"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...

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...

The following blog is in Dutch, as it deals with local politics and I don't want to bore my inernational readers with the frustration I am sure everybody experiences every now and then when dealing with your Government.
Ik begin het erg druk te krijgen. Naast mede-eigenaar van ABN ben ik opeens ook mede-eigenaar van SNS. Dat is niet alleen een bank, maar ook een verzekeraar en een vastgoed-boer. Ik heb wel enige voorkennis moet ik u vertellen, want al die, door de SNS gefinancierde vastgoed-projectontwikkelaars zijn de laatste jaren allemaal langsgeweest omdat ze voor S2M van die geweldige...

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...

We all may be familiar with this famous quote from the novel Animal Farm. This novel, written by George Orwell in 1945 was a response to the rising communism in those days.
Reading my daily newspaper (but for scanning daily 350 blogs, yes I do still read newspapers) this quote regularly comes to my mind. Let me show you some examples.
In Holland the municipalities don’t charge VAT to their citizens. This means they cannot deduct it either. For this reason they were compensated by our national government by means of a “VAT compensation fund”. Due to the budget cuts this fund is...

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.
That number by itself doesn't surprise me. At Seats2meet.com we grew the past years from 3 locations to (as per today) 78 locations...
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.
The survey also shows that almost 80% on the co-working spaces/...