Only brings 80 entrepreneurs together in Antwerp
A network spanning the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordics has an advantage that is easy to claim and harder to realise. Cross-border collaboration only works when the people involved understand where their assumptions differ - and in strategic communication, those assumptions are the product. On Friday 12 December, Only brought 80 creative entrepreneurs from the Dutch, Belgian and Danish agencies together at De Serre in Antwerp for a day built around exactly that question: what does it take to connect across borders?
Psychiatrist Dirk De Wachter opened on genuine connection within teams, within organisations and between them - the argument that collaboration depends less on structure than on the willingness to be actually known by the people you work with. Comedian and presenter Jan Jaap van der Wal then took on cultural difference directly, using humour to make visible the small divergences in directness, hierarchy and humour itself that separate Dutch, Belgian and Danish working practice, along with the similarities that get overlooked.
What made the day useful was less the programme than what surrounded it: conversations between people who share a network but rarely a room. Every participant left with a bag of tulip bulbs, a reference to the network's flower of life model, and one instruction - let your inspiration bloom in 2026.