Dear reader,
I hope you’re healthy and well on this first day of a new year. After a tumultuous 2024, many are thinking ‘what might 2025 have in store for us?’ So, regardless of whatever this year might bring, what about getting together more?
Upcoming newsletters will be more in-depth, philosophical and focussed on what the most helpful stories might be for 2025 and beyond.
In this first newsletter though, I’d like to:
Give you a quick projects update
Share my intentions for 2025
Invite you to (re)connect
For the Rainforest Alliance in New York, US, I produced and directed three films in a naive, messy and colourful style to explain the core pillars of their work.
For coaching app Fabulous in Paris, France, I produced and directed seven coaching films, with motion captured 3D characters in hand drawn environments.
In the past few months I’ve created core stories for both individuals as well as companies, in the form of websites and other media, using a new process I called ‘To the Core’ that brings out your best story quite easily, directly in usable media.
If you’re figuring out the story for your business or project, please check out the the program or get in touch with me, I’d love to work with you. Also, feel free to share with someone who could use some pro support in offering their value to the world!
At both library congress Bibliotheekplaza and pharmaceutical congress InFarma, I used visitor inputs to make a precise and detailed qualitative core narrative about their sector and the responses were really great.
The library congress asked to paint a picture of the future of the library, whereas the pharmaceutical congress asked me ‘to show their sector a mirror’, which I thought was a really great request.
More on this in a future newsletter.
My main intentions for this year are:
To speak out more openly and with more clarity from the inside outward to the world to share what I have to offer that might be helpful. This newsletter is one step in this.
To focus more on uncovering and clarifying the most helpful and powerful unspoken stories that live among groups, companies, organisations and sectors of any size.
To shift subtly from a future-oriented idealism to a more now-oriented pragmatism. While idealism strives to achieve lofty goals in some imagined future, now-oriented pragmatism asks: what is truly needed in the now and who really needs it?
To connect more actively with the people I find interesting and care about, as much as possible in person in the real world, while consuming far less digital content.
So in regards to that last point: what about getting together more and share what’s on our hearts and minds?
The climate, the news, (geo)politics and the internet seem to be getting weirder and less human by the day, while AI seems to gradually be degrading the quality, reliability and authenticity of online content. Meanwhile, many of us have become quite isolated behind our screens, getting increasingly anxious and depressed, and I don’t think it’s just young people.
Therefore, I believe that making a more conscious, deliberate effort to see each other ‘IRL’ as living beings and to make new friends, is increasingly becoming a more precious gift we can offer one another and ourselves.
Please feel free to contact me and let’s meet up for a coffee in one of the social hotspots in Amsterdam, or let’s (re)connect over a video call if you live further away. If enough people respond, we could organise little gatherings.
Thank you for reading the entire newsletter: hope to hear from you!
Groetjes from Amsterdam, Douwe.
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