XPLUS lunch with Peter Hinssen

On Friday 28th of April, XPLUS had the honour to invite a small group of our clients to spend an afternoon in the mind-gobbling companionship of Peter Hinssen at a location as inspiring as our host himself, the famous Apple Chapel, below sharing some impressions :

Prelude

It requires an endless 20KM/hour cobblestone ride to arrive at Mater, now so peacefully quiet, but once a year the CenterStage for the world’s best cyclists starring in the Tours de Flanders. Rendez-vous at the famous Apple Chapel, once part of a monastery, now transformed into an Apple sanctum protecting the heritage of Steve Jobs’ turbulent and world changing life.

Apéro

In 40 minutes we zoom through 40 years of digital innovations, from typewriters with 64 Kilobyte memory to BYOD PC embryonic kits, from Lisa I to Lisa II (which was rebranded to the Macintosh XL), constantly enlarging the kilobytes to 512 and more, from view masters (yes the baby boomers acknowledge virtual reality exists already a long time ) to the failed Apple palm pilot, from iPod with touch wheels inspired by designer Dieter Rams to drawers filled with the complete set of annual reports of the Apple Corporation.
 
It takes an entire chapel floor and more to display 40 years of Apple innovation. This all in contrast with the collection of iPhone models of the recent years that all find a place in a small forgotten attic room hiding gigabits of memory; testimonial of a reverse correlation between physical space and invisible gigabytes.

Starter and Main course

While we savour a delicious lunch on the first floor of the chapel, our brain is spoiled with sharp insights presented to us at light speed by Peter Hinssen. It just keeps coming, as a fast ride through time. After major disrupters we’ve all seen over time such as TV, internet, mobile phones, cloud and others, generative AI and ChatGPT promise to become the next major disrupters – or are they already here? People and businesses will need to re-invent themselves. Some reflective questions stay with us: Is our education still adjusted to all this fast-changing technology? Who is teaching who? Where is Europe falling behind as superpower between USA and China? How does culture slow down fast company changes? Why do we need a (COVID) crisis to work together across politics and boundaries?

Dessert and Coffee

Around the kitchen table we reflect on why digital transformations are so tough to realise in some companies, what to give as parental advice as school orientation to the kids, career switching to the USA and people sharing memories how it was in the past. It was re-energising to take a pause, to step away from the daily micro level race and to reflect at macro level. We all felt refreshed and inspired, got new insights and ideas to take home, got new friends to connect to …

Thank you Peter Hinssen !