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KLM Surprise

Schiphol airport before flying back to Shanghai

Two days ago I needed to check a KLM reservation, but I could not log onto the KLM site with my frequent flyer number. So I tweeted about it and KLM later sent me a reply wishing me a good flight, which I retweeted to my followers. A few hours later while boarding for a flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam, I gave my boarding pass to one of the ground staff at the gate and instead of the usual green light a red light turned on… She didn’t know why but told me to go to the desk to find out what was wrong.

Before I could even walk over to the desk 2 KLM employees approached me and told me that they had a surprise for me, that’s why my boarding pass set off an ‘alarm’. They told me that because of my tweets they wanted to thank me with a gift, and they handed me a Nike paper bag containing an Nike iPod sensor! Because they followed me on Twitter they read I am a runner, so this was an excellent gift. The KLM social media reps also took a picture of me with the present for their site, I must have looked really surprised in the picture.

I just did a Google search and found that KLM does this more often, they even have a site for this: http://surprise.klm.com/ They describe the concept there as follows: “To see how happiness spreads, we committed little acts of kindness to brighten a passenger’s day. So next time you fly with us, we might just pop up somewhere unexpectedly.”

I really appreciate this KLM, especially considering our love-hate relationship on social media over the past years. Based on some tweets of mine Dutch newspaper Het Parool even wrote an article about among others KLM’s Twitter policy. At that time (over 2 years ago), KLM did not really have one yet, but that has changed since. KLM is since a few days 24 hours a day active on social media like Twitter – despite their Twitter profile still saying 8 AM- 11 PM.

Thanks a lot for the surprise KLM. I am impressed by your new social media strategy, lots of other companies (not only airlines) can learn from this. One of my personal social media slogans is “The more you give, the more you’ll get”, so I am sure for you this strategy will lead to more positive results as well.

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Running holiday

Marc after a long trail run in Ommen

One of the goals that I set myself for our summer holiday in Europe was to get into a much better running shape. I will run the New York Marathon in just over 3 months, and because I likely won’t have a lot of time for the necessary long training runs, I at least wanted to make sure my basic shape is in place now already. Next to that I wanted to run outside on my Vibram Five Fingers. In Shanghai I mainly run on the treadmill in my home gym, both because of the air pollution and because it’s just too hot to run outside. But in order to run 42 kilometers almost barefoot (the Vibram FF’s feel very similar to running barefoot) you need to do quite some training on the road, or at least on another surface than a treadmill, as well.

View to the north of Vlieland

The runs worked out much better than I had imagined. Over the past 3 weeks I did at least 5 runs over 15 kilometers (incl. 2 half marathons), and I even did a 16 km and a 21 km run within 2 days of each other. Although I still feel a bit tired after the runs I do not have a lot of muscle ache anymore (after my first runs that was still the case), and the next day I feel good enough to run again. Happy to know this, it gives me a lot of confidence for the actual marathon.

Woods around Ommen (Holland) - June 2005

During my vacation I ran on the island of Vlieland on the beach and through the dunes, I ran in France in the hills in the Provence close to St. Paul de Vence, and I ran several times in the woods around Ommen in The Netherlands. Running in the woods is great, you don’t meet any other people once you are more than a few hundred meters away from the closest road and nature is beatiful. I found a lot of new trails to explore in the future, and with my Nike GPS+ watch I was able to find them all back on Google Maps later. I didn’t take my phone or camera during my runs, but if I had I could have shot a lot of great pictures.

Woods around Ommen (Holland) - June 2005

In a way I was lucky that for most of the time the weather was not very good in The Netherlands. It was way too cold for the time of year and it rained a lot. Perfect for running. I like to run in the rain, it makes long distance running easier and you don’t meet any other people – most prefer to stay dry indoors. The only downside is that the trails (I ran a lot on trails in the woods) can be slippery, and you have to watch out that you don’t fall.

And of course that’s what happened to me: during a 16 km trail run I slipped after about 10 km and hurt myself. I managed to get up again and finished the run without too much pain, and I thought things were fine. But when I arrived home it suddenly started to hurt a lot, I didn’t really feel it while running. I will spare you the details, but if you fall down while running at 12-13 km/h and there are some small stones on the ground you can imagine the result… Anyway, I am fine again now, and I started running again. But I will be even more careful in the future.

Today we will fly back to Shanghai, I am happy to go back but I am not too happy that I will have to run on the treadmill again from now on. As I have said several times before already on this blog, the thing I miss most in Shanghai is running outside in nature. You can’t have it all…

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Visiting the Circus Sydney show in Ommen

Circus Sydney in Ommen

The last time I visited a real circus was probably when I was in primary school. At that time there were still a couple of local circuses traveling around The Netherlands, but I think most of them stopped operating many years ago already. I have seen other top circuses such as the DPRK State Circus in Pyongyang (amazing acts, but you can only see them if you manage to do a trip to North-Korea), some circuses in Shanghai and of course the Cirque Du Soleil. But they are different from what I call a ‘real circus’: a traveling group of entertainers with clowns, animals and of course a big tent, that stays in each town for just a few days.

Circus Sydney in Ommen

After reading Water For Elephants a couple of months ago, a book that describes the life of people in a traveling circus in the US in the 1930s, I was looking forward to seeing a real circus again. So when I saw a circus tent being set up next to the Vecht river in Ommen I decided to go there. For some reason the local government in Ommen did not allow the circus to advertise in town (something I totally disagree with, this is a great event for kids and their parents and for the many tourists in Ommen that pay lots of tourist tax every day, and the government should support this – but I digress), so it was difficult to find out when the shows would take place.

My dad parked his car right in front of the entrance of the circus

So yesterday I just drove my car to the tent of Circus Sydney, asked the people there and immediately reserved tickets for the show this afternoon. The best tickets of course, when you only go to a real circus once every 20-30 years you might as well get the best seats! So this afternoon we woke up the kids a bit earlier than usual from their afternoon nap and we drove over to the circus to see the show.

Circus Sydney in Ommen

Circus Sydney seems to be an Australian circus that is now traveling around Europe. They are not very big (about 20 entertainers in total during today’s show), but the show is fun, especially with kids. They have a clown that fills the intermezzos, acrobats, dancers, and of course several animals (horses, dogs, llamas, camels).

Marc and Scott at Circus Sydney in Ommen

Because we were on the front seat we had an excellent view, but sometimes we were a bit too close to all the actions for our kids. At a certain point Scott was so scared of the horses that were a mere 50 centimeters away from him that he decided to move to the second row, where Elaine was already sitting. Later he came back, but he held onto me and my dad tightly when the camels or other animals came too close.

The horses came very close, Scott was scared

During his first act the clown needed an assistant and he asked me to join him in the ring. Always fun to do, so of course I participated. Scott was very happy to see me in the ring with the clown!

Marc participating in a clown's act

I liked the show. You can’t compare it to the big shows like you see in China or in North-Korea, or to big budget shows like Cirque Du Soleil, but it has a very friendly, family-like feeling. Some small things went wrong during the show, but that makes it actually more interesting to me. I enjoyed watching the 2 hour performance (incl. a 15 min break), and the kids also loved it. If you’re in Ommen over the next 3 days or if you see Circus Sydney (owned by Alexander Scholl) somewhere in your area, make sure you visit. Especially if you have kids it’s a wonderful afternoon or evening out.

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Chinese Youth And Mobile Phone Usage

Enovate, a Chinese research company focused on the Chinese youth, published an interesting infographic about the usage of mobile devices. Although I am not sure how scientifically valid their findings are, the results are worth sharing.
Some of their findings include:
– 18-22 year old people spend more time on their mobile phones than on a computer. The 23-30 year old group still uses the computer a bit more (35% vs. 31%) but when you also take tablets into account (14%), mobile also wins by far in that category.
– People would rather give up their computer than their phone
– Daily must-have content includes news, video and SNS

Conclusion: The future is mobile – now already in China, but soon also in the rest of the world!

Youth Go Mobile in China (Enovate.com infographic 2011)

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Scott and Elaine watching cows

Elaine watching the cows

A few kilometers from my parents house is a farm that sells its own cheese. My parents and I drove over to buy several kinds of cheese and took the kids with us. Right at the moment we were there the cows were herded back into their stables so they could be milked. Scott and Elaine had the time of their lives watching the huge animals fighting to go through the narrow door.

In the stable of a farm in Ommen

Scott was not afraid at all, but when we later walked through the stable Elaine held me very tight and only peeked occasionally at the big animals. Nice for them to see real cows, you don’t see them in Shanghai.

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USA Inc.

USA Inc. - Mary Meeker's latest presentation

Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley’s former star analyst who is now a partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins, created a report called USA Inc. back in February this year. The report explains the financial problems in the US and then compares the country to a company (USA Inc.) and how this corporation would solve its problems.

Because since then the fiscal problems in the US have grown a lot worse and the country could theoretically go bankrupt in a few weeks, she now created a 90-slide presentation with the main points of her report. It’s well worth the read, it takes about 10 minutes if you go through the main points quickly.

After reading the presentation you’ll better understand where the biggest problems come from in the US and how they can, and should, be solved. The US needs a turnaround strategy for which big spending cuts will be necessary soon (start with low hanging fruit like Medicare), however painful they may be. After that the country should look at growing its revenue base, through taxes and economic growth.

As usual her presentation contains tons of information, but it’s delivered in an informal and easy-to-understand way. I enjoyed going through the slides a few times over the past days. If you are interested, the full presentation including notes can be found here: http://www.kpcb.com/usainc/pdf.php

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One week on the Cote d’Azur

Another clear blue sky day, taken from our pool in St. Paul de Vence.

The past 7 days I took my family to the south of France for a relaxed holiday in a villa in St. Paul de Vence. I had the idea a few weeks ago while I was working late at night in Shanghai and immediately searched for (and booked) a nice place not far from the Mediterranean coast. The house was quite big (4 bed rooms & 4 bath rooms), so that next to my wife and kids I was also able to bring my parents along and even my sister flew in for a couple of days.

St. Paul de Vence

St. Paul de Vence is a medieval fortified village, built on a hill overlooking the countryside and the coast. The beautiful place is quite touristic, but I guess that’s not unusual in the middle of the high tourist season. Even some Chinese tour groups have now included a visit to the place in their Europe-in-one-week itineraries – but most won’t meet them, because they only arrive at 8 AM when the average Western tourist is still sound asleep.

View over the valley to the sea

Because of the kids we could not make long tours, but we normally spent the morning sightseeing and relaxed in the afternoon when the kids had their afternoon naps. At night we sometimes prepared our own dinner and other days we went out for dinner in Nice, Cannes or one of the other places in the area.

Nice (France)

The south of France is a great area, both in summer and in winter. From St. Paul de Vence you can be on the beach in 15 minutes in summer and on the ski slopes in 40 minutes in winter (the big resorts like Isola 2000 are about 1 hour further away). The climate is quite good as well, with lots of sunny days and warm (but not too hot) temperatures in summer.

Sonja and Marc in Cannes

We flew to Nice-Cote d’Azur airport, which is the 2nd busiest airport in France, and was also just 15 minutes from St. Paul de Vence. There we rented a car – a Opel Zafira, the only minivan that was still available and that fitted my family and luggage. Not the best car and with a relatively light engine, but okay for a couple of days. However, a convertible is definitively better suited for the southern French climate!

Monaco

Among others we visited Monaco with the kids. The city state was only a 45 minute drive from our house, so you could theoretically drive there just for lunch. I always love Monaco, it’s one of the very few cities in the world where it’s normal to have a traffic jam in which at least half the cars are valued over USD 200,000. The boats are even better, especially the super yachts moored with their backsides to J.F. Kennedy Avenue (the road along the harbor front, famous for its chicanes during the Formula One races). I love to watch them, although I don’t think I would want to have one of them, even if I would be able to afford one. But if you happen to have a mega yacht you can show it off to the public for a mooring fee of less than USD 1000 per night (Monace is relatively ‘cheap’ in this regard), without tips of course – and without taking into account the cost of all the staff to take care of the boat…

Elaine in Monaco

Cannes and Nice are also nice places, but I prefer Monaco myself. We went to Nice twice with the kids and once to Cannes. I like both cities, but Cannes has the advantage of sandy beaches. I can’t understand how people can lay on the pebbles on the beaches in Nice for hours on just a thin towel… Although the high prices of beach chairs (EUR 20) and umbrellas (EUR 10) along the Boulevard des Anglais may explain some of this of course.

It's busy on the beach in downtown Nice

My favorite place during the trip was Tourettes-sur-Loup, another medieval village, a bit higher in the mountains. Despite being just a 10 minute drive from St. Paul de Vence there was hardly anybody there. I was very surprised that we had the walled city almost to ourselves. I guess that’s partly what made me like it so much, it was an unexpected gem that seemed (still) to be off the off the tourist track.

Tourettes-sur-Loup

When we were not sightseeing we spent time at the pool, in the garden or on one of the terraces. The kids loved the pool, on most days the first thing they wanted to do in the morning was to jump into the it! They swim a lot in China too, but here they liked it a lot more it seemed.

Kids swimming in the pool

I read a few books and magazines, but not as many as I hoped. I also talked a lot with my parents and enjoyed many good bottles of wine with my dad. It seems the local wines taste so much better there than at home. And the wines are much cheaper: you can get very decent wines for EUR 6-7 per bottle – in China I would not even dare to buy a bottle at that price. But because it was a holiday I mainly bought better wines, the assortment at the local wine dealer was excellent and we were able to try a lot of new wines.

Nice, harbor behind the Chateau

I would not have mind to stay a bit longer, so maybe I’ll come back again in the near future. I realize I really like the Mediterranean coast in France – the nature, the beaches, the climate and the food. A good place to spend some more time reading and writing. I am sure it’s not the first time I say this about an area on my blog, I guess there are just too many great places on this planet.

Beach in Nice (France)

I put a set of my holiday pictures on Flickr, you can find my Cote d’Azur trip pictures here.

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An alternative to Facebook for gamers and game developers

Zoo Mumba - to be launched this month on Spil Games platforms!

I published this article today on the Business Insider, the original is here.

Facebook is not only the biggest social network in the world, but it has also grown to become the biggest online game destination. People that did not play online games before, started playing them on Facebook when they saw their friends also doing that. Because Facebook does not develop the games itself, many companies were started to create content for Facebook. Some of these have even grown into huge companies themselves, such as Zynga that just filed for IPO.

Reading Zynga’s S-1 it becomes clear that the company relies almost completely on Facebook. The SEC filing says in the risk factors section: “Facebook is the primary distribution, marketing, promotion and payment platform for our games. We generate substantially all of our revenue and players through the Facebook platform and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Any deterioration in our relationship with Facebook would harm our business”.

Most other social game companies face exactly the same problem, all their players are on Facebook, which is potentially a big risk. Likely Google+ will also add social games to its social network, and I am sure that Zynga and other developers will then try to get users to play their games on Google+ as well. But it’s not sure yet that Google+ will become as big as Facebook, or that people will use the social network in the same way as Facebook. So whether it will be a real alternative is still a big question mark.

Therefore game developers are looking for other solutions. Today’s Financial Times published an article about how leading browser-based game developer Bigpoint will now distributes its games on the Spil Games social game platforms. For Bigpoint this has the added advantage that Spil Games focuses only on games. As Bigpoint CEO Hubertz says in the article: “Facebook is not a gaming website. Their first interest is not that the user finds our games… but that users can communicate.”

Spil Games’ users go there with the primary goal to play (social) games, and the company also understands game developers better than Facebook does. As Mr. Hubertz notes in the FT article “the decision to tie up with SpilGames reflected that company