Cheese and coffeeshops

For the launch of our new program, which I discussed in my previous blog-post, I had to travel abroad, to Amsterdam, a city I had already been in once before. Like my last meetings in other countries, I decided to make a little trip out of it. I left Friday morning and took the train to Amsterdam which was about a 2 hour long ride. During the ride I caught up on some e-mails and my new favourite book from Terry Pratchett. The meeting was next to the train station so I didn't have to go very far. The meeting took all afternoon during which I was very hungry and I was very releaved when it was finally over. I had decided to try out something different and not stay in a hotel but actually couchsurf at someone's home. I got in touch with someone called Joost, through the couchsurfing website, who was a student at the local university.  Joost, my new host for the night, and me met up near the train station and we quickly felt a very strong connection. We were both easy going and laughed a lot, I thought he was a very friendly guy. He prepared me something called wentelteefjes, something I remember my grandmother used to make. It's a dish made from bread which is then soaked in a mixture of milk, eggs and sugar and then baked in a pan. Joost was a very friendly host and we talked until the early morning, discussing our mutual interest such as travelling and business. I was very happy to have met Joost and call him a friend. 

On Saturday morning we said goodbyes and decided to stay in contact during E-mail and Facebook. I still had the whole day to myself and decided to visit the local Rembrandtmuseum which was a recomendation by Joost, I tought the museum was very cool. It talked about the life of Rembrandt who's a famous painter, the museum was located in his former house and workstation. After the museum I ate at a local restaurant. I also did some personal shopping and walked by the water for a bit. 

All in all I thought my trip to Amsterdam was very pleasant and I will definately do more couch surfing because I think it's a greay way to meet new people and expolore some of the local culture.

Stalked by a student

 Last week I got contacted by a student from Artevelde University College, he told me he is a first year student of the International Business Management program. He needed to follow a manager for a day and write a short essay about it. As a former IBM student myself I immediately thought it was a great idea to let him follow me for a day (8hours). I quickly got in contact with him and we decided to split the internship over 2 days. He would follow me on monday and tuesday. 

We (me and Mathias) met on monday 1:00 pm and first I explained him a little bit about the company and my overall job. He noted down everything and wasn't shy about asking any questions. After the introduction it was time for the weekly marketing meeting. We discussed recent changes in customer level and all that comes with it. He actually brought up quite a few valuable point which could make significant changes, so I'm reallly happy we had him with us. After the meeting was done, which took about 3 hours, we did a short interview where he asked me some questions regarding my studies, job and personal life. We shook goodbye and said we would meet up again the next day. 

We met up again on tuesday 1:00 pm where we had another meeting but this time with the product owner. We recently brought out a new version of our program and wanted everyone to switch from the old one to the new one. We had to set up a bunch of emails which needed to be sent to the different clients we had. When Mathias had any questions he immediately asked them and me and Robin, who's the product owner, were more than happy to explain everything to him. After the meeting was over we still had one hour to round things up and explain some things to him. He seemed very interested in the A/B system which I was more than happy to explain to him. He still had some questions which I happily answered as well. And then it was time to say goodbye. I told him not to hesitate to contact me if he had anymore questions and he was on his way.

I thought it was really fun experience to have someone 'follow' you around like that, it really makes you think about your job and how well you like it. I really enjoyed Mathias' company and hope to hear from him soon about how his project went. 

Trip to Ardennen

As I have told you about my travels and previous meetings it might be time to take a look inside the company and see what is happening with our clients and employees. As CEO of the company I have to rely on my collegues and work with them as best as possible. 

Last week we got a complaint from one of our clients who uses the software program we provide, apparently some of his data went missing and now he's holding us responsible for the problem. Because our customer service didn't really know what to do with the complaint they tried to hand it off to our tech-people. Eventually they found out that the customer didn't save his session by checking his saving logs from the profile. 

Because I believed that our customer service should've tried to work together with the tech guys I wasn't very pleased with the way they handled the report. I decided our team could use an upgrade. I decided we could all use some teambuilding. 

During the weekend of the 1st of May we went on a trip to the Ardennen. I had planned a lot of activities during these 3 days so there was a lot that needed to be done. 

Saturday morning we all met at our office and I devided everyone into different cars so everyone wasn't in a car with their normal colleague(s), I thought this was a great way for people to familiarize themselves with colleagues they didn't know so well. After the arrangement of the cars our 2 hour drive started. After 2 hours and a lot of traffic we arrived at our destination: Spa. We checked into our B&B and I could already tell it was a great start to the weekend, everyone was smiling and their was just a feeling of happiness in the air.

I told everyone to pack their hiking boots and swimming shorts/ bathing suits and ofcourse other clothes as well. We started with a little hike around the town and up into the forst during which we could hear the sound of cars on the race track, Spa-Francorchamps, which wasn't so far away. After a long hike up to the top of the forest we found what I was hoping to find, a little lake. We all put on our swimming clothes and started to swim. After a while it was time to go back to the little town. We ate at a local restaurant and went back to our B&B after. We enjoyed a good night of sleep and were all ready for the next morning. 

Sunday morning I planned to visit the local museum, Musée de la Ville d'eaux, which is located in the old villa from queen Marie-Henriëtte of Austria. In the stables we could also visit the museum of the horse. In the afternoon I had planned something really exciting, an escape room! We were locked in this room with clues to open the door to the next room and so on. We had one hour to reach the final room where you could find the big secret. We found multiple boxes with locks on them, so we needed to find the codes which were all hidden in the room. Unfortunately one of the locks didn't work so we had some trouble opening it but with a quick call to the desk they broke it open and we were on our way again to finding the big secret. Unfortunately we only reached the second room which was the biggest of them all. Better luck next time I suppose. It was already late in the afternoon when we got out so we decided to have a little appetiser before our final meal. We had a delicious meal at another restaurant which concluded our night.

Monday morning we went back home. I thought everyone enjoyed our little trip, I got some amazing feedback. I also had the feeling everyone was way happier than when we started the trip. Monday morning there were only smiles to be seen at our office. I think of doing something similar at the end of the year but that's still an early thought, still got plenty of time to think about other fun stuff to do.

Thanks for reading and see you guys next time!

Headaches in New York

I was super excited when our management team decided I had to go to New York to meet with one of our biggest clients. As I had never been to New York before, it was a whole new experience, one that didn't turn out so well.

I packed the thursday evening and had a quick night of sleep because I had to catch my plane at 8 a.m. at Brussesl airport. I got up at 5 a.m. and had a quick shower, the troubles already began with my cab being 10 minutes late, then we still had to drive to Brussels airport which would take us about 45 minutes. Evidently we also got stuck in traffic, eventually we arrrived at Brussels Airport 1 hour later than planned. I checked in and a while later boarded my flight. I decided to read a good book and listen to some of my favourite music, that was until I discovered I left my headphones at home. Great! I had to sit through the whole flight and listen to the snoring of some old lady 2 rows behind me. The flight time from Brussels to New York is about 9 hours so at 5 p.m. (Belgian time) I landed in New York. Because it was only 11 a.m. (-6 hours time difference) there was a lot of traffic (but what can you expect in the city that never sleeps). 

After I had checked into my hotel I decided to discover some of the 'great' city. I grabbed a cab to Times Square and enjoyed seeing all the busy people who looked like they were running around like chickens without a head. I got a slice of pizza from John's of times square's pizza place which is famous for their pizza. I decided to walk a few blocks until I reached Central Park and I need to confess something to you. Never had I ever seen a park like that one! Wow it really took me by surprise, ofcourse I had seen photos of the place but nothing could've prepared for the afternoon I spent there. I decided to walk along the outer edge of the park. At one time a runner went by me and I thought I recognised him from somewhere but I quickly let the thought go because that just couldn't be true. The runner ran by me a second time and a name popped into my head, before I could close my mouth I yelled his name and he turned around. I couldn't believe I just met with Casey Neistat, world's most well-known vlogger and partial film maker. I grabbed a quick photo with him and he was already on his way before I could ask him something. Unfortunately he didn't ran by me again (I think I might've scared him). 

Because I was pretty jetlagged I decided to get an early night because I had to get up early in the morning for a full day of meetings. 

Before I could even get to my first meeting I was already stuck in traffic which is just horrible, everyone's yelling, honking their horns, you hear the sound of alarms in the distance, it's just a horrible experience in NYC. I arrived at my meeting 45 minutes late so we couldn't discuss everything we wanted. Ofcourse the second meeting had to be at another building, luckily it was halfway down the block and I could easily walk the distance. Apparently there was a fire drill scheduled for that day so halfway down our meeting we had to go outside for this fire drill. By the time we were allowed back inside I had to be at another meeting halfway downtown. I quickly grabbed my things, appologized for the inconvenience and told them we would arrange another meeting in the near future and rushed outside to catch a cab. Luckily there's no shortage of cabs in New York City. I was already late for my third and final meeting of that day but fortunately traffic wasn't that bad and I arrived only 15 minutes late for my final meeting. We had plenty of time to discuss all we wanted. Because it was only 3 p.m and my last meeting of the day had finished. I still had time to do some other things. I decided to stop at the nearest mall because there was one thing I really needed, some new headphones! I got the new bose quietcomfort 35's, they are wireless and the sound is just incredible, also you almost don't hear anything around you so I wouldn't have to deal with the snoring of other people on my flight back to Brussels.

I had to catch my plane at 9 p.m. This time I didn't want to be late again so I arrived 3 hours beforehand at the airport. I had dinner at the lounge of my airline. And got on board safely. I put on my new headphones, read my new favourite book and in no time and some sleep I was back in Belgium. 

After my horrible experience I needed to do some phone calls with our client in NYC and sort some things out. In the end we decided to host a skype meeting the week after so everything was okay in the end. 

My first blog

Maybe something more about myself and this blog

Hello

I would like to start this first little post by introducing myself.

My name is Thomas Pruvoost, I'm 23 years old and already work for one of the most advanced software program companies in the world, as CEO of LogiSoft. 

We offer a big software program for companies who want to have everything in order and want everything to be as clean as possible. Our program contains multiple management tools for our clients' needs and wishes it also helps suppliers keep track of their sales and purches but also helps with accounting and marketing.

As this blog will go on, I will try and record things that have happened during the week and in life on its own. Mainly I will write about my recent travels and adventures.  

I hope you now know something more about myself and my company.

                                                                    Thomas.