First Impressions

Last week, my sister and I attended a networking event with 140 sustainable enterpreneurs in the region Gelderland/Overijssel. We had met the organizer of the event a few weeks prior and we were invited to attend under the condition that we would lend him some support during the event. As this was a paid event we could then participate for free.

One of the activities was to help pack bags with informational material for the participants. As some of the people that had to bring in materials were late we were already packing the bags when the last materials were dropped off. When the person to bring in these materials (he had an assistant carrying the box) was seeing us packing the bags, he made an, in my eyes, derogative comment on how the "little women" (vrouwtjes) were doing such a great and important job of packing bags - even though the organizer's son was helping out too, as well as the organizer's wife.

If you know me a little bit, you know I cannot appreciate such comments, so I rolled my eyes and said to the daughter of the organizer, who was in charge of all the logistics, that I would not want to be at the table with this guy. Then the organizer passed by and admonished us once more to treat every guest as very special. So I swallowed my pride and decided to not hold the remark against the guy or to at least forget about it for the night.

The event was organized around 4 rounds of dining table networking and plenary sessions. During each plenary session, one of the enterpreneurs was invited to tell the audience what his sustainable business was about. Of course ... the first invitee was this same guy that called us "little women". He appeared to be a TV producer who had started a new initiative: an online TV channel that would only broadcast programs on sustainable development and enterpreneurship. And ... completely for free.

Of course the interviewer thought there had to be a catch because as an enterpreneur you want to make money. So how was he paying for the programming? Were there commercials etc.? No, said the guy, this online TV channel was a gift from his company to Dutch society. To him sustainable enterpreneurship also meant giving back and this was his company's way of giving back using the company's staff and equipment to produce TV for free. In addition, a lot of the programming would come from Dutch people sending in their own video-taped material with their ideas, visions, and actions on sustainable development and enterpreneurship.

This led to the next question from the audience. How was he going to ensure that the material sent in by Dutch individuals and organizations would be about the subject matter and would not be used for expressing for example negative, racist or anti-Islamist views? In other words, how would he ensure this would indeed be the "positive" news channel he envisioned? His answer: trust. To him, it all started and ended with trust. If you did not trust people to send in positive material they would betray your trust eventually. So yes, he in fact did not lock his door back at home ....

Call him crazy, naive, but despite his derogative remark in our first encounter, this guy not only inspired me, but he also showed me what a sustainable world should look like.

There were many more interesting and inspiring initiatives and people that I met, who also gave me some new ideas I want to work on. This guy though taught me two important lessons: 1. a first impression does not say everything about a person ... so always give people a second chance. They might surprise you; 2. Two important elements of a sustainable society are trust and giving back.

His TV channel can be found at http://www.duurzaam24.tv/ (unfortunately, only in Dutch). While you can already find some programming there right now, 24 hour-programming will start the end of May.

Have a fabulous week!

Rose