"We hebben een historisch akkoord". Vicepremier Lodewijk Asscher noemde dit Sociaal Akkoord het “Mondriaan Akkoord”, omdat in het gebouw met die naam het document blijkbaar ondertekend is.
Piet Mondriaan was een Nederlandse kunstenaar, die vooral bekend is geworden door zijn kubistische werken. Het was wel een kunstenaar die leefde als een kluizenaar. Nederland vond hij eigenlijk niets en zijn bloei en vernieuwings periode beleefde hij vooral BUITEN Nederland. Mondriaan had last van persoonlijkheid stoornissen en beschikte over een zwakke gezondheid. Mondriaan hechtte ook...

When is a school not a school? Yesterday, a judge in the Netherlands ruled that De Kampanje school in Amersfoort is not a school, and fined the parents of its students for sending their kids there. You might recognize De Kampanje as it is the subject of Christel Hartkamp's chapter in our new book, Knowmad Society. In it, she summarizes the Dutch situation:

There is a growing demand in society for alternatives to the regular educational system. Although the Netherlands is famous for its diverse schooling options (i.e., Montessori, Waldorf, Dalton, Freinet, Jenaplan, etc.), most of the options...

Last December, we celebrated the completion of the Knowmad Society project by launching it at Seats2Meet.com in Utrecht. Now, we are pleased to launch the website, and offer the book as a free download, a free iPhone app, or a $0.99 Amazon.com Kindle purchase.

Full details about book is available at http://www.knowmadsociety.com.

Knowmad Society launch - Photo by Rene Wouters

A collaboration between John Moravec, Cristóbal Cobo, Thieu Besselink, Christel Hartkamp, Pieter Spinder, Edwin de Bree, Bianca Stokman, Christine Renaud, and Ronald van den Hoff, Knowmad Society explores...

After being elected best Workspace in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Seats2meet.com Strijp-S was elected Best Workspace of The Netherlands as well!
The competition was organized by one of the leading management magazines in The Netherlands Intermediair.

We are really proud of the location owners Marcel Nicolaas, Luc van der Keilen and Roger van den Berg.
From left to right: Luc van der Kellen, Marcel Nicolaas and Roger van den Berg

Mariëlle Sijgers and Ronald van den Hoff , directors and founders of Seats2meet.com, handed out this ‘framed congratulation’ to location owner Marcel...

Japan, a tribute
So clean and well organized
Spring, sun, energy

In this Haiku I try to describe some of the impressions I had of many, during our recent trip to Japan to witness the opening of League, the first Seats2meet.com location in Tokyo.
40 million people. Tokyo. Clean. And even cleaner than you think. Everything. No eating or smoking in the streets. No trash. No chewing gum remains on the sidewalks.
Polite! Japanese people are very polite in their behavior, words, and gestures. They are very helpful. Great service. Cab drivers wearing white gloves. Tipping is an insult. Public...

It is going to be an exciting year for us at S2M.
The annual survey on co-working worldwide by Deskmag shows an incredible growth of co-working locations of over 200% over the past 2 years.
These numbers show that co-working is here to stay and although some may be skeptical of a future where 'not working in a dedicated office is the new standard for value creation', many of us realize that co-working has become a non reversible trend. In the meantime Marriott hotels entered the game.
The survey also shows that almost 80% of the co-working spaces/locations, like the Hub in Amsterdam and...

Society 3.0 describes how we can use technological progress to redesign our social- and economic systems according to values and principles that allow individuals to truly contribute something meaningful, not just to the market but to society per se. Society 3.0 is a society emerging from the ruins of industrially managed capitalism. In fact, it is a vision of the first true network society, one that uses its social and technological potential to the utmost while simultaneously building structures that valorize our contemporary sources of value, human knowledge and creativity in a sustainable...

"Ronald and Mariëlle have indeed created a serendipity machine. I’ve experienced it for myself. I encourage you to experience it for yourself, but more importantly to apply its principles and the lessons you will read in this book to your business." says Joe Pine in his introduction of the book The Serendipity Machine.
Serendipity, a word hard to translate into Dutch. Still, we at Seats2meet.com know how to make it work for us. Us, as in the network of literal 100 thousands of Knowmads and New Leaders we are sharing the S2M platform with.
According to the author Sebastian...