Harry is senior advisor content & services for ‘Images for the Future’. One of the main questions he works on is how to optimally disclose digital cultural heritage. Digitization of photos, films, and writings is a challenge in itself, but Harry is mainly interested in the what, where, and how of implementing the resulting content: what does digitization mean for copyrights? What kind of business models can we think of to make content widely available, and at the same time ensure revenue streams? Which characteristics do innovative services need in order to be successful? In other words, how can we profit from investments into our cultural heritage, as a society and as a knowledge economy? Harry’s of course not tackling these problems on his own, but works with a team of experts in the fields of: user research – Nikki, new media – Geert, web editing – Marcel, and intellectual property rights – Martijn.

Harry got his experience from scientific publishers Kluwer Academic and Springer; for the second he headed the Business Development section. He derived his interest in publishing processes (identifying, organizing, adding value to, and distributing historically valuable content) from his first professional love, IDC Publishers. This organization, currently part of Koninklijke Brill has been carrying its slogan, ‘Bringing History to the Future’, for more than 50 years. As a born-and-raised historicist, this appealed to Harry then and still does now. Having wondered the international academic circuit for ten years, stopping at Paris and New York, Harry has taken a liking to the commuter service between The Hague and Amsterdam. Although it stops dead his frequent flyer mileage, it gives him much substantive satisfaction: ‘history is a travel through the gardens of the spirit’ (Johan Huizinga).

Old Hobbies: Canonball Adderley, Sahara crossings, Odyssee, Jack Kerouac, Zen and the Art of Mortorcycle Maintenance, Manuel Castells, mouth harmonica, readings by Jaques Chirac, hard cheese & aperitifs

Current Hobbies: The Fratellis, Niek & David, photography, the Southern Beach, Mercedes 280 E, The Long Tail, Michael Ondaatje, steak béarnaise & Bergerac

Future Hobbies: Chopin, refined cookery, the Mediterranean, Dante, Bhuddism, chocolate & digestifs.