Profile: Stevijn de Jong

Company name:
Enrise.

Company founding date:
1 January 2009, as a new holding company for 4worx, which has been operating since 2000.

Place of business:
Amersfoort.

Names of founders:
Stevijn de Jong and Hermen Heinen.

Ages of founders:
Stevijn = 36, Hermen = 30.

About the company:
Enrise is a full-service Internet company with a passion for technological creativity; hence our subtitle: Code Cuisine. Our basic point of departure is that a website is very rarely ‘complete’ and we see it more as a question of educating, growing up, adjusting and expanding. A good website or web application is too dynamic for anyone to be able to know in advance exactly what the users will need most and which components will eventually yield the best results. We work side by side with our principals to keep a constant eye on how to make the most of the available budget. Our strength lies in the fact that we have divided the different disciplines over four subsidiaries, so that our clients will always be able to deal with specialists: 4worx does all the open source projects (mainly PHP and MySQL), Solidate does everything based on Microsoft technology (.NET, MS SQL, etc.) and we are currently in the process of setting up a separate branch for RIA (Rich Interface Applications), such as Flash and Silverlight. Besides that, we also have our own R&D lab, named Glitch, which provides support services for all the other companies by building tools, researching new technologies and keeping an eye on all the latest trends and developments in our fun and dynamic industry.

Current project:
Besides the sites and applications we build, we also like to do more in our industry; for example, we’re currently hard at work organising GLITCHED, the first Dutch Nerdcore event that will take place on 26 February this year in Panama, Amsterdam. Nerdcore is a movement in hiphop with music and texts based on geeky subjects, such as the Internet, computers, video games, science fiction, programming, technology and comic strips. We will also hold the European premiere for the film, ‘Nerdcore for Life’, with extra performances by the biggest American Nerdcore rappers of our time: MC Lars, YTCracker, MC Router and Beefy. We’re convinced that we will attract a huge crowd of enthusiastic nerds in the Netherlands with this show and by doing so create an amazing ‘nerd pride’ event. More information is available at www.glitched.nl

Source of inspiration:
Eckart Wintzen, Gordon Ramsay, SQL, natural paint pigments, my gas oven and almost everything that comes with an electrical plug :-)

I worked for Eckart for the past ten years until he died tragically last March from a heart attack. He taught me a great deal; among other things, you don’t need to be some dumb business suit to be able to do good business. And that your office does not need to look like an office: on the contrary. Gordon Ramsay was our inspiration when setting up Enrise: comparable to his different restaurants, each with its own menu, unique image and own specialties, but always backed up by the strength (and organisation) of the umbrella holding company that does all the boring work, such as administration, accommodation, and that also sets up the new restaurants. We do exactly the same thing, only with computer technology.
SQL inspires me, because a database is an incredibly powerful thing. The best websites run on the back of loaded databases with nice, linked data. I obviously love natural paint pigments because of their intense colours. You can buy them ground in-house at the paint factory, De Kat, in Zaanse Schans (near Zaandam)! Then there’s my gas oven: I love it. There’s nothing as amazing as cooking on gas, and while cooking, I invariably drift off into dreams about all the other things I still want to do. Finally, my gadgets: I’ve been a subscriber of T3 (Tomorrows Technology Today) magazine for years – it’s my ultimate form of ‘nerd porn’.

My big idea:
In 2004, I tried to persuade a major Dutch bank to get rid of web-based telebanking. The stuffy old lists on the screen should make way for a dynamic screen presentation that makes it possible to sort and group the data. That way, you can tell, at a glance, how much you spend on, for example, Albert Heijn every month. It should also have bar charts that show income versus expenditures over the past six months and a monthly pie chart that divides your expenditures over housing, shopping, recreation and so on. It should only have a few categories to keep things nice and simple. Interpay would have to transmit a code with every new transaction, so that, for example, all H&M payments would automatically go under the item, Clothing, sports clubs under Leisure, and all the different insurances and mortgages under Housing. Obviously it should also be possible to create different types of classifications manually in your own account. You could also expand the service with budgets, savings, and a host of other cool things.
Meanwhile, someone else has taken over that idea and put it into practice at, among others at www.mint.com.

Favourite tools:
Photoshop, my iPhone, the GSF-31 knife from Global and the Aeroccino from Nespresso.

Favourite website:
www.dpreview.com en www.imdb.com
No site is all that complete, when it comes to camera reviews, as DP Review. Even the most minor details are mentioned there, shown in images, and compared with other alternatives. IMDB is the best example of a database-driven website. Everything is linked to everything else.

Hobby:
Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet and Internet. Oh yes, and cooking.

Best advice I ever received:
Follow your heart. But that’s my own advice ;-)

Biggest blunder:
The fact that I did not start building websites on my tenth birthday.

Tips for professional colleagues:
Passion makes the world go rounder. Only do the things you love to do.

As an ambassador of Amersfoort, I would...

... lay fibre-optic networks throughout the entire province. In that regards, the full, brute force of the Internet is still Science Fiction.

Company website:
www.enrise.com

Company email address:

Web 2.0:
maps.google.nl is my personal favourite, and we use www.basecamphq.com a lot in our projects at the office. Our customers also like to use it, because it shows them exactly which jobs we still haven’t done and they can always add points if they want to.

Back to the Creative Amsterdam Hall of Fame