Craig Atkinson

Well I have found some open wifi hotspots from my tiny hostal bedroom. I have to keep the window open for the connection to stay active, which is a bit of a problem because it’s freezing in Madrid and all over Spain today! I better keep it short.

Today I woke up in Sevilla to a major rainstorm. At least I had a few hours in the evening to enjoy the town, because I sure didn’t this day. It was freezing cold. About 4′C. Plus the rain was falling from buckets in the sky that just kept replenishing. Then there was the annual Sevilla Marathon, which shut down all normal activity in the old part of the city where I was. This made it really hard to get around because all the buses were being rerouted around and traffic was snarled.

I did have a bit of fun in the afternoon when I finally got back into the historic district and bought an umbrella. I made it inside the famous Cathedral which was free on Sundays. Big plus for free. It seems like an amazing city and I can’t wait to come back again on a nice warm day and enjoy it!

Anyways so I was glad to get onto the AVE out of town. It’s still frigidly cold here in Madrid (2′C this evening), but at least there is not a raindrop in sight.

So far the camera is working out wonderfully. There are just so many exciting pictures out there that I want to take. I will keep working at it and you can see everything at flickr as promised now that I have my wifi access.

Hasta manana, buenas noche!

I arrived in Spain last night. I decided to stop in Granada because I really wanted to tour through the Alhambra and I realized that it´s a great stop on the way to Seville. Originally I wasn´t going to but I figured at least there is a page in my Rough Guide to Europe about it. How lost can I get?

Well the streets are narrow, winding, confusing, and follow no discernable order in this town. I wandered around having loads of fun for a few hours, stopping at a Doner Kabap stand for a meal, then a cafe for a cafe au lait and a tarte, then a small bar for some cervezas y tapas. Well I was getting tired of walking by now, and I started to make my way back. However, I went totally in the wrong direction and had to double back twice. I got lost for at least an hour trying to figure it out. Plus it was cold and dark and raining. But I had great fun doing it.

Spain is so cold right now. I have warm clothes for the north, but I was hoping it would be a little more mild around here. I have read a few things about a cold snap in Europe and I suppose this is it.

Today a gypsy lady forcibly read my palm. She handed me a stick of evergreen and grabbed my hand. This is after I said “¡Non! No entiendo”. Well she obviously doesn´t understand either so she started telling me completely in Spanish about how smart I am and that my heart is strong with love. I will have a beautiful family and live very happy. I guess I did understand enough Spanish to get the meaning of what she said, but I didn´t believe for a second that she was reading anything other than a script in her head. I refused to give her any money and she took the evergreen stick back again!

More from Seville tomorrow. Plus with pictures!

I am off to London this evening. I will be lugging around my wifi-enabled tablet pc, my new digital slr rebel and my 40gig HD mp3 player. Updates will occur as usual. Now with lots of pictures! Expect only the best cross-posted here but all of them on flickr.

Brodie Elected

Originally uploaded by tommyg.

This is my friend (who is incredible) getting elected as PAI (President of AIESEC International). I’m certain AIESEC will be in good hands with him in charge of the 15,000+ members in 90+ countries.

It was really nice to see him in the AI (AIESEC International) office a few weeks back just before he was going to the elections at IPM in Romania. He was calm and collected, even working in the office until late on a friday night. (Everybody on AI was doing the same thing to catch up on weekly priorities!) He has this sort of calm and focused quality that impresses everybody. I don’t quite know how to describe it.

Well done Brodie. Congrats.

Here’s the quick photo tour of Amsterdam. I wasn’t there but a weekend, so there aren’t too many photos.

A lovely canal street.



I took this picture in B&W and actually prefer that version much more.



This is a giant parking garage for bicycles near the Amsterdam Centraal train station. See the second storey of it behind this mass of bikes?



Some houses along the rich Herengracht Canal.



A dark and overcast sky accompanied much of my winter trip.


This might be the skinnest house in Amsterdam in the front. I’ve heard there may be others though.

I bought a new camera!

I’ve been interested for many years. And I figured that I had some opportunities in the next two weeks when I am in Seville, Madrid, Lisbon, Paris and London to hunt for pictures. I am mainly interested in architectural and landscape photography with an emphasis on black and white images. Eventually I may start to pursue people portraits or street photography.

Stay tuned for some pictures…

I was just talking to the founder of Beercasting.com (whose name I can’t find right now). It’s a very interesting concept into studying sociology through the use of podcasting. He sets up meets where people come to talk about specific ideas and topics. I think it is because people can really open up and relax in a comfortable and open bar setting. Check it out.

I decided not to take pictures here, but that doesn’t stop a slew of pics showing up on the web. Here’s a nice one during Scoble’s talk.

So far listening to Tim Bray and Robert Scoble has been pretty interesting. It was pretty funny when Scoble dodged Dave Winer’s call on his cellphone. Everybody got a good laugn when he suggested we should talk to him.

The common theme of course is that blogging matters and there is tremendous power in the community.

Many references were made to the quick adoption of new ideas within the blogosphere and articles appearing in mainstream journals. Others talked about the quick rise of products when bloggers started talking.

I’ve been meaning to share this ever since I passed through George Bush ‘Intercontinental’ Airport in Houston a few weeks back. Well this and the sweet Southern BBQ Ribs I ate at Harlon’s. Those were a bit overpriced but this glich in the departures monitor system was good value!

The error dialog says that there are “a large number of Temporary Internet Files” and the system is attempting to clear the cache. All the monitors were continuing to repeat this message off and on.

I couldn’t resist a snap!

Okay I admit it. I signed up for the Northern Voice Vancouver blogging conference just to hear Scoble speak. I have however been blogging since 2000 and reading them since forever. And already had my Tablet PC before becoming such a fan of his!

You can find some great photos on Flickr from the Vancouver Chinese New Year Parade. I still haven’t got around to uploading my pictures from Amsterdam but hopefully soon. I haven’t even used my flickr account yet!

I’ve had a Compaq Tablet PC for nearly 6 months now. It’s a great computer, although I think I’m not fully pushing the boundaries of what the platform can do yet. If you really pressed me, I guess I love watching movies and TV shows on it. Sometimes I grab it and head to bed. I just take the keyboard off and keep the pen handy for pausing and changing the volume. I turn the brightness down real low to conserve the battery and relax.

I love traveling with it since it is so light and has a fairly nice 3-4 hour battery life. I always make sure to load up on some downloaded entertainment before boarding my next flight. It sure beats watching a movie for the 2nd or 3rd time.

It must be the freedom then that I enjoy. The take it anywhere and do what you really enjoy kind of thing. Well I certainly enjoy using the internet too! That’s why I was so interested to find the Vancouver Guide to Free WiFi today.

Last night got the pleasure to meet up again with Stephen Ibaraki and Dave O’Leary. Both were founders of iGEN Knowledge Solutions and still actively involved as mentors to all of us involved in running the company. It was really amazing to sit around and talk strategy with both of them. We even got into a small brainstorming session that was brilliant and are going to hold a full afternoon “idea generating” session next weekend.

Some essence of the conversation included: the keys to success in business, the power of relationships, how to leverage intellectual property, and how persistance and energy will eventually win the game. They are both great mentors to me and I really enjoy and learn from the time we spend together.

Thanks to the guys for coming out and I can’t wait for the next session!!

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Happy New Years to all my friends celebrating the Lunar New Year.

I’m planning to attend the Chinese New Year Parade in Vancouver’s Chinatown. It’s Sunday afternoon. Want to come?

Well I’m here in Rotterdam, working with the ECOLEAD spec team at the AI office. We are just passing 5pm after a nice day of talking about the modules that we are working upon. We will probably continue the meeting for a few hours.

It was interesting to talk with everyone, Adriana from Romania is working for DHL in Brussels, Aloke from India is working for Opera in Norway/Sweden and soon to be going to the London School of Economics, Jens from Germany is still in University, Ludek and Steve from AI, and Voldoja is working for some Sustainability research centre in Belgium and is the ECOLEAD project manager.

We just connected to Malte in Germany on speakerphone to talk about his module, the Social and Business Networking, so I’ll be back to work.

Spent the day walking around just trying to get my bearings straightened out. I enjoyed the sights and found a cheap hostel by mid-afternoon. It was just three rooms with 15 or so people in each above an Irish Bar just a few blocks from Centraal station and a few blocks from the Red Light district. I think most of the hostelers were British over for the weekend to smoke some pot and woop it up in the bars and sex shops.

Bartender / Hostelier: “Can you give me your name and passport number” said in a heavy Scot accent
Me: “Sure here let me write it down”
Bartender: “Oh okay thanks … are you British?”
Me: “No Canadian”
Bartender: “Ohhhh sorry!! Ok here you go”
Me (to myself): “Did he just offend me there or is it supposed to be a good thing?!?”

And true to their word, most of the people were coming and going through all hours of the night and still sleeping when I left at 9am in the morning. But it was a decent bed and a cheap spot to crash.

Well I’m off in the morning to Amsterdam and Rotterdam for the weekend. I have a meeting with AIESEC International for the business specifications that I am working on for the ECOLEAD project.

Hopefully, I’ll get some nice weather to walk around and check out the houses and the canals. I plan to tow around my girlfriend’s camera and spend some time composing pictures. Actually, I may be stuck working all weekend What a rough life.