Monday, May 11, 2026

Monday, May 11, 2026

May 11, 2026

I was up early. Not because I had to attend the CINEX coffee morning, but simply because I had a short night. I had actually already decided to skip that first meeting because the agenda seemed packed. After helping all my clients online, I got ready and still headed to the gathering. The vibe was quite good. A former student gave a TED-style talk about what the Curaçao mission to Silicon Valley had achieved. If we really want to do something with AI, we first need to work on energy, data centers, and governance. There should be a minister responsible for both the vertical and horizontal chains. Those were at least some interesting food-for-thought moments.

During that meeting, I was invited to another talk elsewhere about tourism. My agenda was already full. But first, I had to be at the SVB at 9:30 to fill out a form. The appointment had been made digitally. There I was reminded once again how differently people age: a spectrum ranging from people who look younger than they are to others who struggle to walk. It brought me back to my recurring theme of prevention and lifestyle.

At ten o’clock, the other talk started, again featuring a university alumnus. A smooth presentation. Tourism has created the lowest unemployment seen in a long time, yet poverty continues to rise. The message was that the pursuit of diversification does not necessarily have to come at the expense of tourism, because there can be spin-off effects and synergy. Still, it all remained very conceptual and seemed mainly intended to justify further growth of tourism. By eleven o’clock, I had seen enough. Many of these talks skip over the stage of proper problem analysis, as well as the question of how bottlenecks can actually be solved. For example, how do we attract more ICT talent, and how do we solve the labor shortage in tourism, even with imported labor? How are we going to generate enough electricity for AI?

What I take away from the whole morning is the feeling that people have thought about these issues, but not far enough and not deeply enough. These are fast thoughts, not thoughts aimed at action. We need to challenge ourselves more to prevent our thinking from eroding even further. Meanwhile, I also see how the issue surrounding the national team coach continues to unfold throughout the morning. That too seems to me to be a result of the way we think and act.

Miguel Goede