Reality Keeper and I used pr to get a lot of free publicity in well-known and lesser-known written media about mental health & Reality Keeper. It helped to make me aware of my social media use and how pr worked around projects. Unfortunately the collaboration was too complex to get further funding or use own money to market Reality Keeper furiously through marketing campaign. Reality Keeper has its own blog 'Reality Keeper'.