His face and his voice are known by every­one in the Nether­lands. He is an out­stand­ing reporter and jour­nal­ist. On 4 June 2010, Max West­er­man is TEDxRot­ter­dam host and he is every­thing we could have wanted for the con­fer­ence and more..…More

Tabarki adds a keen per­sonal note to the events and debates he leads. His style is sharp, he loves to dis­cuss but remains bright and pos­i­tive all the same. It is the ideas and the con­cepts peo­ple talk about that are intrigu­ing to him..…More

In the king­dom of blind men the one-eyed is king, Eras­mus once said. Lis­ten­ing to Willem Ver­beke makes us real­ize that we are in the king­dom of blind men but thanks to him we can catch a unique glimpse of the land­scape..…More

Bart Weet­jens has a com­pletely dif­fer­ent approach to the land­mine detec­tion prob­lem. The com­plex tech­nol­ogy sur­prised him when he ana­lyzed the prob­lem of mine detec­tion in Africa in 1995. He set out to develop cheaper and more effi­cient tech­nolo­gies that rely on locally avail­able resources..…More

What is her dri­ving force? Her per­sonal moti­va­tion is to make a small con­tri­bu­tion to a bet­ter world. Entre­pre­neur­ship to her means giv­ing full play to those who pur­sue their pas­sion instead of their career. Sus­tain­abil­ity is her rai­son d’être..…More

Ahmed Aboutaleb was born in 1961 in a small Moroc­can vil­lage. His father moved to the Nether­lands to work, fol­lowed by the fam­ily in 1976. At that time, Aboutaleb was fif­teen. .…More

Maarten van der Wei­j­den is an Olympic swim­ming cham­pion and has won gold for the 10 kilo­me­ters open water event, at the Olympics in Bei­jing 2008. He also sur­vived can­cer and was forced to take two years out to sur­vive the dis­ease..…More

Bas Har­ing has man­aged to increase tele­vi­sion rat­ings with an amaz­ing pro­gram on phi­los­o­phy. He is bright. He is tit­il­lat­ing. And he is search­ing for answers to ques­tions that every­body could have asked, but no one did..…More

Frans Hiddema’s main focus is to reduce the fear of the hos­pi­tals patients. ‘Scared patients run a higher risk of some­thing going wrong. The less afraid, the more sat­is­fied peo­ple are. This is an evidence-based result..…More

Jan Rothuizen calls this work his soft Atlas. He walks through dif­fer­ent cities, some­times by him­self, some­times with inhab­i­tants as guides. He takes notes on what he sees, on what he hears and expe­ri­ences and makes draw­ings of that in his ate­lier..…More

His world used to be safe, orderly and pre­dictable. Until the thing with the train hap­pened. How does one deal with it as a direc­tor, as a human, as a ‘Rot­ter­dammer’ when a bank needs to be res­cued by the gov­ern­ment?.…More

Ntjam Rosie’s authen­tic per­for­mance makes for a com­pelling set full of soul and energy. Her pow­er­ful voice and per­sonal style set the tone. Unde­ni­ably her music has inter­na­tional poten­tial.…More

‘Bor doesn’t actu­ally believe that phi­los­o­phy has become mar­ginal in today’s world. On the con­trary: ‘To me phi­los­o­phy is always about think­ing, about beau­ti­ful, com­plex rea­son­ing.’ .…More

You either cheer or jeer at Harry Merry. With the music of this Rot­ter­dam musi­cian it really is a mat­ter of love or hate. Some do not hes­i­tate to call it bril­liant, while oth­ers won­der uncom­pre­hend­ingly if you can even call these sounds music..…More

Frances Gouda is the expert on gen­der issues in post­colo­nial soci­eties. She has been appointed numer­ous ambi­tious awards for her out­stand­ing schol­ar­ship. But she is also a woman with a clear view on today’s polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions..…More

Since Gut­ter­Punk Noisia belongs to the top of the drum ‘n bass scene. With their out­stand­ing albums they cap­ti­vate their lis­ten­ers and with their live shows they set the dance floor on fire..…More

Social media give a voice to com­mon peo­ple. Twit­ter, Face­book, YouTube, Ipa­dio: the num­ber of peo­ple in Asia, Africa and the Mid­dle East that use social media to oppose vio­lence and injus­tice grows. For many, Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter have become impor­tant tools to con­nect..…More

Abeltje Hoogenkamp is a min­is­ter of the Protes­tant Church Ams­ter­dam. She works as a chap­lain at St. Lucas Andreas Hos­pi­tal. In 2006 she won the audi­ence award of the Ser­mon of the Year, a national preach­ing com­pe­ti­tion orga­nized by Trouw and NCRV...…More

Igor Nikolic is study­ing the infra­struc­tures sur­round­ing har­bour com­plexes: “Imag­ine the har­bour as a gar­den,” he says. “Rather than being like a camp­ing boss who wel­comes any­one, in any order, the har­bour author­ity should act like a gar­dener..…More

Elec­tric boo­gie was his spe­cialty. “My friends and I viewed clips and movies on YouTube. We taught our­selves, on the street, to do the move­ments that we liked. “Besim Hoti is sopho­more of Codarts and dances a solo in a chore­og­ra­phy of Scapino Bal­let Rot­ter­dam..…More

Celine Cairo was born in Ams­ter­dam in 1990. When she reached the age of 3 she started singing lit­tle by lit­tle, always mak­ing noise around the house. Now, six­teen years later, she has played in the best the­aters and venues around the world, includ­ing Carnegie Hall in New York..…More

Archi­tects design build­ings. At least that’s what they were known to do. But some archi­tects have pulled down the walls between their own domain and the world around them. …More

Mar­cus Vlaar is one of the gam­ing wiz­ards of the world. Any­thing he touches seems to turn into gold. He is a celebrity in his field and has won awards all over the world pre­sented by an amaz­ing vari­ety of sec­tors rang­ing from the art world to tech­ni­cal project man­age­ment..…More

Paulis­sen is a trainer and a coach. Her premise is that you need other peo­ple to do what you must do. That is what gives you energy! Free energy is what we all want, isn’t it?
…More

Julian Oliver pro­vides new and allur­ing approaches to aug­mented real­ity. Aug­mented real­ity means cre­at­ing vir­tual ad-on’s to what is already there...…More

For­get every­thing you thought bal­let was about. Ed Wubbe has remod­eled the image of bal­let esthet­ics and turned it into dance not to be missed. Since 1990 he has build on a reper­toire that is com­pletely dif­fer­ent and deeply inspir­ing..…More

Dick Tib­boel is spe­cial­ized in pain. He says: ‘An embryo already can feel pain.’ Pain is func­tional, it tells us how we feel. When in pain we don’t feel good, with­out pain we know we are fine..…More

The truly good things on this earth seem to just come into exis­tence effort­less. Richard Straver is con­vinced that he has devel­oped one of these really good things: some­thing that appears so sim­ple, you and I should have thought of it our­selves..…More

Stu­dio Roosegaarde is an artis­tic lab­o­ra­tory for unique art and tech­nol­ogy projects. It is the home­stead of artist Daan Roosegaarde where he explores the dynamic rela­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture, peo­ple and e-culture..…More

“On this beau­ti­ful blue planet we are fac­ing some huge chal­lenges. My ambi­tion is to help make this place a bit more enjoy­able.“
This may not be a state­ment one expects to hear from a library direc­tor when ques­tioned about his moti­va­tion..…More

At times he whis­tles on invi­ta­tion with a clas­si­cal orches­tra, but he also has been seen per­form­ing a solo act on Low­lands fes­ti­val right before the musi­cal vio­lence of the Baz­zookas. Geert Cha­trou whis­tles from clas­si­cal to jazz, from Cajun to pop...…More

A heart tech­ni­cian! How cool is that! For­get the clichés you ever heard about medial sci­ence. There is noth­ing nerdy about it, not since Ton van der Steen has become the super­star in his field..…More