Tag Archives: Doodle

How to Plan a Backpacking Trip Through Europe

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With summer upon us, it’s not too late to start planning your Europe backpacking journey with your friends. Organizing, especially amongst a group of friends, can be a pain. With so many countries, places, and bars to see across Europe with so little time, it can be a nightmare planning it all.

Here are a few things to keep in mind for your backpacking adventure…

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Planning your dates – With a continent to explore and everyone one of your friends having a different idea about what to see and do, Doodle can help you plan your travel schedule together. Doodle simplifies the process of agreeing on a date and time for a holiday with friends or family members cutting out the endless WhatsApp chats. Simply suggest the possible dates, send to the participants via the app, email or iMessage and then let them instantly vote on which options work for them. Doodle will do the rest, confirming the best time for everyone. The best times to travel in Europe are in the shoulder seasons of Spring and Autumn since European cities in the summertime can be packed tourists and cruise guests.

Transport – Getting around Europe can be a breeze, from cheap discount airlines like Ryanair offering £10 flights to bus companies such as Flixbus offering €5 bus fares between cities. Europe has it all. Despite the number of options, planning ahead will save you lots of money as fares in the summer can shoot up quickly last minute, especially if all your friends voted with Doodle on going to La Tomatina. Make sure to tackle landing cheap tickets as soon as possible so you avoid paying over-the-odds for transportation. Train travel is a great way to travel around Europe since you can purchase a Eurail pass that will allow you to travel to multiple countries using the one, global pass.

Festivals – No summer backpacking journey to Europe would be complete without attending one of Europe’s many festivals. From the world famous music festivals such as Tomorrowland to Spanish cultural festivals such as Las Fallas and Running of the Bulls – there is a festival in Europe for every occasion. But before diving head first into a festival, it is important to pack the proper gear. For example, if you plan to head to Oktoberfest in Munich, make sure you don’t forget to pack the lederhosen, or you will miss out on half the fun!

Budget – While running out of money happens to some, it is not in the life of Doodlers. Before you leave on your trip with your friends it is important to hash out your travel priorities, because there is nothing worse than getting to Paris than finding out you can’t afford to see any of its amazing museums. At the same time, while saving on accommodation can increase the longevity of your journey, don’t be afraid to splash out every now and then on experiences that you will never forget. Create a budget to stick to, and make use of apps such as Venmo or Splitwise to help you split your costs fairly.

Accommodation – There are many ways you can save money on accommodation, such as staying in hostels or booking an apartment on AirBnB and splitting the costs. Apartment shares are actually a great way to save money when you’re travelling in a group since you can buy groceries at the supermarket and cook your own meals at home.

Backpacking with your friends around Europe can be a life-changing experience that you’ll never forget. With the correct planning and communication with your friends, you can have an incredible journey. There may be a few unforeseen hiccups along the way, no doubt, but that is part of the entire travel experience.

 

About the Author

Victoria Brewood is owner of Life Hacks and Tips – a site offering life hacking tips for every situation. She has been travelling the world since 2008, visiting over 50 countries including Madagascar, Iceland and Japan to name just a few. Victoria’s favourite countries to backpack in Europe are Portugal and Montenegro.

“Hi Meekan!” — Doodle welcomes Meekan, the scheduling assistant chatbot

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The Doodle Team is thrilled to announce that the Israel-based startup Meekan is now part of the Doodle family! Meekan’s chatbot supports users as a virtual assistant with easy and fast scheduling — a perfect fit to enhance Doodle’s already powerful online scheduling service.

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Driven thoroughly by artificial intelligence, Meekan acts as a virtual scheduling assistant and is controlled by a conversational interface. In response to a simple request, the chatbot automatically matches up the schedules of all members of a group chat within seconds and proposes prioritized dates. The Meekan chatbot is adaptive and remembers prior preferences and practices of its users to optimally plan and adjust schedules. Unique to this industry, Meekan is 100% driven by artificial intelligence, with no humans involved “behind the curtains”.

Meekan was established in Israel in 2013 by Lior Yavor, Eyal Yavor and Matty Marianksy and has been supported by Hong Kong-based venture capital investor Horizons Ventures up to now. The Meekan scheduler is already in use as a robot assistant in the instant messaging applications of Slack and HipChat.

As members of the Doodle management team, the founders Lior Yavor, Eyal Yavor and Matty Marianksy will continue to be responsible for the development of Meekan. Lior Yavor, CEO of Meekan: “We very much look forward to working with Doodle, a strong international brand with more than 26 million users a month worldwide. With the chatbot feature and other developments, Doodle will still be the first choice for scheduling in the future, both for personal use and for business purposes.”

For further details, please refer to the press release.

 

 

Interview with CEO Michael Brecht @frenchweb.fr

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Doodle CEO Michael was in Paris this week where he spoke to the French media about Doodle’s future.

Here is the link to the video on French magazine frenchweb.fr where Michael spoke to Marion Moreau about his first 100 days with scheduling specialist Doodle, his role in leading the Swiss start-up to become a global player and about the importance of growing in French speaking countries. Doodle is today used by more than 20 million users worldwide with French being one of the top three languages on its platform. Doodle as a scheduling platform for private and business use is available in 20 languages.

Thanks Marion for the interview, it was great talking to you.

Doodle scheduled in France

Doodle in France

New Findings: A small number of initiators organize most of the meetings

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Do you have the feeling that the last team meeting or dinner with friends wouldn’t have taken place if you hadn’t taken the initiative? If that’s the case, then you’re probably one of the initiators who organizes more than half of their personal and business meetings without any help. The portion of these initiators among Internet users is 22%, which is about the same size as the portion of “loners” who never take care of these tasks. Additionally, 55% of Internet users may organize some of their meetings, but for the most part, they’re “herd people” who allow themselves to be herded by other people. These are just some of the results of a recent survey that was conducted on behalf of Doodle*.

Despite what you may think, people with higher educations, income, and job positions are more likely to be initiators. These people are normally busier than others and have more appointments per week and more contacts that they manage. Also, when they get annoyed by scheduling, they use Doodle to get quick and easy help because the portion of initiators among Doodle users is almost twice as big as the portion of initiators among Internet users**.

Initiators are:

  • People with higher education and income
  • Mostly managers, office workers, and freelancers
  • Not really determined by age or gender

Initiators are twice as likely to agree with the following statements:

  • I know a lot of people
  • I like to connect people
  • I like to organize things for the group
  • People act on what I say

Initiators use:

  • Private social networks more often (social media)
  • Business social networks much more often
  • Sites about new tools and technology more often

Initiators attend more group events:

  • 50% have 3 or more group events per week (compared to 25% of non-initiators)
  • Less than 10% of initiators have fewer than one meeting per week

“Loners” don’t organize any events by themselves:

  • They make up 23% of Internet users and 3% of Doodle users
  • 73% of them have less than one group event per week
  • Many of them “don’t like to organize” (72%) and “don’t know a lot of people” (61%)

Both initiators and other respondents indicated a clear list of things that are annoying when organizing events for others. 93% are annoyed by at least one of the situations below, and chasing people who aren’t answering is the clear winner.

Business meetings are the most frequent group events that the respondents attend, followed by volunteering events and dinner appointments. The initiators don’t favor a particular event type, but they just have more of each.

*Toluna Group Ltd. on behalf of Doodle (June 2012): International survey among Internet users by means of online panels in the US, the UK, Germany, France, and Switzerland (2,050 respondents)

**On-site surveys of Doodle users (May 2012 – 777 respondents and June 2012 – 501 respondents)