Utrecht – 30 March 2017
During the ‘Logistics as Game Changer 2.0’ conference in Media Plaza Utrecht, I posed for a photo with Ruud Veltenaar after his presentation.
Ruud is an inspirer of transformation, philosopher, TEDx-speaker, Trend watcher, Fresh Thinker and Visiting professor. He had the full attention of the room during his fascinating and inspiring presentation.
Veltenaar started his presentation with the stimulating question: ‘Are things going to radically change in the world during the coming years?’ Using some very concrete examples, he continuously built up his argument. This man has a special gift: to bring things that are ‘far away’ ‘closer’ and make them ‘tangible’.
One huge eye-opener Ruud mentioned in his presentation was about the energy needs and provisions in the world. He put a lot of power behind this by uninhibitedly naming some very concrete examples and then following that up with ‘the journey from ego to eco-system awareness’ and the ‘Paradox of Purpose’.
A special case he mentioned was about a lecture Veltenaar gave to 176,000 students worldwide, simultaneously! They were then divided into groups of 25. Each group had to answer a list of 130 questions within a certain number of hours. Any sources in the whole world could be used for this. The IBM Watson computer selected the best contribution from the 7,040 groups (with the 915,200 answers) in less than five seconds.
Ruud also called on managers and owners of companies to examine the 17 sustainable development goals of the VN and to select three of them to concretely work towards. He also urged everyone there to pick a sustainable development goal as an individual, and to contribute to it.
One of the things I remember most is his call: ‘Don’t conform and go along, but create and contribute’.
If you ever get a chance to go to a meeting with Ruud Veltenaar: I highly recommend it. Unforgettable! Fortunately, he also has many videos on YouTube.