Podcasts
Leadership
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the mayor of Eindhoven since September 2022, sees his task as “burgemeester” (father citizen) to be focused on enhancing the collaboration and building trust between the various communities, he wants to avoid Eindhoven being a “collection of nationalities”, but aims for it to be a safe city and community for all of us. Having had various high profile political roles in the past: Minister of Finance (2012-2017) and Chairman of the Eurogroup (2013-2018), Jeroen Dijsselbloem is known for his diplomatic skills and courage not to shy away from talking about the “pink elephant”; he is not new to building bridges and bringing people together, this is a skill he sharpened while dealing with the European bank crises. It now helps him to bring together local representatives and to solve the challenges of the municipalities in the region. He encourages us to search for root causes before we jump to solutions. Will Brainport continue to grow? What if the economy cools down?Innovation in Brainport
Huge global transitions are ongoing, and we see the creation of economic blocks. The value generation that can come out these challenges and changes is huge. Are we sufficiently aware of that in Europe? Will we stay relevant? As we need to organize ourselves better, cooperation among academia, companies and governments, can ASML work in an open innovation environment? Responsible companies create a safe environment for their employees. ASML wants to take a proactive role in helping governments, be it financially, paying for infrastructure, for building more homes, be it in terms of accelerating paper work. To us, that sounded like the early days of Philips, but Peter Wennink does not want be paternalistic, but a collaboration is the way to approach the challenges at system level. Starting a lab at the university is an example to setting up collaborations.Politics
A pre-election political debate among Mpanzu Bamenga, D66 (Democratic 66); Jan Joosten, CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal); Judith Tielen, VVD (People’s Party for Liberals and Democracy), Eva de Bruijn, GL-PvdA (Labour and Green left coalition) and Valerie Pajak, Volt (Pan-European political movement), organized by EindhovenNews.com The debate has four segments that each focus on key topics. The first segment addresses international students, housing, minimum wage and the development of the Brainport region. The second segment will focus on immigration, 30% ruling, and asylum. The third round is dedicated to innovation, sustainability, mobility and security. The final round highlights housing, health insurance and taxation. Moderator Beena Arunraj, Eindhoven News is joined by Zach Newmark from NL Times, Jean-Paul Linnartz and Robin Pascoe from Dutch News. Dutch News also reports results from a poll among internationals.Events
Carnaval [link]: Internationals coming to the southern provinces of the Netherlands often are taken by surprise during Carnaval. Crazy days. Suddenly Eindhoven is different from being a hotspot in technology and innovation.