Today is the first really spring-like day of the year in Amsterdam. A hazy but sunny day, temperature about 19 Celsius (about 66 F), so it felt nice for my wife and I to take a stroll for an hour or so around our neighbourhood with my camera this afternoon. I snapped quite a few […]
Category: Amsterdam life
The colours of Keukenhof
One of the things The Netherlands is well known for is flowers, tulips in particular. And there’s one place in particular where you can see tulips of every single type imaginable. Not only tulips, but also other flowers including rare orchids. That place is Keukenhof outside the town of Lisse, about a 20-minute drive from […]
Talk and images about Blognomics
Yesterday’s Blognomics conference at the RAI conference center in Amsterdam was a terrific event. With about 85 participants, there were so many great people to meet. I commented about it in yesterday’s edition of the Hobson & Holtz Report podcast, so I won’t repeat all that here in a post. If you’d like to listen […]
Amsterdam’s giant street party
On 30 April each year, The Netherlands celebrates Queen’s Day, or Koninginnedag to give it its formal Dutch label. Queen’s Day is ostensibly about celebrating the birthday of Queen Beatrix. Indeed, the monarch spends the day visiting towns throughout the country as part of the celebrations. This year, 2005, is a special one as it […]
Simply a gorgeous day
Today’s one of those city days when the weather is just perfect. Wall-to-wall sunshine, 25 degrees C (about 77 F), about 50 percent humidity. For this part of western Europe, it doesn’t get much more pleasant than this in a city. Here in Amsterdam, it’s been pretty dismal during the past few weeks. A couple […]
Net chaos in Amsterdam
Since about midday yesterday, Wednesday, I’ve been without net access along with several hundred other people in the part of Amsterdam where I am. Still no service this morning. No dial-up any more: none of my PCs has the capability to connect to the net via a normal phone line (how we progress!). So I’m […]
Customer service from UPC? Fat chance!
Is waiting a week for your cable TV service to be fixed a reasonable time? Is it right to expect that the cable guy who’s coming to fix your service at an appointed time actually shows up? And is it reasonable to expect that, when you call customer service for the third time and they […]
Speaking at E-Day Amsterdam
Heading off to the Emerce E-Day conference taking place today in Amsterdam. I’m participating in a panel discussion broadly titled Public Relations in The Blogosphere. My fellow panelists are Scott Rafer, Frank Janssen, Paul Molenaar and Hans Mestrum. We hope to have a stimulating and dynamic multi-lingual discussion (Dutch and English) on issues and strategies […]
Video presentation on PR and the blogosphere
In mid October, I participated in a session at the Emerce eDay conference in Amsterdam entitled Public Relations in the Blogosphere. The session comprised two presentations followed by a panel discussion. The two presentations were made by Scott Rafer and I, and were video recorded. That video is now online and you can view it […]
Pray the name isn’t Kone
If you ever get stuck in a lift, hope that it’s not a lift where the emergency help system is managed by Kone. I had a surreal experience last night, New Year’s Eve, involving a Kone lift, three gorgeous women and a bottle of champagne. We’d been celebrating the New Year Amsterdam-neighbourhood style, where you […]