Dutch Government Invites North American IT and New Media Companies to Visit Holland
The Dutch government is inviting 15 IT and new media companies to visit Holland from September 20-25, 2010 to explore this creative hub to Europe. The week will be packed with matchmaking and networking events including PICNIC festival.For a limited group of Canadian and US new media/IT companies there is a Dutch government grant available. More information is available at www.creativecradle.com.
The Netherlands is widely recognized as mainland Europe’s creative hub, and Amsterdam – the capital city- is one of the TOP 5 most creative cities in the world.
The stunning broadband and mobile infrastructure, and the low cost of communication services make that 85% of the Dutch population is connected to broadband. The 16 million inhabitants are extremely web savvy as proven recently when they managed to make their parliament election trending topic on twitter and constantly challenged Twitter’s capacity during the countries World Cup football matches.
The international oriented business culture is also reflected in high adaptation rate of business networks, LinkedIn for example has 1 million Dutch members. Not surprisingly LinkedIn opened their first mainland Europe office in the Netherlands last year and Tijmen Kos, Managing Director EMEA, Sun Microsystems states: “We chose the Netherlands because of the multilingualism, the education level of the working population and the excellent telecommunications infrastructure.”
With a multilingual educational system and an international economic focus as part of their history, the Dutch have embraced the digital technology to pursue a global citizen lifestyle. The country is in fact one big digital test bed, where a successful creative industry sprouted that is combining creativity, innovation and technology. It is also known for its diversity, with Creative Business Services, Media & Entertainment and Arts as the three main divisions in which the Dutch excel.
