Hi there!

About this blog:

Wavelab blog is the third and hopefully last location where I’ll shift my entire online life to. It’s some sort of hub where I’ll collect all the data from my different social networks and it’s serving as an indexation tool for my mind. 

At the same time, I’ll be venting some frustrations, discuss some ideas and challenge existing theories. Occasionally, where deemed appropriate, those things might be written in Flemish.

I’m not going to merge my former MicroMiel blog and I’m not going to re-install Marketing Thoughts. Instead, I’ll start over from scratch and with good intentions, here on the Wavelab blog. Micromiel will remain online but won’t be updated anymore. Marketing Thoughts has been transferred to a new owner and is no longer in my possession. I have no regrets, only good memories.

For some social services, I kinda forgot the password or didn’t revive the user after hibernation, so I either lost the data or simply failed to maintain the channel for a certain period of time. So I had to create a new account, for instance for YouTube. I probably should feel guilty about it, but I don’t. Instead, I’ll just try to stay up to date with all channels this time and explore the features that have been added while I was away.

What I write on this blog is my own personal opinion and with best intentions. If you have a problem with something I published, please contact me to sort it out.

About the author:

My name is Miel Van Opstal. Born in springtime of the last year of the seventies, vividly alive and dedicated to the work I do. I’m a happy little camper, studied interactive marketing and saw quite some places in the world already. My nickname on most services that require one is Coolz0r. That last ‘o’ is a zero.

I practice the noble sport of Savate, also known as French street boxing. I love snowboarding even though I haven’t had much time to do so the past couple of years. I used to skateboard every day but I never bought a new board after I broke the last one crashing on the cooping while airing from a ramp which caused a hilarious faceplant and a broken arm. I secretly dream of buying a new board soon and starting to cruise again. I enjoy running near rivers or shore lines or in forests, especially when it’s about to rain or when it has just finished raining. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen because I like experimenting with food. I have a weak for the sauce I make for Tiramisu. I used to be a sous-chef in an Italian restaurant for over 9 months before I started college (again).

I was a bedroom DJ for a long time, then I had a 2 hour radio show on Sunday evenings between 8 and 10 PM for 8 months on Radio Centraal, an Antwerp-based independent radio station. During those hours I’d play and discuss all the deep house and groove vinyl I’d bought earlier that week at the USA Import record store or at Wally’s Groove World. In the late nineties, I used to play at parties in the old Club Zazou, an underground basement night club in Lier, my hometown. The best place I’ve ever spun records at was Cafe d’Anvers, somewhere early 2001. In 2003 I sold my turntables, mixer and boxes of records to gather funds to go back to college. Which I did. But I still regret selling my stuff. I hope to buy it back some day.

I went to Music School, followed 4 years of musical notation and 2 years of classical guitar, but I quit because I wanted to make noise like Metallica and Guns N Roses, and not play all that soft shit repeatedly. So instead I went to follow the courses of declamation and phonetic writing, and I finished those after another 2 years. Sometimes I feel bad about quitting guitar class, but now I compensate it by playing Guitar Hero Metallica on my XBox 360, and I pretend it’s for real.

In high school I played a lot of Magic The Gathering, a fantasy trading card game based on the powers of nature. In 1995 I partipated in the Wizards Of The Coast Belgian Championship. Obviously I didn’t win. But it was cool. I was a good collector and I sold everything when the I lost interest in the game. I’d be rich if I had just kept all the cards. Meh.

I like watching good tv shows like The Sopranos or The Wire or Carnivale. And I’m hooked to gangster movies of all sorts, from Bonnie & Clyde over the Untouchables and Scarface to Casino or GoodFellas and American Gangster or The Departed. And all the twisted things too like Snatch, Crank, Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But I’m also keen on vintage stuff and timeless classics. That kind of should put you in the mood.

Short Bio:
  2003/09-2006/06 – Communication Management  – Interactive Marketing (KHM Mechelen).
  2006/01-2006/11 – Intern + Strategic Planner @ ‘i-merge’ ( now Boondoggle ).
  2006/11-2009/07 – Technology Evangelist @ Microsoft.

  2009/07 – WaveLab, Strategic Marketing

Some References:
  Founder of ‘Coolz0r – Marketing Thoughts’ Blog (2005).
  Bachelor of the year award for ‘internal knowledge network’, a 2.0 project (2006).
  Self-Promotion campaign stunt – one day for free (micromiel.com/promo) (2009).

For work-related recommendations and full bio please check my Linked-in profile.

About this design:

I have no problem at all admitting this is a borrowed Wordpress template. I removed the footer because it was ugly and I know that’s supposed to hold information about the creator.
That’s why I paste it here, to give proper credit where it’s due.

Theme Name: family
Theme URI: http://topwpthemes.com/family/
Description: Designed by TopWPThemes.com and available FREE at WordPress Themes Gallery
Author: TopWPThemes.com
Author URI: http://topwpthemes.com
Tags: black, white, yellow, orange, four-columns, three-columns, fixed-width, right-sidebar

I have to add that I made all the icons custom for this blog. If you want to have those, feel free to use ‘m.