The parting of the ways: so long, @TheNextWeb

TL;DR: As of today, I’m no longer part of the team at The Next Web, where I have worked as the European Editor for the past 1.5 years.

It’s all good though, and I’m looking forward to taking some needed time off and away from the tech media rat race and exploring some ideas in the next few weeks, although I’m open to discuss any opportunity.

My email is robinwauters@gmail.com if you want to reach me for anything – my Twitter handle is @robinwauters if that is your preferred communication tool.

———–

The long version:

It’s been an interesting month so far.

First it was a trip to Athens, Greece, which was an eye-opener for me both on a personal and a professional level.

Next, there was the surprise of me being crowned the ‘most influential Belgian journalist on Twitter’ for my work at The Next Web. This was quite amusing and resulted in hundreds of new followers on Twitter who are no doubt wondering why on earth I made it to the top of that particular list by now, much like I do.

“Robin who?” indeed.

Then, there was the very successful TNW @ Barcelona mini-conference, which was organised in collaboration with Barcelona.IO, bringing close to 300 people together in a short period of time in what many deemed one of, if not the, best tech event to ever take place in the city. Colour me proud.

This was followed by a great short vacation with me and my lovely wife exploring a good part of Catalunya and the beautiful Costa Brava.

Next up was a trip to Rijeka, Croatia, for the excellent RockPaperStartups conference, where I did a keynote on startup-press relationships on behalf of The Next Web.

Now things have gotten even more interesting.

Today is my last day of writing for The Next Web, as the company last week informed me that it has decided to make some changes in editorial and business focus going forward, plans I apparently didn’t quite fit into.

Although this was a bit of a surprise to me, I understand and respect their decision.

No need to feel sorry for me. 🙂

For the most part I really enjoyed the 1.5 years I worked at TNW, and I wish everyone there the very best. I’m grateful for them giving me a platform to write, post-TechCrunch, and also for enabling me relocate to Barcelona for half a year. I maintain that the company has a lot of potential, if they play their cards right. Time will tell if they do just that.

As for what’s next for me, I don’t really know. I’m definitely going to take some time off – maybe even until the end of August – because I made the mistake of not doing that when I left TechCrunch last year.

This will give me time to think, explore some ideas I’ve never really had time for in the past few years, enjoy life with my wife Evelien and our toddler Jaan, and study the work of ancient philosophers fuck around on the Internet for a bit.

Then, we’ll see. I might not be able to resist writing about the technology industry, and the European startup ecosystem in particular. A lot of people think there’s a lot of specialized reporting work still to be done in these parts on that level, and I tend to agree.

Or maybe I might just be able to resist writing for a living, who knows.

I’m very much open to any new opportunity though, so if you have any suggestions I’ll be happy to hear you out.

If you want to reach my, please use my personal email address robinwauters@gmail.com, although my robin@thenextweb.com email address should work through the end of this month to ensure a smooth transition. You can find my bio and a link to my LinkedIn profile on robinwauters.com.

Alrighty. Let’s see which way the wind blows me next.

Thank you for reading this entire post and actually making it all the way down 🙂

I like turtles.