Bike Tour through Groningen
July 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Yesterday we went on a bike tour through Groningen. Even though we’ve been here three months, this was an eye-opener. Our tour guide, Cor, was really enthusiastic and did a great job of showing us some very interesting and quaint places in the city we didn’t know existed.
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- Groningen Museum
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- Did you ever bother to go into the main hall and look up?
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- Refreshments at the Prinsentuin
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- Our two astronomers got to explain this one to the group.
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- Messing around in the Prinsentuin
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- Noorderhaven
Highly recommended! For booking details, see Fietsstad Groningen.
Safari in Friesland
July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
On Sunday we went to Friesland to visit Richard, Martise and Bas. It’s the first time we saw the lovely farm they bought many years back and renovated. Richard looked at the big zoom lens on my camera and asked if I had just come from a safari. And in this manner, a title to a blog post was born!
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- What me? I’m not the Big Five?
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- The Farm
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- Marshland
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- Flower
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- The River Tsjonger
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- Birds
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- Cattails. Richard called these “klapsigaren”.
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- Beautiful Hortensias in the Front
Eva in June
June 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Friends have been clamoring for me to put up some photographs of our granddaughter, Eva Rose. Here are my favorites from June.
Hanze University
June 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A sunny spring day on campus
A while ago, I wrote about TSiBA’s relationship with Northeastern University in Boston. There are other international universities with close ties to TSiBA, and I am privileged to spend part of my sabbatical in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands, home of Hanze University. Three of our students have been here as well: Elkay, Jasmine and Thobela have done their IPJs in Groningen.
Groningen is a city in the northeast of The Netherlands with about 200,000 inhabitants, 50,000 of which are students. Imagine that, 1 in 4! (Accordingly, some “kneipen” – Dutch for shebeen – are open 24/7)! Twenty thousand are enrolled at the Hanze. They share a very modern campus to the north of the city with the University of Groningen (RUG) which counts another 20,000 students. The campus is modern and has some stunning architecture. Here’s a gallery of my favorite buildings (click for a larger view):
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- Van Olst Tower – Hanze
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- Life Sciences – RUG
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- Hanze Sports Centre
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- Zernikeborg – RUG
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- Bernoulliborg – RUG
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- Duisenberg Building – RUG
One of the most remarkable facts about Groningen is the number of bicycles it has. The Dutch are renowned for using the bicycle as their favorite means of transportation, but Groningen beats all records. Estimates say that there are about three bicycles for every single inhabitant, the highest density of bicycles in the world! Take a look at one of the many campus parking lots: on busy days; you’ll have a problem parking your bike and even more of a problem finding it when classes are over!
Where's my bike?
I have been invited to give several guest lectures (seven at last count) at Hanze; about TSiBA, of course, and entrepreneurship, but also about globalization and other economic trends. The story of TSiBA really excites the community here so I am sure we will have a relationship with Hanze for many years to come. For now, we are expecting two students from Hanze to travel to Cape Town to visit us, Douwe Hooijenga and Arik Vlaanderen, who – with their colleagues Angelique Rosner and Alkanna Buist – have fund-raised 11,500 Euro (about 114,000 Rand) for TSiBA (see the full story here). Be sure to shake their hand when they visit TSiBA in August!
Peter Kraan
They’ve ACEd it!
June 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
On Wednesday, I had the privilege of spending over an hour of Martin Haring’s time. Martin (@martin_haring) is Coordinator of the Amsterdam Centre for Entrepreneurship, better known as ACE. The mood was very upbeat as he had just come back from Budapest where ACE won first prize in the 5th annual European Enterprise Awards in the category “Investment in Skills”.
Stirring the Entrepreneurial Soup
ACE was founded five years ago and is a collaboration between 3 Amsterdam universities, the Dutch government and entrepreneurs. It runs an elective minor in Entrepreneurship for 3rd and 4th year university students. But it’s not make believe as some other entrepreneurship programmes in The Netherlands : “The students have to officially register their company with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and operate it like any other real business” explains Martin. And they’ve got a lot on their plates: the minor is full-time but lasts only six months, not a lot of time to start a company, especially considering that many students don’t have a concrete business idea when they start the programme.
During the six months, the students have an educational component of about 4-8 hours per week but for the rest of the time they’re either at ACE plotting their next steps or out in the real world doing deals. In the beginning, the educational component concentrates on creativity and idea generation. Afterwards they get law, entrepreneurial finance, marketing and all-important sales training. At any one time there are about 100-150 students running 30-40 businesses. Students decide what their companies will offer and the companies are active in all sectors of service, trade and product development.
A Coaching Session
On a company by company basis, 6-month goals are agreed upon between the students and ACE and the students’ assessment is based on how well these goals are reached. During the programme, they are supported by 10-15 staff members. “The students have a lot of independence in this programme, but business coaching is not optional”, Martin continues. “One hour week of business coaching by our staff is the absolute minimum. The programme really revolves around competent business coaching, and, if needed, we’ll pull in additional specialists.” One thing the students do have to organize themselves is start-up financing, which most student companies do by the time-honored triple-F method (Friends, Families, and Fools).
For more information about this very interesting initiative, see the ACE home page (English version). There’s also a nice video about ACE available (English subtitles).
Peter Kraan
Northeastern University
June 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Soon, very soon, the 4th annual TSiBA / Northeastern Field Study Programme will begin. On July 7th, thirty-six American students will arrive in Cape Town to work together with 52 TSiBA Students on a range of hands-on entrepreneurial projects. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Northeastern University. Having been involved in creating the South African component of the field study programme, it was very interesting and educational to witness the perspective on TSiBA from the “other side” of the ocean.
Walking to class
Northeastern University is located in Boston, Massachusetts, one of the oldest cities in, no surprise, the northeast of the United States. There are many similarities between Northeastern University and TSiBA Education: Northeastern describes itself as a leader in the integration of classroom learning with real-world experience – sentiments very familiar to TSiBA – and was recently ranked No. 4 by Forbes Magazine as one of “America’s Most Entrepreneurial Campuses”. Professor Dennis Shaughnessy, founder of the Social Enterprise Institute of Northeastern and head of the US delegation coming to Cape Town adds: “What I recognized when I saw TSiBA was that TSiBA was very much like the roots of Northeastern maybe as much as 100 years ago. Like TSiBA, it was very community based, blue collar, the first generation of college students from their families”.
Entrepreneurs from Boston and Cape Town
Of course, Northeastern in 2011 is much larger than TSiBA Education: It consists of 8 colleges offering undergraduate degrees in 65 departments to about 15,000 students. At the graduate level, the university offers more than 125 programs to about 5,000 students. The university even has its own Police Department and its own stop on Boston’s public transport system! So we still have some catching up to do, but then we have some time left: NU was founded in 1898, 107 years before TSiBA.
Northeastern University Police Department
I was very pleased to learn that the TSiBA Field Study programme has become one of the most popular field study programmes at Northeastern: it is over-subscribed and less than half of the students that apply can be accepted. “This was one of the best experiences I have ever had and I will, in a heartbeat, go back, without question”, says Riley Pruett, a Northeastern student from the 2009 programme. And there is an interesting development that grew out of the 2008 programme for one of TSiBA’s own: Cebisa Mahlukwana is slated to start his MBA at Northeastern next year!
On his way to Boston!
Peter Kraan
Inspiration Breakfast Hanze University Foundation
June 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Today was the big day. Four second-year students from the MER Faculty (Management, Economy and Law) of the Hanze University of Groningen, The Netherlands had spent the better part of 4 months organizing the Inspiration Breakfast 2011 on behalf of TSiBA. Under the auspices of the Hanze University Foundation, Angelique Rosner, Alkanna Buist, Arik Vlaanderen and Douwe Hooijenga raised a total of 11,500 Euro (about 114,000 Rand) through a fundraising breakfast attended by 50 people from local business.
This will allow 3 TSiBA students to study for a year
The perfectly organized event was opened by the Mr. Eric Dam, Head of the Foundation, and Mr. Henk Pijlman, Chairman of Hanze University. Both stressed that they were very impressed by the efforts of the Hanze students as a good example of “solidarity of young people with young people”.
Some networking going on
Besides the good food, there was musical entertainment throughout, but the highlight of the day for me was Coco from African Percussion. He had traveled all the way from Delft to get us stomping, clapping and shouting in perfect African rhythm!
Douwe and Arik in the hot seat
Arik and Douwe have been so inspired by their project that they have booked tickets for a trip to Cape Town this August. “We can’t wait to go! If it wasn’t for year-end exams starting next week, we’d be there already” they explained. And I think that Angelique and Alkanna won’t be too far behind. Congratulations and good luck to the four of you!
Peter Kraan
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