The last part of the Vlerick MBA is the Giving Something Back Project. This is a module designed to get nearly baked MBA’s to do some good stuff for a good cause. I will be doing my project in London for a very interesting NGO that supports local projects. The Cosmic Girl is coming with me of course to have some fun and study in London. While there I hope to get to know the place a bit and meet interesting people an hey, if a nice opportunity shows up at any point – even better.

I am still working on those China posts so patience please.

So I am on vacation with friends hoping to get some well deserved rest. There is no wifi where we are staying so the only connection possibility is edge (no 3G here). Can you imagine 100k data costs 26 cents? Unbelieveable. The EU should crack down much harder on the european carriers to lower the roaming data costs. Thank god Blackberry email doesn’t need much data.

Today, I have finally delivered my thesis and now I am wondering what to do. After 2 years during which this unfinished business was always on the back of my mind I at last feel a bit free. The problem is – what do I do with the newly won time? One thing is I started this blog, though I still ain’t sure what’s it gonna be about but I am not sure this will take up much of my interest. I am thinking of getting back to some coding but will see… Until then I guess I’ll vent my frustruations here.

I am a tech person. What does this mean? Well it means I spend a lot of time with tech stuff – computers, internet, online services, gadgets – everything. Any new tool, gadget or service will get my attention and I’ll most probably at least try it out. People who have no idea what Flickr, iTunes music store or Audible is are for me difficult to understand. These services are amazing and really use the power of the internet to deliver value – so why don’t all people use them.

Well non-tech people don’t know and don’t care. My mother is on 6 week stay in Ireland and she wanted to share some photos from her stay. Before she went I set her up with a gmail account, including blogger. She wanted to document her stay and was willing to give blogger a try. Now after a few weeks she is ok with blogger but also wanted to share pictures she made there and she didn’t know how. So I helped her over Skype to get picasa and upload some albums on to the internet. It is not something she would have done without me but as I recommended her these things she got used to them and now is happily adding pictures to her web albums all the time.

The point is it’s up to us tech people to sort the really good tech stuff from the crappy stuff so the non-tech people can be what they want to be – just plain users.