These bloggers have shared their vision on the future of blogging.

• Hugh MacLeod - cartoonist and professional blogger on Gapingvoid
• Pete Cashmore - founder and CEO of Mashable
• Loren Feldman - 1938media.com
• Tim Overdiek - Deputy Editor in Chief at NOS News
• Scott Rafer - CEO of Lookery
• Boris van der Ham - Member of the Dutch House of Representatives
• Clo Willaerts - Blogger and marketing manager IBU at Sanoma Magazines Belgium
• Nalden - influential music and lifestyle blogger who experiments with blog design on nalden.net
• Gabe McIntyre (aka GabeMac) - bad mother vlogger
• Paul Bradshaw - Online Journalism Blog
• Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten - co-founder of The Next Web Blog
• Piet Bakker - professor at the Hogeschool Utrecht

Host of the day was Internet entrepreneur and web evangelist Patrick de Laive.

Hugh MacLeod from Gapingvoid

It’s been twenty years when Hugh MacLeod started drawing his “squiggly” cartoons and a decade when he decided to draw them on the back of business cards. It was the consequence of a “creative bug” he had. For him, this bug led to a lot of great work and experiences, yet this isn’t a guarantee that it will turn out successfully for everyone. After all, it IS a bug. So in 2004 he decided to write a piece called ‘How to be creative‘. The article - full of eye-openers - has been download a million times now and inspired tons of people.

MacLeod’s mantra is that “Blogs are a good way to make things happen indirectly“. By living to this mantra, MacLeod tripled the sales of Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon within three months. He’s also helping a a small South African winery, Stormhoek to “rise above the clutter”. Sales have going up fivefold since then, thanks to MacLeod’s blog marketing efforts.

Hugh MacLeod currently resides in Alpine, Texas, and will travel all the way to Amsterdam to share his vision on blog marketing.

Photo credit: David Sifry

Pete Cashmore from Mashable

Pete Cashmore has built his own blog empire. In the summer of 2005, he started Mashable - a blog filled with social networking news. Over the years Mashable has been growing rapidly. The blog now has over 5 million monthly pageviews and is ranked no. 10 worldwide. The Mashable parties, thrown all over the world, are legendary.

The 22-year old smart and well-dressed gentleman was named the 22nd most important Web Celeb by Forbes.com, describing him as the new media expert to go to when you want to know more about Web 2.0 and blogging. Well, that’s exactly why we invited him to come to Amsterdam.

Photo credit: Richard Moross

Loren Feldman, 1938media.com

Loren Feldman is an entertainer and videographer based in New York City. He comments on the tech industry on 1938media.com. He is president of 1938media, a video production company. He has been called “the most controversial video blogger in social media today.” Before focusing exclusively on the internet, Loren worked as an actor and independent filmmaker in Los Angeles. Loren is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the New York Friars’ Club.

Feldman was a featured video blogger at The Huffington Post and formerly at Podtech. He was prominently featured on Valleywag for his controversial TechNigga video. He has been a featured speaker at tech conferences, including speaking on the future of media at Mesh [4] and MobileMonday in NYC, where he was a panelist discussing business and investment opportunities in mobile video. A Wired writer said, “In classic brass knuckles, New Yorker style, Podtech.net/1938 Media video blogger Loren Feldman may have posted the final, definitive word on the whole email versus telephone Interview debate.”

When Anna Nicole Smith died, the New York Times said about Feldman’s video linking Smith and Marilyn Monroe, “[I]f anyone can pull off the just-gotta-do-it comparison, it’s Loren at 1938 Media.”

Photo credit: Brian Solis

Tim Overdiek from NOS News

Overdiek believes that journalists without a blog don’t have a future. That’s quite a statement, coming from a respectable journalist as he is. He currently occupies the position of Deputy Editor in Chief of the Dutch national public broadcasting news outlet.

His first claim to fame was his much applauded reporting about 9/11 from Washington. After the prestigious job of U.S. correspondent, Overdiek ran an one-man multimedia circus from London. He reported for radio, television, and.., a blog.

Now he continues his blogging quest as the Deputy Editor in Chief at NOS News. This asks for a completely different approach. We’re looking forward to hear his tactics and views during the Journalism Versus/Heart Blogging panel.

Photo credit: Leendert Jansen

Scott Rafer, CEO of Lookery

Scott Rafer has been helping Internet publishers and users take advantage of the latest technologies and trends since 1995. As CEO of Lookery, Rafer is creating an ad network and user-targeting service that supports the growth of social applications. Earlier, he was CEO of MyBlogLog, which was acquired by Yahoo! in early 2007. Before MyBlogLog, he twice tried and failed to build blog search companies—with Fresher Information in 1998 and with Feedster in 2003. Prior to the first dotcom boom, Rafer led the Internet products group at Kodak Hollywood, worked in investment banking, and graduated from the Management of Technology program at UPenn.

Rafer is also a member of the board of directors and co-founder of Mashery, which manages API and developer programs for web services providers, and is chairman of Winksite, which helps publishers large and small assemble active mobile communities around their brands based on the content they already syndicate.

Boris van der Ham - Member of the Dutch House of Representatives

Boris van der Ham is Holland’s most active politician on the web. He has been a member of the Dutch House of Representatives for D66, a social liberal party, since 2002.

Van der Ham is one of the few politicians who really understand the power of blogs and Web 2.0. Instead of hiring ghostwriters, he takes some time to keep in touch with his readers on Borisvanderham.nl. If you don’t take that from us, have a look at these facts:

• In 2006, he was awarded with the title of “Web Politician of the Year”
• Dutch social network Hyves (5M users) awarded him as “Most Active Internet Politician” on May 2 this year.
• Van der Ham wrote a column for Holland’s most popular blog GeenStijl.nl

He’ll will tell us how he started blogging and what it has meant for him so far. He will also discuss the paradox of being totally open yet cautious as well. We’re glad this extraordinary politician will take the time to share his thoughts and experiences (in English!).

Photo credit: Sophie Knijff

Clo Willaerts from Sanoma Magazines Belgium

Clo Willaerts combines two jobs: she manages a team of site managers and webmasters for Sanoma websites as libelle.be, flair.be, télémoustique.be, or zappybaby.be. Besides that, she monitors the online market trends, with a special interest for the wilder digital life forms, like social networks, user generated content, viral marketing, and social media in general.

Willaerts thinks blogs just happen to be a very convenient platform to start and enable conversations. During the Belgian summer festivals, Humo’s music journalists would publish their concert reviews live on the Humo blogs. But in between were other blog posts, like pictures and movies made by non-journalists - some even sent in by festival visitors themselves. The content was important, but the comments even more.

Clo will share her thoughts on journalism and blogging during the Journalism Versus/Heart Blogging panel.

Nalden from nalden.net

Since Nalden (1984) started sharing his thoughts via www.nalden.net he has worked for several companies in the music and advertising industry. He started working for record label Top Notch and State Magazine. After two years he moved over to the BBDO network to work as a junior creative for Proximity in the Internet & advertising department. Six months later he switched to Streative Branding
where he became an expert in trend research and creative consulting. With his knowledge about the web he gave advice to clients like O2, Telefonica, Bacardi, Jo Malone and became Streative’s in-house community connector.

Today he is co-owner of Appletree Records and shares his autodidact thoughts as a young social entrepreneur professionally through lectures and consulting. Despite all his activities as a record label owner, lecturer, web strategic consultant Nalden does not stop sharing, helping and promoting good initiatives (music, art, design…) on Nalden.net.

Nalden.net is unique on the web as one of the few weblogs build in Flash and has won many design- and website awards which is an acknowledgment for the current form as a Rich Media Application.

Gabe McIntyre (aka GabeMac)

GabeMac has been video blogging since 2003. His run in with Amsterdam Police launched him onto the net. Since then he has been from New York, Montreal, Paris, Berlin, Monaco to Amsterdam making vlogs, talking to media douchebags of the world, and whoring out his creativity to companies like BMW and Coca Cola.

After a dot gonner at startup XOLO.TV and teaching Design for Virtual Theater and Games in Utrecht, he is working as a Online Media Savant, consulting and creating for companies, and hosting a daily tech news show in Madrid with Mobuzz.tv.

We managed to catch him for BLOG08 cause he’s throwing a party in Amsterdam that weekend. You have been warned….

Photo credit: Some guy with a cellphone

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten from The Next Web Blog

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten is well known as one of the first Dutch Successful Serial Internet Entrepreneurs. He started his first company in 1997 and sold it during the hype of 1999. Starting companies, inventing innovative technology and coming up with new ideas is his daily work.

A lot of his time is spent on keeping up with new trends on the web, internet and in technology in general and looking for opportunities. He co-founded The Next Web Blog in January 2008 to put that information to good use. Not just for fun, as he even hired several bloggers (including BLOG08 co-organizer Ernst-Jan). In only seven months, the blog has become one of Europe’s most influential tech blogs, serving 4500 RSS readers a day.

Combine his creative mind with blogging and you get an inspiring presentation with the title “How blogging, serendipity, the image of God and interactivity all come together in one vision of the future of technology and humankind”. Are you ready for this controversial part of the program?

Photo credit: Lenniez

Paul Bradshaw from the Online Journalism Blog

Paul Bradshaw is the man behind the Online Journalism Blog, one of the world’s most popular journalism blogs, as well as various other blogs he keeps forgetting about. In between blog posts he works as a Senior Lecturer in Online Journalism, Magazines and New Media at Birmingham City University in the UK, and as a new media consultant for publishers. He was the founding editor of Internet Monthly magazine and also involved in the launch of the UK’s first MP3 magazine before going on to manage the launch of a number of educational magazine websites. He has contributed to a number of books including How To Do Just About Anything on the Internet; Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives; Web Journalism; and the second edition of Investigative Journalism. He organized JEEcamp – an unconference for journalism entrepreneurs and experimenters - earlier this year, and hopes to repeat the experience in 2009. Please say hello – he doesn’t bite.

Piet Bakker - professor at the Hogeschool Utrecht

Dr. Piet Bakker (1953) studied Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He worked as a journalist for several newspapers, magazines and radio stations and was a teacher at the School for Journalism in Utrecht. He also organized workshops for newspapers publishers, gave lectures and works as a consultant on newspaper innovation. He has been blogging on a daily basis since August 2004 about newspaper innovation.

From 1985 to 2007 he worked at the Department of Communications at the University of Amsterdam / Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) as an associate professor. He is now (from September 2007 on) professor Cross Media Content at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Hogeschool Utrecht. He is still member of ASCoR in Amsterdam as well. He edited and published books and articles on reading habits, media history, local journalism, internet, Dutch media, international news, investigative journalism, the music industry and free newspapers. He teaches mass communication and journalism at undergraduate and MA-level.

Bakker will participate in the Journalism Versus/ Heart Blogging panel.

Host of the Day: Patrick de Laive

Patrick de Laive is a true web enthusiast who just can’t stop organizing events to bring other web fanatics together. He initiated one of Europe’s largest web conferences The Next Web, started OpenCoffee Amsterdam, co-organized Kings of Code, and used two sports - bowling and petanque - to offer Dutch new media professionals a relaxed and fun networking environment.

After Edial and Ernst-Jan saw Patrick introducing Diggnation at The Next Web - it concerned beer, a white suit, and running around with Revision 3 CEO Jim Louderback - they knew he was the man to host a conference for the “rockstars of the web”.

He had a two-weekly column on Holland’s most popular blog