Birthday cake, modelled on the dimensions of a competition pool table

Turning 40 has been brought to you by Veronica Holdings, radio and television broadcasters, and publishers of the Netherland’s most popular magazine.

My birthday in Amsterdam was pretty much spectacular. Everything had been arranged in advance by phone and email, but I really had no specific idea of what I was in for. I was a guest speaker at something called the Networking and Knowledge Event, which was sufficiently vague a title for me not to know what to expect.

My host was Guido van Nispen, director of Veronica Holdings, and his team.

I had been prepared for a broadcast-style interview, because I had been sent various bits of correspondence from Carsten, the programme’s producer, but I was also aware that this was a conference of some sort, and I wasn’t quite sure how those two things worked together.

We arrived at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam around 10.30am, where we met our driver, who took us to Hilversum, about 40 minutes away, one of the most tree-lined towns you’re ever likely to find. We arrived at Veronica, where we were met by Guido and the team.

Bobbie and I were shown around the building, which serves a number of functions. There’s a film school and a radio school, a media centre, and an archival history project about Veronica, which started life as a pirate radio station.

They’re engaged in an extensive project to source, digitise, archive and make available as much of the broadcasts and the history of Veronica as they can, and they are flooded with tape recordings from over the decades donated by audience members who also share their own recollections. They’re really proud of their history and there’s amazing research to be done there.

(New Zealand readers: can you imagine another ex-pirate radio station investing in a massive public digital archive and in radio education? If only…)

A VIP lunch was put on the rooftop balcony with a range of guests, including Jeroen Bouwman, the new Head of Digital for Universal (with whom I had to agree to disagree on quite a bit), Gabe McIntyre, who runs Xolo.tv and is one of the leading lights in video blogging, and Hans Veldhuizen, the founder of Novatunes — a new online record label which will be launching soon, with the support of some very big names in popular music (and which turns out to have some really great ideas).

There were some rather famous people there too — DJs and presenters (at least, I’m guessing they’re famous in Dutch-speaking circles) — as well as the Veronica top brass.

We spent a large part of the afternoon, just hanging out, talking about music online, being presented with CDs of classic Radio Veronica jingles, meeting people who were uniformly delightful, and looking forward to the networking event (even though I still really wasn’t sure what was going on).

Between 2 and 3pm, about a hundred or so media professionals gathered for champagne and snacks. Around 140 were expected, but there had been a major traffic incident in Amsterdam, and some of the attendees had given up. As it was some people had driven for two and a half hours to get to the event.

There were two stages. On one, there was a radio interview setup, with a DJ off to one side (Dr. Ska - ‘our black music specialist’). On the other, a stage for a music performance by a singer/songwriter by the name of Charlie Dee.

We sat around till 4pm, discussing ideas about music and the internet - and Jeroen and I found a few more things to politely disagree about (though, in fairness, he was quite quick to admit that the major record labels had behaved appallingly until now) and while he didn’t see any major changes over the next 24 months, he was quite certain that things would turn around in the long run.

It became clear that what was happening was a radio-style interview with several of the key delegates, on stage in front of an audience. Because Jeroen was not allowed to speak on a live broadcast (they’re a fearful lot, those major label types), the event was recorded for a podcast that will be released in conjunction with Kink FM, Veronica’s alternative brand).

I was up first, and was asked a few questions about the future of FM radio, and what I thought about the music business. It was interspersed with a song and some radio-style jingles, and the whole thing was over in about 20 minutes — about ten of which was me talking, five was music, and the other five was me being presented with the largest cake I’ve ever seen, which was then divided up for all of the delegates in attendance.

My God, they made a fuss of my birthday. In Holland, they don’t say ‘happy birthday’, they congratulate you. And, it turns out, everyone else connected with you. Bobbie was congratulated on my birthday — and had my parents been there, they would have been congratulated as well.

Congratulations, Mum and Dad, from the people of the Hilversum media industry.

And then there were the other interviews. People far more important than me spoke in Dutch for the next hour and a half, and there was live music and entertainment.

Then followed the party. There was amazing food — noodles and stir fry cooked on the premises and served in cardboard boxes with chopsticks (the prawn was fantastic) — and Bobbie and I spoke mostly to Gabe, who is one of the nicest and smartest people you could hope to meet.

We were treated like absolute royalty for the whole day, and around 8pm we were presented with a bottle of wine each, before our driver arrived to take us back to the hotel, where we had been put up in a ‘Superior Room’ at the Gresham Memphis — a large and rather fancy hotel room beyond our means and expectations.

We had been given strict instructions to order whatever we wanted from the hotel bar, and that food and extras would all be picked up by Veronica. So, naturally, I had a very nice glass of whisky before retiring for the evening.

And today, I’m just enjoying Amsterdam. Bobbie and I wandered around and had a coffee, I bought a Bobby Hutcherson record from Record Palace on Weteringschans (whenever in Amsterdam, always visit the Record Palace), and then we went our separate ways around lunchtime so she could meet with friends here, and I could go off and have a pre-arranged lunch meeting with someone who’s doing some really exciting things with music online… Nothing I can actually discuss as yet, but I am so very excited about it’s potential.

I have heard about three completely game-changing and revolutionary online music ventures just getting off the ground, about which I am allowed to say nothing, but it’s fair to say that whatever you think the future of the music business is, you’re either wrong, or you have underestimated how radically it’s about to change. Man, I love clever people with good ideas.

So now, I’m sitting in a cafe on Prinsengracht, sipping a beer and eating a sandwich consisting of handmade bread, fresh mozzarella, sundried tomatoes and a variety of lettuce I’ve not encountered before, using the free internet connection, and just enjoying every minute of being 40.

I have no right to expect it gets better than this — but I’ve had some conversations in the past 24 hours that lead me to believe that actually, it just might. Again… watch this space.

I’m so grateful to Guido for bringing me over — and to everyone who has made my time here so absolutely joyful. It may be back to work on Monday with a whole bunch of new students (which, actually, is pretty cool), but for now, I’m as happy as I can remember ever having been.

Happy birthday, me.