On August 27^th we welcomed over 120 Digital Leaders and Business Partners at the Dolce in La Hulpe to celebrate the end of the summer with a barbeque.

In the morning the first Digital Leaders gathered to discuss Innovation in their Peer Group. After lunch our Advisory Board brainstormed the Program for 2020. What type of transformation, organizational change priorities and technology area's would be most important for 2020?

At 16h our Summer Celebration started with a warm welcome from our President of the Advisory Board, Koen Vandaele.

Niels Decraene from our new Business Partner, Transmit Security gave a short introduction on his company.

After the introductions, it was time for our first guest speaker, Dado Van Peteghem. He explained us the seven metaphores of transformation, gave his view on Start-ups and Scale-ups and how these can work together with big corporations. Next up a session on Ecosystems and how to think outside the box with this network of networks. To quote Greg Satell:

It’s Ecosystems, Not Inventions That Truly Change the World

And concluding:

• follow the people: see Torfs and JBC
• follow the purpose
• follow the data: Jack Ma from Alibaba (Dado mentioned we should all read 'The house that Jack Ma built'. When he inquired if anyone had read the book, nobody in the audience had. Xavier and Wim from LCL immediately thought, why not send a copy of this book to everyone who was present! Every attendee will receive it soon from LCL Data Centers)
• follow the money
• follow the technology

Our final speaker was Jürgen Ingels, entrepreneur pur sang and founder of Clear2pay. Jürgen guided us through his life, from organising parties (do something you like), via commercialising notes at university and selling exam questions (the price is not always linked to value). As president of the faculty he organised the 'night of the erotics' (sex sells). He used the profits of classisal concerts to buy champagne for the after party (it's not important what you know, but who you know). And even started selling diapers (shit sometimes sells) and chocolates in Stockholm (expect the unexpected).

Jürgen's conclusions as an entrepreneur:

• you have to have luck
• you have to have passion
• you have to be a rebel
• the cost of bad people is three times higher than his salary
• C-level people don't walk around in their company
• parallel working
• Executing ideas
• Don't take yourself too serious

As Jürgen ended with "Have fun in life", our barbeque started and the six CIOs who won our competition left for hot air balloon trip.

And what is Hendrik Deckers up to.. find out soon: