Dragonfly Media Curacao

As we mentioned earlier in this blog, we have moved in with Bas Kok Creatieve Communicatie. This week we sent out a mailing to our clients and a press release to the press.

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We are currently looking for a content editor (or two part-time content editors) who will become responsible for the content of a large tourism website. We posted an ad in the Amigoe (local newspaper) of today and have reproduced the ad below.

If you’re interested you should read the ad below. The gist of the requirements is that you need to be good at writing English texts and you need to have a ‘feel’ for the tourism industry as well as a lot of experience with the internet. We would like you to start May 5, 2008, but this also depends on the client and yourself; we’re pretty flexible in this. If this sounds like you and you’re looking for a great job in the internet business, you should apply. (more…)

As of April 7, 2008 we have a new address; Gosieweg 33.
Our new telephone number will be: +5999 737-1233!

Since about 6 months we’ve been working together a lot with Bas Kok Creatieve Communicatie and several future projects are planned with them. So, to keep the lines of communication short, we’ve moved in with them in their new office.

The setup in the new office will be relatively similar to the old one and an added bonus is that we share a conference room with Bas’s people for contact with clients and presentations. This will look a lot better to clients than having to sit with us in the work room.

Note: Dragonfly and BKCC have not merged. The two companies will remain as two separate entities but we will be cooperating more in the future.

We are firm believers in doing something back for the community in which we live. For this reason we allocate time, resources and money to community projects and sometimes sponsor a website with a worthwhile goal. Currently we are engaged in two such projects; the Princess Willhelmina Fund Curacao (local cancer society) and the Academy Hotel Curacao.

The Princess Wilhelmina Fund is the Curacao cancer foundation. Its American counterpart is the American Cancer Society. The PWF helps cancer sufferers on Curacao with financial aid, treatments, prostheses and information. Their work is very worthwhile and we want to help them improve their information distribution and their ability to raise funds. We think that a new and improved website can help them reach these goals.

The Academy Hotel Curacao is an initiative of CHATA and the Curacao Hospitality Training Foundation (CHTF). The idea of this new hotel (which will open in September 2008) is that it is run entirely by hospitality students. Curacao has a lot of students studying for jobs in the hospitality industry but it can be very difficult for them to get intern positions for the shorter internships (1 to 3 months).
Therefore this new hotel will be set up so they can get on-the-job training and we’re not just talking room attendants, waiters and cooks here. All positions (except for General Manager) will be filled by students. As our main niche is the hospitality industry we want to contribute to this great idea which we believe will help the people of Curacao to fill as many jobs as possible in the booming tourism and hospitality industry on Curacao.

One of our clients is looking for an intern to take charge of creating the content for their daily emails (around food, travel, global issues, news, wellness, culture, borders). The full description is below.

If you want to apply, just send an email with your motivation and unique selling points to Janera Soerel, or contact her on Facebook. The description:

JANERA.com, The Voice of Global Nomads, is an independent online magazine and members-only social network. Ours is an online magazine and social network, for global nomads. We talk about global culture and economics from a human point of view.

We are looking for a smart, motivated, internet-savvy intern who can take charge of creating the content for our daily emails (around food, travel, global issues, news, wellness, culture, borders). Content will need to either be created, or found via links to relevant topics on the web. Other responsibilities include editing, transcribing of interviews conducted with leading global thinkers, some writing, database management, and a variety of other duties related to running an online publication.

Interns must have a strong interest in New Media, know how to use photoshop, be web-savvy, have outstanding communication abilities, and strong attention to detail.

Most of the work will have to be done remotely, and quite independently.

As every self-respecting nerd (myself included) knows we’re running out of IP addresses. The current IPv4 protocol is not up to the challenge of the size of tomorrow’s internet. IPv6 is supposed to be the solution to this problem, but implementation is coming along slowly.

At last month’s RIPE:55 meeting in Amsterdam Gary Feldman put a new, hilarious text about this problem to the tune of a well-known pop song.

We found this video on Sebastian’s Pamphlets and there you can also find a transcription of the text. If you don’t know what the h*ll Gary is singing about, go ask your system administrator. You’ll score a lot of points with him/her.

In the exciting world of corporate enterprises many battles are waged every day. The CEO fights with the board on what the best direction is for the company, the HR people argue with management about whether or not personal items are allowed in cubicles, the finance department has fortified its position against the marketing department which wants another ad campaign, and so on.

One of these corporate battlegrounds is the company’s website and its two key combatants are the IT department and the search marketers. Simon Heseltine posted an excellent article in the in-house column over at Search Engine Land. If any of the above sounds even vaguely familiar we urge you to read his article The IT Group: Friend Or Foe Of In-House Search Marketers?.

We are pretty proud of our new babies: a magazine and website about getting married in Curacao.
It is called ‘JaCuracao‘, which is Dutch for ‘Yes, or I Do’ - Curacao.

I was married last year December and during the months of preperations, I wondered many times why no-one had ever thought about making things easier to find for the bride-to-be.
Whether looking for the right location for the reception, or the dinner, or my make-up, I found that I really had to look around and ask around a lot.

Dragonfly Media is a member of the Curacao Hospitality and Tourism Association (CHATA) and we attend most presentations of CHATA as well as those of the Curacao Tourist Board (CTB) .
As CTB plans for marketing Curacao as a great destination for weddings & honeymoon, our choice was clear: we need to build a website that provides information about getting married or honeymooning in Curacao!

Publishing company Loket 1 is in charge of the magazine and we take care of the website.
‘JaCuracao‘ will be published twice a year and will be distributed, for now, among the major travel agents in Holland, the Antillenhuis, Curacao Tourist Board etc. Not only is it great for couples in Holland that want to get married but also local people that need to find information.

PS: this post was written by Bo and not Joost. Joost is still not married and does not wear make-up. Really, he doesn’t.

Every 6 months dozens of Curacaoan students need a company for an internship and hundreds of young people come from Holland to do their internship (”stage” in Dutch) on Curacao. That’s a lot of people for such a small island so sometimes it’s quite the rat race for these students to find their perfect company.

Usually we also get quite a few applications and it can be difficult to make a decision. And honestly; sometimes it’s a bit of a mess because we’ve never set up any rules, guidelines or deadlines for internship applications. We’re in the process of changing this and have set up some basic guidelines and a deadline for applying for an internship at DGF.

So, if you’re looking for an (web design) internship on Curacao check out our internships page and make sure you apply before the deadline ends.

Recently we talked about the opportunities in Latin America (or better: the Latino market) for internet companies. Curacao is ideally positioned to do business in Latin America; not only because of its geographical location, but also for the fact that it has a stable government and there are strong ties with Holland.

The CIFA (Curaçao International Financial Services Association)  recognizes these opportunities and is organizing a conference from September 6 to 9. The title of the conference is the “Wealth and Business Preservation conference” and its aim is to show the benefits that Curacao can offer to so-called high net worth individuals for living and doing business in Curacao.

More information about the conference can be found on CIFA’s (Spanish) conference page. There is also conference information available in English, but the conference itself will be focused on Latin America and therefore the official language will be Spanish.