Vivencia Moments Utrecht
Venue Huize Molenaar, Utrecht
SEPTEMBER 1, 2026
All new.
Same problem.
An evening for eleven leaders on why so much finished work leaves the business exactly where it started.
Why this evening
Nobody signs off a transformation programme hoping things stay the same. You wanted the business to move: a process that finally made sense to the people working inside it, systems that helped them instead of fighting them, a shift real enough to point to in the boardroom. That is a reasonable thing to want, and it is the thing most of these programmes quietly fail to deliver.
Part of the reason is that the people selling change tend to sell the version that keeps you paying: a transformation practice, a roadmap, a licence that renews, a stage with the right logo behind it. The deeper reason shows up once the work starts. The business explains what it needs, IT hears something slightly different and builds to what it heard, and the gap between the two is never quite closed. The timeline stretches, because the system underneath is old and every change has to be negotiated with it. The cost climbs, because touching those systems always does. And what you actually wanted slips out of scope without anyone deciding to drop it, while the status report still reads green.
So the programme ships, more or less on time, and the business ends up roughly where it began. This is the line Roger draws between renovation and transformation. Renovation keeps the shape and fixes what is broken: the same process runs faster, the old silos move into the new system, the customer ends up no closer. Transformation is the harder, rarer thing that rethinks the process so it stops breaking.
The honest cost of getting this wrong was never the licence. It was the year the business stood still while the project moved, and the distance that opened between what got delivered and what was actually needed.
Vivencia Moments exists for that conversation. One evening, eleven leaders and me around a single table, in a private room with the topic chosen as carefully as the food. It runs in English. Nobody pitches and nobody presents, no two direct competitors sit at the same table because that is the only way people say the true thing, and nothing said in the room leaves it.
Who is at the table
Roger Stoffers
Guest speaker · Enterprise Architect, ASN Bank ·
co-author A Field Guide to Digital Transformation
Roger and I first worked together at Vodafone, close to twenty years ago, and I have known his work ever since. He is an enterprise architect. His job is to turn what the business wants into something the technology can actually be built to do, and to carry it back the other way when the two stop understanding each other.
He does that now at ASN Bank, and before it spent a decade at DXC across retail, telecoms and financial services, so he has stood on the delivery side of the programmes most of you are running. He co-wrote A Field Guide to Digital Transformation, and has trained architects around the world for fifteen years, so he can put this in plain terms for a room that is not all engineers.
I trust Roger because he cares whether the thing works, not whether it sounded good in the meeting. He has spent his career closing the distance between what a business asks for and what it actually gets. He speaks after me.
Loek Berendsen
Your host · Founder, Vivencia ·
20+ years between the decision and the build
For twenty years I have worked inside enterprise software and transformation. Retail, logistics, financial services, hospitality. ERP, WMS, OMS, PIM, and lately AI. The programmes that were going to change everything.
Most of them were agreed in a room where everyone said yes. I learned, slowly, that a yes is not one thing. On an international programme years ago, the business asked for something, the engineers built something else, and both sides were sure they had been clear. Nobody was wrong. The people who decided and the people who built did not speak the same language, and neither did the two cultures in the room. What was missing was someone who could carry the intent across.
That gap is my whole career now. Vivencia means lived experience, and that is the point. I have worked both sides of it, marketing and tech, Asia and Europe, from Amsterdam to Riyadh to Singapore to Tokyo.
I open the evening with two minutes. Not a talk. The one project I was sure of, and the year it took to see why it changed nothing.
Your evening
6:00 PM
Arrive and connect
Welcome drinks in a private room. No name tags, no elevator pitches. You will be introduced personally to the people you should know, and told exactly why. Half the evening happens here.
7:00 PM
Dinner, then depth
Over dinner the conversation opens up, guided. Not the roadmap or the demo, but what sits underneath. Where the customer really sits now. Whether the AI on your plan changes anything.
6:30 PM
One story, no deck
Two minutes from me. One yes I believed, and how long it took to see where the decision truly sat. Then Roger, on the line between renovation and transformation. One argument, no stage.
8:30 PM
What happens after
You leave with more than business cards. Within forty-eight hours I introduce you personally to the people worth staying close to, chosen from what was said at the table. Relationships that keep going.
Everything you need
Tuesday 1 September 2026.
Dinner event starts at 6:00 PM.
Restaurant Huize Molenaar
Korte Nieuwstraat 6 – 8, Utrecht
Smart casual. No tie, no logos, no lanyard. A jacket over a shirt or a fine knit.
Tailored trousers, or a dress. Leather shoes, or clean minimal trainers.
Come as the leader you are, not the suit you wear.
English.
None. This seat is not for sale.
Dinner and drinks are on us.
Once your seat is confirmed, we will ask about any dietary needs and let the restaurant know.
Why we do this
A free dinner usually has something behind it. Here is what is behind this one.
Vivencia Moments started because, after fifty-odd keynotes, I noticed the useful conversation never happened on the stage. It happened afterwards, standing up, with the two or three people who stayed behind. So I stopped booking stages and started booking tables.
Vivencia's own work is helping Asian companies build real teams and real footing in Europe. One or two people here may connect to that world. Most will not, and the evening earns its place either way.
You will also see one other name tonight, on the question cards and at the foot of this page. Sovablu is an enterprise platform I work with, built to replace the slow and costly systems this evening keeps circling back to. It is not on the menu. If the line between renovation and transformation is a live problem for you, I may say a word about it, and you are welcome to ask me more. If you would rather not, nothing about your evening changes.
Which leaves one promise, and it is mine to make rather than any company's. Nobody sells anything on the night, least of all me. No one gets a sales call the next morning either. What you will get is a thank-you from me and the introduction I promised within forty-eight hours, and nothing heavier than that unless you ask for it. If you ever want to talk about working together, on either side of what I do, you raise it, and I will be glad you did.
Loek
Is this your table?
This evening is for you if
You own the outcome, not just the project. C-level, director, or head of, the person who can actually decide rather than the one who has to ask upstairs.
You are running real change, or about to. A transformation, a core system replacement, a modernisation, an AI push that has to add up to something.
You have seen the gap up close. The business and IT talking past each other, a programme that shipped on time and changed almost nothing.
You care where the customer ends up, not whether the project closed on time and on budget.
You would rather hear what actually worked from people who have done it than sit through another roadmap.
This evening is not for you if
You want a product demo, or someone to tell you what to buy. That is a sales call, and this is not one.
You are looking for a stage to pitch from.
You want a general briefing on AI or transformation. There is plenty of that about, most of it free.
You would rather keep the evening pleasant than honest.
Your seat
There is nothing to pay and nothing to buy. Eleven seats, built one person at a time, and no two direct competitors at the same table. If you are reading this, someone has already decided you belong in the room.
Tell us who you are and we will confirm your seat personally.
Vivencia Moments
