Wednesday evening, 19:00. Back home from a day with meetings from 8:00 till 18:00. While checking your e-mail (you always want to do that after being a day without it, don't you) and you see that Scoble and Maryam sent the phone number of the hotel they are staying at. You call them and say you'll pick them up at the hotel in 45 minutes.
So far so good. Until you arrive at the hotel but the police won't allow you to stop. Why? Because Dr. Condoleezza Rice is also staying at that hotel. Because of this I way too late to pick them up, of course.
After picking up Wim, we went to visit the city of Leuven. After having a big casserole of mussels (note for Robert: that was in Leuven and not in Brussels ;), Wim and I gave Robert and Maryam a quick tour around the city with of course a visit to the Oude Markt (freely translated as "Old Market Square"). This place also has the nickname of being the greatest bar of Western Europe. Not many people out there that night though... Luckily we had quite some stuff to talk about: culture, food, beers, Microsoft, Google, Apple, blogging... One thing's for sure, if you're out with the Scobles you're never out of conversation material. Robert is a great guy and knows a lot about so many different things. His wife, Maryam is such a spontaneous and lovely woman.
Before bringing them back to their hotel, we also gave Robert and Maryam the opportunity to see the Atomium at 1:00 in the morning. Luck was definitely not on our side, because normally this piece of art is completely lighted. But not now... Robert posted some photo's of places we visited.
Thursday morning Scoble gave a breakfast presentation to my colleagues at the Microsoft Belgium offices. Besides the "regular employees" also several members of the management team could free up time in their agenda to attend his presentation on blogging. Sweet!
In the evening, there was David's Geek Dinner at Serenata in Zaventem. On the previous geek dinners I attended almost everyone was part of the .NET developer community. (Yup, I definitely should go to more geek dinners.) This time, however, there were quite some people that I didn't met or even knew before. With the risk of forgetting someone, the people that I remember to have seen: Scoble & Maryam, David Boschmans, Wim Verhaeghen, Jelle Druyts, Joris Poelmans, Erwin van Hunen, Luc Van Brakel, Smetty "I Kissed Scoble", Miel Van Opstal (Coolz0r), Maarten Schenk, Frédéric De Vries (Druppels), Will Moffat (Hamstersoup.com). Also Bart Goossens, author of the Dutch book "Webloggen" of Clickx Magazine, joined us. During the evening we had nice chats on several topics, such as Apache, Windows Media Server, PHP, having blog dinners when interesting people visit Microsoft, open source, and much more. Erwin showed us the coolest mobile application that I've seen since Imagine Cup's SmartRunner. DopplerMobile is an enhanced version of the desktop DopplerRadio with many nice features. This is one of those apps that would convince me to buy a new Smartphone, just to be able to run it. Knowing that it has been written by someone that lives in Belgium just adds that extra touch. Erwin didn't release a beta version to the public yet.
During dinner one of the Belgian national radio's, Studio Brussel, broadcasted the interview that Kaat Mendonck did with Robert and Maryam earlier that day.
Summarized: it was a fantastic experience. Thanks Robert and Maryam for taking the time to visit our nice country (view an informational video). It was nice to hear that you enjoyed your visit!
PS. Today, De Morgen also published a piece on blogging with quotes from Robert.
Update: Maarten Schenk has also published a lot of pics of the dinner.