Jaren terug, toen ik nog studeerde en veel met de trein reisde, kon ik genieten van een kop koffie in de trein met een heerlijke Luikse wafel erbij. Op Intercitys in ieder geval was er namelijk een railtender. Een man of vrouw met een wagentje met koffie, thee en andere versnaperingen. Toen ik na die tijd wat minder met de trein ben gaan reizen ben ik deze geweldige service nooit meer tegengekomen. Bij mij was zelfs de indruk ontstaan dat deze service wegbezuizingd was, of om veiligheidredenen opgheven, of niet meer kon vanwege de introductie van dubbeldekkers. Met al die trappen zijn wagentjes natuurlijk ook een beetje lastig.

Tot ik vandaag, ruim 20 jaar nadien, ineens de man op de foto tegenkwam. Hij had koffie en thee op zijn rug en versnaperingen op zijn buik. Daar kwam mijn railtender binnenlopen! Na mijn bestelling van koffie en natuurlijk een Luikse wafel heb ik hem gevraagd of ik deze foto mocht nemen. Enigszins verbaasd vertelt hij mij dat deze service van Kiosk alweer 5 jaar bestaat. Heerlijk, de koffie in de trein is weer terug!

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A couple of weeks ago we got introduced to a new feature at LinkedIn: the Profile Organizer. This is a real great feature. It gives you the possibility to keep profiles you are interested in for whatever reason in private folders so that you can handle with them later. This can be an interesting person for recruitment, a prospect, someone you like to connect with or anything else. LinkedIn is only giving this feature to paid subscribers.

Guess what? I am a paid subscriber. Not the billion dollar a year Business account but a Personal Plus account. This account gives you a bit more than the Free Personal account. Besides the Profile Organizer you get the possibility to send InMails, be part of the OpenLink Network, see more in Who Viewed My Profile, Search for References and a little bit more. This will set you back $60 a year. Is it worth it? I think yes, you get the possibility to use all of the LinkedIn features for not a lot of money.

The strange thing is that LinkedIn does not advertise with or mentions the Personal Plus account at all. So this makes me wonder. Is Personal Plus obsolete? Is it new? I own my account for almost a year now, because my brother in law has the same account. He was pointed at it by a friend. But LinkedIn? They don't talk about it at all. On the other hand. The account is updated once in a while, hence the addition of the Profile Organizer. You can subscribe to it, so I presume they do support it.

When the Profile Organizer got introduced I sent out two tweets saying:

"Very usefull feature @LinkedIn: Profile Organizer bit.ly/KIThO Why is it they don't inform people about availability of PersonalPlus?" and

"This accounttype for only $60/yr can be found through linkedin.com/personalplus Why is that @LinkedIn?".

This gave no reaction at all, not even from LinkedIn. But this week I saw a blogpost from my LinkedIn friend Neal Schaffer where he asks "The new LinkedIn Profile Organizer: Worth the upgrade?". My reply was "At $60/yr for www.linkedin.com/personalplus I think it is worth the upgrade. I like the feature." This lead to a conversation in where Neal subscribed to Personal Plus and wrote a blogpost about his findings.

Does anyone know why LinkedIn is not advertising with Personal Plus? Do you use Personal Plus? Please share your experience.

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A couple of weeks ago we had a company weekend in a very child friendly park in Belgium. I have been playing with the kids in the megapool and the also mega internal playground. While a lot of my colleagues had flying lessons that weekend I had the most comfortable 737 ever!

See the full gallery on posterous

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So here it is. My first blog post. You might say I am a late adapter. A very late adapter even. The same can be said for my use  of LinkedIn and Twitter. Last month I told a trainee at my company: "Listen to this old gray man, I regret I started to use LinkedIn only a couple of months ago. I should have started 5 years earlier. Building up your social network and building your portfolio starts NOW." The guy listened and is now building his portfolio and expanding his network, although he still doesn't know how to use his network (yet).

My decisions are either black or white, there is no gray. I don't do anything or I go for it, all the way. Until this year I was against social networking, but now something has changed. Two independent entrepreneurs convinced me off  the professionalism of LinkedIn. And I must say they were right. It is a professional network. There is only one thing about LinkedIn I don't understand: LION's. I really don't understand what the use is of a huge "network" of people you don't know. Well, one day I will find out and maybe understand them.

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Posterous might be just the type site for me to use. As anyone may know I am new to blogging and I don't have the time yet to and start blogging and finding out the technical details. I started a couple of weeks ago with the still in beta blogger service of xs4all which is .text. I just didn't like the look and feel. That's why I am now moving to this site and just try it out. The next two updates have been moved from my xs4all blog.

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