In an era of overtourism, where mass travel increasingly strains destinations worldwide, Christopher Hill offers a compelling alternative with his voluntourism/volunteer travel business, Hands-Up Holidays. As a founder and managing director of this company, Hill has built a business model that demonstrates how travel companies can be forces for good rather than exploitation. His approach to volunteer travel challenges the conventional wisdom that luxury and social responsibility cannot coexist.



Voluntourism: When Volunteer Travel and Luxury Coexist For Mutual Benefit



Voluntourism is a portmanteau expression combining “volunteer” and “tourism” — Photo from Hands Up blog post on Earth Day Eco-Luxury Inspiration (Mexico – conservation of turtles in Baja California by Christopher Hill)


What makes Hands Up Holidays’ philosophy particularly noteworthy is its commitment to controlled growth, prioritising quality experiences over scale. Rather than pursuing rapid expansion that could compromise his mission, Christopher Hill maintains personal oversight of every client interaction, proving that sustainable business practices can create more meaningful outcomes for travellers and communities alike.







Operating across over 30 countries, Hands Up Holidays represents a fascinating case study in how the apparent contradiction between luxury accommodations and volunteer work can enhance both experiences.



Here is the account of our interview.



What kind of work are your clients doing during their volunteer travel?



We offer a great variety of projects. Our most popular initiatives are building projects, which can range from small-scale but highly tangible endeavours like constructing or installing eco-friendly stoves in village homes to larger undertakings such as helping build houses or renovating school classrooms.



Beyond construction, we focus heavily on wildlife conservation projects, where families might care for elephants or participate in sea turtle protection programs. The third major area involves educational support, particularly serving as reading partners in local schools. Each project is carefully selected to ensure meaningful impact while being suitable for family participation.



Nayara Tented Camp – The tented camp was built on stilts and a lot of space was left between tents to plant trees and palms between them. Thousands of trees and indigenous bushes have been planted to reforest and repair damage done by cattle farmers. Energy and water conservation measures are in place. The majority of the team is from the local town, and free transport and health services are provided.


What triggered your shift from London finance to voluntourism?



It was quite a dramatic shift, and in true dramatic fashion, I experienced my own road to Damascus moment in South Africa. This happened about six years into my career in London’s financial sector. During a trip there, beyond the traditional safari experiences and stays at beautiful lodges throughout Cape Town and the Garden Route, I participated in building a house for a family in one of the townships. This experience was genuinely life-changing in two fundamental ways.



First, it enabled me to interact authentically with local people,

AI is radically transforming the B2B sales landscape and accelerating the shift towards intelligent sales enablement. At a major B2B event which took place in Paris in July 2025, I met with Stephane Renger, co-founder and managing director of Salesapps. The leading European sales enablement vendor has placed AI at the heart of its innovation strategy. In this interview conducted at the event, Stephane explains how AI agents are revolutionising commercial efficiency whilst maximising security and privacy. A fascinating dive into the future of AI-powered sales enablement that’s redefining commercial performance standards.



AI Saves Time for Sales and Marketing Teams




AI-powered sales enablement : Stephane Renger is the co-founder and General Manager of European sales enablement company Salesapps.








How is AI transforming sales enablement and sales in general?



Stephane Renger: At Salesapps, we’re working on AI agents with the goal of bringing greater efficiency to sales teams, while maximising data privacy and security.



Specifically, what do these AI agents do?



S.R. We developed three types of intelligent agents for our AI-powered sales enablement solution.




* The ‘company profiler‘ AI agent analyses the targeted business regarding its strengths, weaknesses, products, competition, news…,



* The ‘individual profiler’ agent describes the buyer’s profile: background, interests, pain points… Then we use content enrichment agents with metadata to generate sales presentations and pitches,



* Finally, our ‘conversational agent’ restructures meeting minutes and reports.





Once again, this major B2B event took place in the prestigious premises of the Parc des Princes in Paris, with a focus on AI-powered sales enablement.




What are the efficiency gains from the implementation of AI within sales enablement?



S.R. They are quite blatant, mainly in terms of time savings. Thanks to AI, salespeople quickly access information that used to take hours to research.




For a complete sales team, there is at least 20% time saving, which equates to one working day every week. Marketing teams and content managers can save up to 50% of their time.




Is this an opportunity for getting rid of salespeople?



S.R. No, it’s not. Salespeople only spend one third of their time actually selling. Two thirds are devoted to paperwork, CRM, preparation. Automation frees up their time from what isn’t their core business.



Are certain sales roles more threatened than others?



S.R. It depends mainly on the products being sold. The buyer only spends 5% of their time with the salesperson, 80% of the purchasing process happens on the web. So the remaining 5% must involve a complex buying process to require human intervention. In other cases, self-service is way sufficient, even in B2B.



In a nutshell, Sales Enablement becomes AI-Powered Sales?



S. R. For the past two years, we’ve been talking more about ‘AI-powered sales enablement’ than traditional Sales Enablement. This concept is more immediately understandable and evokes innovation in the commercial approach. Worthy of note, for English-speaking markets, we keep that term ‘sales enablement’, but for French-speaking markets,

Are AI and developers the world’s best friends or is artificial intelligence a threat to the future of programmers? As artificial intelligence models are becoming increasingly sophisticated, many questions are raised about the future of developers across the industry. Will AI replace programmers entirely, as Eric Schmidt and Dario Amodei are predicting? Will junior developers be facing extinction, as Steve Yegge surmised in a now-famous blog post? Or are we witnessing the dawn of a new era in which technology amplifies human creativity rather than replacing it? I interviewed Nathaniel Okenwa, Developer Evangelist at Twilio, to pick his brains about this question, and his conclusion is that, in the future, software development will undoubtedly remain human-driven even though many changes will occur. The video recording of that interview is available at the end of this blog post.



Developers and AI: the Path to the Future of Coding







With nearly a decade of hands-on programming experience and a unique perspective on developer community engagement, Nathaniel Okenwa brought both technical depth and strategic insight to this conversation about the evolving landscape of software development.







Spreading the Gospel of Developer Tools



“My parents celebrated when I got that job title of developer evangelist,” Okenwa said. “I speak and meet with developers, online or in person, and I talk about the tools and the technologies they’re using. A part of this job is being with the community and then spreading the good news of Twilio as well.”



AI and programmers, a love-hate relationship? — image antimuseum.com



For those unfamiliar with the company, “Twilio is a customer engagement platform and one of the providers helping businesses with their customer support, communication tools, and APIs.”



The Junior Developer Dilemma



The elephant in the room for the Tech industry is the fate of junior developers. Steve Yegge’s provocative piece ‘The Death of the Junior Developer’ has sparked intense debate, suggesting that AI won’t make inexperienced developers smarter but will enable experienced programmers to eliminate the need for juniors altogether. A daunting perspective for young programmers.



Nathaniel offers a more nuanced perspective that challenges this binary thinking .




Often, a company doesn’t hire junior developers for their current capabilities. They recruit them because they’re investing in what they will become in the future. Junior developers need to exist if we are going to have mid-level senior developers, developer leaders, and architects at a later time.




Nathaniel is right. Programming isn’t just about syntax and algorithms; it’s about developing problem-solving instincts, understanding business contexts, and learning to translate human needs into technological solutions.



‘If you want to create the next generation of builders, then I don’t think junior developers are going to disappear in the long term. We may forget how important they are for a little bit, but they will definitely make a comeback later on.’



The Eric Schmidt Prophecy: Six Months to Obsolescence?



The urgency of these questions intensified when Eric Schmidt,

How do luxury brands maximize experiences in sports events? I attended the 2025 Monte-Carlo Masters, which showed a strong presence of elite brands fighting for high-end customer engagement. Brands such as Rolex, Sergio Tacchini, and Replay can be found advertised almost everywhere at the famous tennis tournament. These brands use the values of this tennis tournament’s identity, which are class, prestige, excellence, and exclusivity, to reinforce their brand image. In this article we will be looking into the strategy behind bougie companies and their connection to the Monte-Carlo Masters Tennis Tournament. 
Luxury Brands Maximize Experiences in Sports Events
Sports Sponsorship in Luxury Branding
Luxury brands have had a history of gravitating towards sports such as tennis, golf and equestrian sports because these sports emphasized precision, elegance, and tradition. Brands saw that it seemed like a good fit for their deluxe identity due to the traditional affluent audiences that these sports offered.
Only the best of the best athletes competing at these events align with the values of the most luxurious brands that they are the best of what they do. These brands are able to prolong their exclusivity while opening up visibility to sports viewership.
As brands become bigger and sports viewership grows, stylish brands are opening up to collaborations with bigger sports that may not have as much class or prestige, such as football and basketball. 

Strategic Brand Positioning at the Monte-Carlo Masters
What once was known as the Monte-Carlo Masters is now known as the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters. Rolex has positioned themselves front and center at a prestige tournament. Not only are they in the title of the tournament, they are on the logo and can be found everywhere at the tournament itself.
Another brand that has strategically positioned itself is Sergio Tacchini. Being at the tournament itself, it is impossible to miss; every ball kid and many employees working for the tournament wear a piece of clothing from Sergio Tacchini. Just being at the tournament, you are constantly being advertised to, whether you realize it or not; everywhere you look, you are reading another brand name.
Other brands, such as Maserati and Emirates, help back the elitist and prestigious image of the tournament.
Monaco, home of the tournament, is known for its wealth as well as its opulent residents, one more reason to advertise an elegant brand, as the target market is mainly wealthy individuals. “According to the World Population Review, Monaco is the richest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita and is regarded as the “billionaires’ playground.”
Celebrities and top-level athletes being at the tournament make being at the event feel like it’s only for those of wealth, class, and elegance. 
Brand and Customer Experiences 
Some of the most exclusive experiences at the Monte-Carlo Masters are sponsored by posh brands. VIP lounges and luxury suites are curated for high-end customers and guests.
Additionally, behind-the-scenes access, meet-and-greets with athletes, and fancy gifting moments allow brands to showcase their exclusivity even more to only those that can afford them. Hospitality packages include gifts, discounts, special access, and events made to feel extraordinarily classy. 
The Société des Bains de Mer (SBM), which is responsible for venues at the event, creates gourmet dining opportunities as well as private lounges mimicking luxury brands.

If you are dying to understand the various GenAI prompting methods, how AI interacts with your prompt, and why this is key to optimising your results, this free prompting guide was made for you. This manual describes GenAI chatbots and the different methods of prompting. It was put forward by Frederic Cavazza, a digital transformation expert, consultant and speaker with over 25 years of experience.
A Free Prompting Guide for Aspiring GenAI Experts
I’ve known Frederic Cavazza for years and I’ve even had the pleasure of working on a few engagements with him. As we were on our way to a GenAI client workshop a few months ago, he showed me this guide and I thought to myself: “This is exactly what I’d like to share with my readers and students”.
Hence this translation and adaption of Frederic’s prompting guide, with his kind permission. I tried his tricks myself and I can guarantee that the mega prompt he describes at the end of the guide is really something you should test, copy, paste, adapt and keep in your own prompt library.
A GenAI Guide about the Art of Prompting
Artificial intelligence is booming, and chatbots like ChatGPT are radically transforming the way we interact with digital tools, changing the way we work. This guide aims to introduce you to the art of ‘prompting’, a key skill for engaging effectively with these artificial intelligence platforms and making the most of their potential.
If you’re researching a topic on the Web and you type in a simple key phrase, the result may not be very compelling. On the other hand, if you structure your search well, you’ll get more relevant answers. And so it goes with artificial intelligence tools like chatbots or digital assistants.
The more structured the prompt, the more relevant the outcome
GenAI Prompting?
The way you ask AI chatbots questions or give them instructions is conducive to more or less convincing results. This is what is called ‘prompting’, i.e., the art of formulating clear and precise instructions to guide the work of artificial intelligence models.
In essence, a well-structured prompt is like a well-formulated search query. When done properly, it shall provide relevant results.
There is no one-size-fits-all prompt methodology, as use cases differ from one user to another. However, we recommend you use one of these three methods based on your needs.
Three Recommended GenAI Prompting Methods
These three methods are entitled RTF (Role, task, format), CRAFT (Context, role, action, format, tone of voice) and COAT-SITES (context objective, acumen, task, specimen, impediments, tone of voice, encoding, scrutiny). Each technique works best depending on expected results. RTF was made for quick results, CRAFT, for simple questions with more accurate results and COAT-SITES, for clear cut questions and extensive results.
So, what are these methods about? Here they are in more detail.
1. RTF Method
With RTF, the prompts specify the role, task and format that AI should adhere to. It consists in a simple, “you are…, you must…, your answer must…” Role indicates who the AI bot should impersonate, providing a contextual framework. Task, gives AI the precise action or problem to be solved, guiding AI towards the expected objective. And Format specifies the type and structure of the outcome.
2. CRAFT Method
Should you be looking for more accurate results, it might then be a good idea to expand your prompt to incorporate more context. The CRAFT method is therefore what you would have to resort to. CRAFT implies providing specifics to the AI chatbot in your prompt such as, “I’m in charge of…, you are… you have to…, your answer should include…, choose the following tone of voice.”
With the CRAFT method,

How is AI Search changing the Internet and what role are we playing in this transformation? In this article, I discuss the current state of adoption of AI-powered search engines. By reflecting on the perspectives of Kevin Roose, Matteo Wong and Joanna Stern, this piece explores what we gain—faster, more organized access to information—and what we risk losing—the diversity of sources, depth of content and our curiosity to go beyond a single answer.
Breaking Up With Your Traditional Search Engine
Is it time to ditch Google and your other favorite search engines? In the past few years, AI has disrupted numerous industries in the digital sector, but arguably one of the most noteworthy shifts has been in the online search market. Think of the last time you searched the internet for information—did you sift through pages of websites, or did AI place the answer at your feet? 
The decades-long reign of Google might just be challenged by this new age of conversational and contextually aware search power. 
Three Voices on AI Search: Roose, Wong and Stern
To examine this idea more deeply, this piece will consider three different articles written by Kevin Roose, Matteo Wong and Joanna Stern. As the conversation surrounding AI evolves, their observations offer unique points, from skepticism to adoption, reflecting the considerable development of AI capabilities and increasing adoption by users. 
By breaking down their findings and looking at the numbers of adoption, I will explore the current and future landscape of AI-powered search. So whether you’ve already hitched your ride to the AI bandwagon or are still clinging to your Google tabs, here’s a glance at where our process of search, the internet, and information is headed. 
Kevin Roose: Continuing with Caution
In February 2024, Kevin Roose wrote an article for The New York Times titled “Can This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google? It Has for Me.” As you might have guessed from the title, Roose’s experience was a positive one, but not without some hesitation.
To test his theory, Roose gave up Google, instead opting for Perplexity, an AI search engine founded by former OpenAI and Meta researchers. Roose’s several-week adoption of Perplexity left him sufficiently convinced AI search engines were a valid competitor against traditional web browsers, but adjustments were needed if they are going to win the race. 

The information retrieval and contextual understanding offered by AI proved more useful for the majority of his work. However, due to AI’s limitations, Google was not obsolete. Acknowledging the absence of credible sources, real-time updates, and the occasional lack of truth AI provided, Roose found his usage of AI had certainly become more prominent, but most successful when used alongside Google.
The article suggests the adoption of AI will not be a bold movement, but a gradual and natural shift in user behavior. Still indecisive on the effects AI will have on journalists, publishers and others who create the internet landscape, Roose stated, “I’ll have to weigh the convenience of using Perplexity against the worry that, by using it, I’m contributing to my own doom.” 
Matteo Wong: Exploratory Search
Roose is far from the only one to have concerns about the growing popularity of AI. The Atlantic’s Matteo Wong placed a heavy critique on AI in his article “The Death of Search.” Wong’s piece focused less on the way in which a person uses AI and more on the way that AI changes our relationship with information.
 
In his view, the concern is not AI’s credibility or factua...

Let AI handle the chores, and humans do the thinking: such should be the future of content marketing. In this piece, I try and debunk a few myths. Firstly, generative AI  can be creative — and often is. Secondly, AI doesn’t necessarily make us stupid; we don’t need it for that. And thirdly, becoming a prompting Guru isn’t necessarily the key to producing great content. The question of AI’s role in content marketing is actually more strategic than technical: it’s about why and for whom we create content. This is the major issue at stake for today’s and tomorrow’s marketers. In this presentation, I urge readers not to outsource their thinking to AI, and rather offload the chores of low-value tasks to machines. Unfortunately, it should be noted that they aren’t always doing a good job with that.
Chores to AI, Ideas to Humans
TL; DR

* Ms Bernard is an SEO agency avatar who adds links to Visionary Marketing on “her” website. Her “work” raises some fundamental questions. 
* Criticisms aimed at AI often miss the mark and overlook fundamental issues: why we write, for whom, for what purpose…
* We also dismiss a few myths such as ‘AI can’t be creative’, ‘AI makes us stupid’, and ‘mastering prompting is a silver bullet’.
* Hence, the question of AI’s role in content marketing is more about strategy than it is about tech.
* In this presentation, I urge content creators (and readers alike) not to outsource their reasoning and to leave the chores to AI.


AI and Marie Bernard, the e-commerce Queen
Let me introduce you to Ms Marie Bernard. This pretty young woman, somewhat artificial in appearance, exists only in Midjourney’s archives and on the website of “her” SEO agency. This supposed e-commerce expert found herself embroiled in a semantic mix-up that was both amusing and revealing.
Taking inspiration from one of my articles, this visionary author mixed up ‘snow globe’, an expression used by one of my expert interviewees as a metaphor, and ‘snowball effect’. Thank God, she inserted a link to Visionary Marketing so that I could correct that fatal mistake. Far from being trivial, this anecdote raises a few fundamental questions. Who is writing? For whom? How? And for what purpose? In fact, it even poses bigger questions such as “what is humans’ place in society, and what sort of society do we want for our children and children’s children?”
AI Information Overload 
Content about generative AI is so ubiquitous that we have gone past information overload. AI content analysts are skirmishing via X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn posts, mainly on the technical front (this AI is better than that one), creativity (AI produces interesting ideas or rather, is dull and inferior to humans), and usage (“download my ultimate prompting guide!”). Yet all these debates (and sadly others that are less prevalent, like the poorly documented issue of energy consumption) fail to address other key questions: who are we creating for, why, and for whom do we work — or more broadly, what kind of society do we want in the future? 
Generative AI at the Heart of the World’s Issues 
AI, and in particular generative AI, have generated most of the noise on social media, blogs, newsletters, and chat around the pub. Traditional economy seems to be ignoring the phenomenon or treating it as incidental — a recurring habit when it comes to digital innovations, but online debates live on unabated.  
Whether and how we should use generative artificial intelligence is now a central question in our modern societies, and that’s understandable. Machines have been able to play around with text since the 1950s, but computing power and large-scale training on such a vast and decent dataset — despite criticisms —...

Isn’t the notion of “disruption “, aka disruptive innovation, used and abused by analysts and technology experts? And by dint of abuse, aren’t we in the process of deluding ourselves? At a time when some are fretting about the volatility of the business generated by ‘unicorns’ or even centaurs, it is perhaps worth asking whether we have not entered an innovation bubble, yet accentuated by that of generative AI, marked by the correction of technology values and a return to more traditional values. Yet it may be too early to find out about the reality of such disruptive innovations. Here are my thoughts about the subject with a few references to sources and books I found interesting.
Disruption: Is Disruptive Innovation Overhyped?

The so-called GenAI revolution
While some have been claiming that we are living in a bubble of innovation (here, here and here for instance and here and here with AI), it has to be said that not everyone always agrees. Especially with the advent of the so-called GenAI revolution.
As I felt like tackling the topic of disruptive innovation, I thought it would be interesting to revisit an article by Joanne Jacobs from a few years ago about this subject: ‘Are we in a disruptive bubble?‘.
In this piece, she explains what role disruptive innovation is playing in contemporary markets. She argues that disruption is not just a fad, but something more profound.

Forget all about unicorns, here come the centaurs! Bessemer Venture Partners – State of the Cloud 2022The hype surrounding disruptive innovation is overwhelming. Here is what I found here and there:

* Disruptive innovation is deemed to impact businesses and employment . with all-out automation a major source of job destruction;
* Integration of productive innovation is supposed to have enabled some companies to reinvent themselves ;
* Organisations are said to be reshaped through the introduction of collaborative networked business approaches ;
* Profound changes in traditional markets (as for banks for Show more...