A Royal Meeting

The Dutch Consulate in Düsseldorf invited Edenspiekermann – together with other representatives of the Dutch creative industries sector – to meet with His Majesty King Willem-Alexander and Her Majesty Queen Máxima in Essen, Germany to exchange ideas and insights on German/Dutch creative cooperation. The purpose of the two-day working visit was to promote mutual trade relations and cooperation in areas like renewable energy, the creative industries, innovation, employment and education.

During this visit the Dutch Topteam Creative Industries introduced a number of case studies to the King and Queen who were – among others – accompanied by Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia Hannelore Kraft and Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp. In this line-up we presented our award-winning dynamic boarding information on train stations project to the King and Queen, using an iconic Märklin train set and a custom built miniature platform with LED display.

King Kraft square Minister-President Hannelore Kraft of North Rhine-Westphalia (l), His Majesty King Willem-Alexander (m) and Chairman Topteam Dutch Creative Industry Barbera Wolfensberger. photo Peter van Beek NS platform square Custom built miniature platform and LED information strip

After the presentations, the various delegates of the selected creative companies joined the King and Queen for lunch. During lunch we discussed the opportunities, obstructions and lessons learned with cross-border and crossover collaboration, both within the creative industries and between creative companies and other product and services industries in the Dutch/German border region.

We sincerely hope that the Royal attention for our work for NS and ProRail will help jump-start the implementation of this innovative information system, not only in the Netherlands but also in Germany and elsewhere around the world.