Sunday, the day before the start of my internship, I got a text message from Andreas (CEO) asking me if I wanted to join him Monday evening on his weekly trip to Rotterdam. Of course I wanted to!
Since pictures can tell you more than a boring block of text, I will show you pictures … a lot of them.
The first day upon my arrival Andreas gave me a sketchbook which would come in handy the next weeks. And it did!
After he briefed me about a project he was thinking about for some time. He asked me to think about the design and the user experience. I did use the sketchbook a lot! This little project will be something I will work on the coming six weeks.
‘It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be.’ by Paul Arden. This book, and two others, are considered the Bibles of madewithlove, which is why he wanted me to read them (and I did!). They made me understand the vision behind madewithlove and it’s team. They told me I can keep the Paul Arden book for myself, which means a lot since it’s really a pleasant book to read!
Around 7.30pm, Andreas picked me up at my place and we drove to Rotterdam. While driving he told me about how the Internet works and how simple it actually is, consisting of just text-files transfers. Not only this, but also about the dangers of the Internet and how simple it is to find or fetch personal data (phishing). He taught me countless things about servers, for example how a browser finds a webpage you’ve been looking for in this huge pile of websites all over the world.
Andreas even told me about once betting his mom he could transfer €100 from his mom’s account to his own without her noticing.
Two weeks later he was €100 richer.
When arrived at the CitizenM hotel in Rotterdam – which is a really nice hotel – Andreas showed me how to ‘talk’ to a server. Over a (free!) drink we talked a little more about the company, how it works and how important the teamspirit is at madewithlove.
The next day Andreas got up Early (6am) to run for an hour while I was still snoring. At 8.30am we drove to the port of Rotterdam, where Awkward has their offices. Awkward is a digital design company that works together with madewithlove on Addapp.
Their office is a really nice place. It is cosy, although looking pretty modern and stacked with fun people. Andreas and I met with Stijn (photo below) from Awkward and while they were discussing some things, I was still amazed and taking pictures of their interior.
Not only do they make beautiful digital stuff, they also make the best coffee and weirdest lunch with fermented beans that tasted really … strong, I guess.
“Do the Belgians want coffee?!” was yelled numerous times throughout the day.
The day ended at 3pm when I worked on a landing page for Addapp and got to learn how to work with Sketch, a designing tool which is particularly useful when designing for mobile devices for example, more useful than Adobe Illustrator, although Adobe Illustrator comes in handy for a lot of other things. After saying goodbye to ‘the Dutchmen’ we headed home.
The rest of the week I worked on my project, Andreas and I did a pitch to Nico, advisor to madewithlove and a good friend of Andreas. Nico seemed like a really nice, passionate guy, actually like everyone I met at madewithlove so far.
To end this week’s post I decided to post some photos of the building and people at madewithlove.
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