Carrying The Open Visor further
The Open Visor does not grow through advertising, but through trust. Every reader came in because someone personally referred them. When you believe an edition truly belongs somewhere, this page helps you deliver it there.
Four circles where you can naturally share
A personal email to three or five people works more strongly than any share button. Not "read this", but rather: "This chapter made me think of you — the passage about the architect who begins to draw again with his hands." People open what a friend recommends; almost never what an unknown platform recommends.
In every edition there are one or two articles that seem written for a specific profession. Edition 3 on primal feeling reaches architects, bakers, teachers, physiotherapists, farmers. Edition 6 on Nova Democratia reaches public administrators, politicians, journalists. Edition 7 on BiCRS (a product of Carbon-Alert Ltd) and Giant Juncao reaches agronomists, chemical engineers, climate advisers, civil servants. Send, per edition, one targeted email to three or five people from such a field, asking for their judgement.
For the content of Nova Democratia and the two levers, parliamentary attention is the heaviest weight. Anyone who knows someone working as a Member of Parliament, a parliamentary assistant, a civil servant, a council member, a Member of the European Parliament, a cabinet member, or a policy adviser — that person can, with one targeted email, do more than a hundred anonymous clicks. Do not ask for agreement; ask for a reaction. Whoever reacts, reads further. Whoever reads further, passes it on.
Substack notes, Aeon, The Guardian Long Read, The Conversation, Carnegie Europe, Bruegel, CEPS, European Policy Centre, VUB Institute for European Studies, KU Leuven, ETH Zürich, the Brookings comment section — everywhere long-form work is welcome. One well-written letter to an editor-in-chief, with one article as a concrete example, can yield a referral or a guest publication.
What weighs most per edition — a routing map
Some editions are addressed to a specific reader-circle. Below, for each edition, the audiences where it lands most strongly:
Edition 3 — Human under the ice
Reader-circle: school administrators, paediatricians, physiotherapists, architects, vocational teachers, parents of school-age children, elderly-care workers, mental-health professionals.
Parliamentary entry: members of standing committees on education, health and social affairs in the Tweede Kamer, Bundestag, Assemblée nationale, Belgian Kamer, the Spanish Congreso and the Maltese Kamra tad-Deputati.
Concrete core sentence to share: "A diagnosis of what has happened to the nervous system of Western humans — and what we no longer teach our children."
Edition 6 — Nova Democratia
Reader-circle: public administrators, policy officers, parliamentary group leaders, European institutional readers, members of advisory councils, foundation staff, professors of constitutional law, political journalists.
Parliamentary entry: committees on Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and European Affairs in all five parliaments. Specifically valuable for groups that consider institutional reform: D66, GroenLinks-PvdA, CDA, NSC in the Netherlands; Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, FDP, Volt, CDU in Germany; CD&V, Vooruit, Open VLD in Belgium; Renew, EPP, S&D in the European Parliament.
Concrete core sentence to share: "A design for European administrative renewal — not as a manifesto, but as a measured calculation across six orders, three hinges, and one measurable outcome over five years."
Edition 7 — The Answer
Reader-circle: agronomists, chemical engineers, climate advisers, energy-policy staff, EIB directors, chairs of process chemistry and plant breeding, civil servants in DGENER, DGCLIMA, DG AGRI.
Parliamentary entry: committees on Climate & Energy, Economic Affairs, Foreign Trade, Development Cooperation in the Tweede Kamer, Bundestag, Assemblée. Specifically for the European Parliament: ITRE (Industry), ENVI (Environment), AGRI (Agriculture). For the Commission itself: DG ENER, DG CLIMA, DG GROW, DG INTPA.
Concrete core sentence to share: "Two physical levers that can make Europe net carbon-negative within ten years — Giant Juncao and BiCRS on one continent, plastic from household waste as geological storage on the other. Three continents together, one measurable result."
Edition 8 — The Supertanker (in preparation)
Reader-circle: anyone wondering why Europe cannot recognise its own problems in time.
Concrete core sentence: "Europe as a supertanker, with the captain at the stern and the crumpling bow beyond his line of sight. A second wheelhouse, not as replacement but as aid."
Regional suggestions
Two technical aids
For sharing via WhatsApp or LinkedIn
For each edition an open-graph image is prepared — when you paste the URL into a chat or messaging programme, the engraved hero illustration with the title appears automatically. You do not need to attach a separate image.
For drafting an email
Below is a sample you can copy and adapt — written for a Member of Parliament or policy officer:
Dear Mrs X,
Last week I came across an independent monthly publication that seems relevant to the discussion we had recently — The Open Visor, written by Jacobus van Merksteijn (a Dutch entrepreneur and publicist, resident on Malta). The edition on Nova Democratia proposes an institutional design in which present decision-making is complemented by a second organ — a "Bondsraad" — which can take measured decisions that may sometimes go against prevailing sentiment.
What struck me is that the calculation is serious — it presents a five-year Pareto analysis with a projected forty-two percent reduction in total brake-weight. Not a utopia, not a manifesto — a workable design that could land institutionally somewhere.
You can read it at openvizier.org/en/edition-6/. Should you wish to react after reading — I would very much like to hear your judgement.
Kind regards,
[your name]
One request to you
If you know one person for whom this edition seems written, send them the address openvizier.org. One person — that is enough. When 41 readers do this, we are 82. When they do the same, 164. No march, no campaign, no social-media tricks. Just one targeted invitation per month.
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