I feel like I’ve already complained enough about the state of mobile telephone on this blog, particularly where it relates to roaming across countries, which just plain sucks. It’s not just mobile telephony, of course, it’s also public transport, where you have to get special discount cards per country, while we live in a so-called united Europe.

You don’t notice this so much within large countries, like France, Germany, and the US, but you definitely notice it living in the tiny Duchy of Luxembourg.  It is therefore an absolute must to a. negotiate higher wages when you start here, to compensate for those costs, and b. the lower taxes compared to the more socialist Netherlands are a nice bonus.

That said, THINGS MUST CHANGE !!! I feel, I cannot say this enough, but there is something very wrong if you go from an all-you-can-eat mobile internet contract for €27 – €50 per month, to paying something like €1 – €5 per MB of data as soon as you move 2 metres (6 feet) across the border!

I’m as against big corporations and government as the next guy, but in this case I favour more consolidation amongst mobile operators and public transport companies (even so, just because I have a T-mobile account in the Netherlands, doesn’t mean that I pay any decreased roaming fees in T-Mobile’s birth-country, Germany, no sir!).

Rather than consolidation, I am even more in favour of large networks infrastructures that are rented out at the same price to companies in different countries, which in turn act as nothing but a language interface for those services (at a minor surcharge). I think this is actually already happening, but the minor surcharge is really abused to the max. in most cases.

Whatever the case, Business-travel in Europe sucks (even more so globally, of course), and I feel that the only way to get around it now is to make more money (as if travelling was a luxury!?) or never travel at all, both of which are, to say the least, inefficient solutions to what should be a simple problem to solve. … as long as, of course, people of all nations get their heads out of their respective a##es (That’s right, I said a## on Tech IT Easy).

End rant,

Vincent
(Apologies for all the swearing. That’s really not like me.)

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Tired of the gazillionth post about 10 marketing tips for social marketeers? Tired of marketing all together? I think there’s a reason for that, it’s because marketing should be invisible!

Let me give you a brief example and then I will stfu. For my high school, I’m organising a reunion together with a team of 2-3 people. We started a Facebook group, ca. 140 people from all over the world have signed up. We hold mass-mailing campaigns only to find out what people’s preferences are. We use that data, derived from poll-answers mostly, and design, hopefully, the perfect reunion event.

When the day comes, this September, I’m sure someone is going to say: “thank you for all the work you did.” But that’s b#llsh#t! Because it wasn’t us doing the work, it was everyone filling in what they wanted and everyone designing their own event. All we did was mediate, using the free tools that are available to anyone at zero effort.

That’s the way all marketing should be. Because if you think about it, marketing is about giving customers they want. And how do you do that? You listen to customers, stfu, and deliver.

Vincent

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