Sail Amsterdam, 5 years on: so what’s changed for you?

Sail Amsterdam is here again. A wonderful event with impressive ships, which really highlights the city of Amsterdam. It’s as if time stood still and we catch a glimpse of how the world of transport worked hundreds of years ago. It also makes me realise how the past 5 years have flown by. The children are 8 and 10 instead of 3 and 5, and I myself have obviously progressed over these past 5 years, both in my work and private life. It’s nice to take a moment to think about all the things that have happened over the past 5 years.

In February 2005, YouTube was launched, can you imagine? Chances are you’d never heard of YouTube at that edition of Sail Amsterdam. Chances are you weren’t into digital photography or digital recording yet. Twitter didn’t even exist! Twitter was established in 2006 and only really exploded in the past year. And what to think of the iPhone? It took another 2 years until, in January 2007, the first model was launched by Apple. And we’re not even talking about the recently released iPad. In July 2005, Google took over a small company called Android, which the mobile phone control system that wasn’t launched until 3 years later, in October 2008, was named after. In 2005, CBS research showed that 1 in 5 Dutch people had never used the internet, something that is no longer imaginable. In Europe, 2010 will be the first year that internet usage will take over from time spent in front of the TV. It feels like the speed with which changes have been brought about in the past 5 years equals that of the transport sector. But over the past 50 years.

And what’s changed for you over the past 5 years? 2005 was the year in which the Dutch government launched the SBR/XBRL program to alleviate some of the burden on SMEs. So where are we today? At the dawn of real solutions and proper implementations. That’s a 5 year incubation time. It’s worth reading this report by KPMG: ‘Trends in Accountancy 2005′. It could’ve easily been published this year, don’t you think? 5 years ago, Twinfield had to fight against objections like: ‘the internet isn’t safe’ or ’has my financial information been truly properly stored?’ They were bears on the road that by now have disappeared. The entire world goes online, lives online and moves online. Whether we want to or not. But let’s get back to you. Which changes have you gone through that are worth mentioning? Or which ones are you expecting to go through over the next 5 years? Who will be tomorrow’s hero? Of whom will we say, in 2015: ‘we didn’t even know them back then, and look how far they’ve come’?

Let’s take the next Sail Amsterdam as our finish line and look back again in 5 years. Those tall ships remain the same, they’re timeless, but the real world keeps on turning and not just around its own axis!

Author: Mark Appel, Marketing manager Twinfield International.