Compliance Unfiltered is TCT’s tell-it-like-it is podcast, dedicated to making compliance suck less. It’s a fresh, raw, uncut alternative for anyone who needs honest, reliable, compliance expertise with a sprinkling of personality.
Show Notes: PCI Europe Community Meeting Recap
Quick Take
On this episode of Compliance Unfiltered, The CU Guys dive into their recent experiences at the PCI European Community Meeting in Amsterdam.
From the city’s impressive public transportation to the vibrant conference atmosphere, they share insights and anecdotes that highlight the unique charm of Amsterdam. Discover the excitement around TCT’s latest technology, EasyCert, and how it resonated with attendees.
Whether it’s the eclectic mix of conversations or the delightful culinary adventures, this episode captures the essence of a memorable trip.
Tune in for a blend of professional insights and personal stories that make for an engaging listen.
Read The Transcript
So let’s face it, managing compliance sucks. It’s complicated. It’s so hard to keep organized and it requires a ton of expertise in order to survive the entire process.
Welcome to Compliance Unfiltered, a podcast dedicated to making compliance suck less. Now here’s your host, Todd Coshow with Adam Goslin.
Well, welcome in to another edition of Compliance Unfiltered. I’m Todd Coshow, alongside the powdered sugar to your compliance, Belgian waffle, Mr. Adam Goslin. How the heck are you, sir?
Oh, we partook in a Belgian waffle or two. Uh, I am doing good. How about yourself, man?
I can’t complain, I cannot complain. Happy to be back, happy to be firing hot here.
We’re gonna spend the next little bit talking about the experience that TCT had at the PCI European Community Meeting held in Amsterdam. So starting with things surrounding the conference, right? As opposed to jumping directly into the community meeting. Let’s talk a little bit about our experience in Amsterdam. Adam, tell me more.
Oh, I mean seriously, shout out to Amsterdam. It was, you know what struck me was the public transportation over there. I mean, okay, I live north of Detroit, okay? And they don’t call it the Motor City for a reason, you know, for without reason. It’s because everybody and their uncle has a freaking car and you drive everywhere and whatnot. The notion of public transportation, at least where I’m at, it’s practically zero. And over in Amsterdam, holy crap, man, they had a been awesome subway system. They had a tram system. They had a bus system. I mean, it was just, it was awesome. Not only awesome, but again, it was well maintained, clean, you know, people were respectful, you know, about that public transportation. Didn’t let it get dirty and nasty or whatever.
So, you know, we’ve been to some places. We’ve seen some things.
For those Adam that have listened to Compliance Unfiltered for a minute and heard us talk about our experience in Fort Worth, we’ve had pretty good luck this year when it comes to public transportation. I would say that the biggest difference on the Amsterdam trip is that it’s a common thing for folks there of all walks of life to use the public transportation, whereas it’s a little less traveled and say maybe Fort Worth, and I think that might have led to some things, but this was proper day in, day out use of this public transit, and it was perfect.
We couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Uh, you know, you know, it’s fun though, is when you get, when you get on there and you’re, you know, you’re just trying to like, you know, whatever pronounce the names of the stations and stuff. And then the hardest part was just listening to the, to the, to the, to the auditory announcements, right? They’d be saying, so I’m sure they were saying whatever was on the wall of like the next stop, but I don’t know, man, it was just me. But, uh, I’m like, I, I was, I was, I was maybe catching it about a third of the time and I’d be able to connect the two. It was, uh, yeah, that was, that was exciting.
You know what, you know, what else, you know, what else was fun. So, uh, my, my trip over there was, was, was terribly exciting. My, my plane got canceled or maintenance issues, whatever I had to delay a day. And then I had to take a hop through Atlanta to get over to Amsterdam, et cetera. Well, there’s a special bus, right? That goes from the airport and that’ll bring it straight out to right where you, wherever you are, you know, where, where we were going to be staying. And, uh, and as we’re going, I, I’m, they would stop at a, at a, at a, at a station. I’m looking at the station and then I’m looking at the map on the bus of what are the station names were supposed to be hitting and none of them are matching up. Finally, I went up to the, uh, to the driver. And I said, I’m really sorry, but I said, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here. I said, you’re stopping at stations. I’m not seeing them on the map on the bus. So he’s like, oh, well, there’s this like big thing going on in downtown Amsterdam. So for today, they’re routing the buses to go different routes, et cetera. And he helped me out. He was like, yeah, just the next station that we’re going to be coming to, that’ll be the one closest to where you need to be. Just, you’re going to need to get off there and figure it out from there. So it was, uh, yeah, it was a little, uh, a little dynamic on the way, uh, you know, kind of trying to get to our place. But once we were there, oh my God, it was just, it was awesome. You know, we were able to move around really well.
Absolutely. Now, some of the other stuff that is noteworthy about Amsterdam, at least from my perspective, was the food. I thought the food was great.
Yeah, we had a good, yeah, we had a good time. So we had, um, Oh, there was this one dinner spot. I think it’s one of the few times that we’ve gone somewhere and gone back.
Right. Normally when we’re doing the, you know, doing the road shows and things like it, like I don’t want to try different things, different things, but it was so damn good we went back and that was the kind of ball Royal, um, for a dinner spot. Holy moly. They hadn’t, uh, the short ribs were stupid, uh, stupid, good. Um, you know, everything that we tried, everything that we had at that place was awesome. So we ended up going back there for kind of our, our, uh, our, our, our final meal as well, but what the hell was the name of that, um, that breakfast spot we landed at?
New Last Pr- what? Prumel.
It was just, yeah, it was just, it was a wonderful little, little bakery, I mean there may have been, including their little outside patio, Adam, there may have been 12 tables in the whole restaurant. But, I mean, I’m talking men, fresh, fresh, homemade, all the things, you know, pastries and whatnot, all day long, ah, truly great stuff.
I just ate not too long ago. And my mouth’s watering again. Honestly, that little bakery boy, they did such a great job. The people were so nice and whatnot. But there’s certainly something to be said for… There were a lot of kind of fresh baked goods style locations, but this one was awesome. It was tucked in on this little side street and whatnot. It was the only thing that we could find that was open at 8am before we needed to go and get on the subway to go over to the conference. So yeah, that place was fricking awesome.
If anybody finds themselves in Amsterdam, then yeah, if you need the… Todd did a stellar attempt at the pronunciation, but if you ever do need the actual name of the place, just send us a note. But other things about Amsterdam that are cool. I don’t know if a lot of people kind of recognize it or not that haven’t been to Amsterdam, but it is a city of literally canals everywhere. The place we were staying at was right off one of the canals, but it’s basically they’ve jammed all of these roads, city streets, public transportation, et cetera, on top of this just grid of canal systems and whatnot. So it’s awesome. There’s boats going through, and boat tours, and drinking boat tours, and you name it. Meanwhile, up on the street level, you got cars and bicycles and all that fun stuff flying all over the place. You’ve got all the public transportation going. So that part was really cool. Speaking of the bicycles,
Watch out. You’re just you’re never safe Adam. That’s that’s really what it boils down to is It doesn’t matter where you are. You’d be in the road on the side or it doesn’t matter. You’re not safe. I
Yeah, it’s it it is it is wild trying to get across the across the street So for the uninitiated so in some cases there so the street is kind of broken up into sections, right? So you’ve got the the outer sidewalk and beside that is a bike lane, you know In some cases a bi-directional bike lane And then you’ve got and then there’s like a roadway then there’s another sidewalk So it’s almost like I feel I feel like I’m going to like Lord of the Rings second breakfast But you know, they got the second sidewalk over there And then they’ve got all the tram area followed by another sidewalk followed by another car lane followed by another bike lane You know followed by another sidewalk.
It’s it’s wild You do have to you have to have your head on an F and swivel because you can yeah those those bikers They don’t they don’t give an F
No, and they’re silent, Adam, they’re silent.
In the entire time we were there, I believe that the bicycles actually possess bells and whatnot, but I heard almost none of them while we were there.
Yeah, they were sparingly used at best.
Yeah, Walker, uh, Walker beware, shall we say. So, yeah, moving on to the actual conference though.
I mean, you know, thoughts at a high level, you know, I thought Amsterdam, you know, in many ways, there’s always pluses and minuses of each of the locations, but I think as a general statement, I’d say that Amsterdam was just as good as Dublin and Barcelona. Um, I mean, what were your thoughts?
Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that, and I think when you’re looking at the measure of a conference, it’s obviously, I remarked, you look at a few different factors, right? So for me, I always look at the conference center in general.
Now, from that perspective, I enjoyed the conference center in Amsterdam, probably as much as Dublin, and definitely more than Barcelona. In Barcelona, we were in the other conference center, but… The other. Yeah, you get it. And I know, because I tried to go to the conference center, if you remember correctly, Adam, but we were not there.
And the cool part about the Amsterdam Conference Center is that they had, which is different from some, is that they had kind of natural light around the top, all the way around the top outer ring of the Conference Center had windows to the outside. So you were getting a lot of natural light and whatnot, which I don’t know, kind of gives it a nicer feel than when you just got straight artificial lighting and whatnot on the, kind of on the conference floor.
But now I wanted to express my appreciation to the, you know, to the PCI council, and yet again, Gina, Effin, Rockstar. Rockstar. She’s amazing. Love, love, love that lady, that lady basically deserved a much needed, well-earned break after getting through all of the various conferences. But now she’s been doing a fricking great job with the last several conferences. So serious shout out to Gina for sure. Now that said, you know, we got to see some people and whatnot when we got over to the various conferences this year in both North America and EU. We had a couple of people both at North America and at EU that were very, very nice to us and came by and dropped off goodies. So, you know, we’ll give a shout out to Paul at the North America conference, you know, brought some goodies for the boss, if you will. And also, Heidi wasn’t there, but Heidi made her presence known because she made Jeff carry a box from North America to EU to hand deliver it to the TCT team.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much, appreciate it. But yeah, I don’t know if you knew this, but I had Jeff and I took a selfie with the box so he could ship it back over to Heidi and whatnot. But no, tremendously appreciated. It’s always great being able to see folks and whatnot. Certainly seeing old friends or current friends and whatnot at these conferences is a good time. We had a lot of people, you know, a lot of people at this particular conference that, you know, that we knew and knew well. So that’s always, you know, always fun. You know, it’s especially fun when you’re on the, you know, you’re on the conference floor and, you know, you’ve got, you know, current clients and whatnot on the floor with you and, you know, being able to have a mix of conversations with either folks you knew from the past or current and existing clients and whatnot being able to talk with them, you know. But, you know, some of the most fun is just making new friends, you know. It’s been a good time.
Absolutely. Now, you know, we go to, you know, we at TCT go to multiple shows a year, you know, specifically the North American Community Meeting and the EU Community Meeting. And there are some differences. What would you say that the EU Community Meeting does maybe better?
Better. Better. Differently. Whatever. You know, I think there were… I think there’s a couple of things that I’ve noticed about the EU conferences. So for those that haven’t attended the, you know, the PCI community meetings, in North America, it’s literally, on average, double the number of attendees as there are in EU. So you know, the EU is a smaller conference. While it’s a smaller conference, it’s very nicely and appropriately done. It’s the little things, right? You know, you’ve got real China that you’re eating off of, and you know, real silverware, and you know, and little touches like that, you know, and whatnot. But the cool part is, is there’s about half the attendees and less than half of the vendors. And so what I find interesting is that when you go to the EU conference in particular, it allows more time for sitting down, chatting with people, et cetera. Like I was remarking to, you know, to both you and John as we were kind of talking it through. I think I had at least five or six different opportunities to just take somebody off, sit down at a table, have a chat, talk about things, et cetera, for whatever, 15 minutes to half an hour, whatever it may be. And it was just, it was really nice. It was really enjoyable to kind of have that opportunity to really get into some depth with, you know, with some of the folks, you know, that we had the opportunity to go in and sit down with, you know, and whatnot. You know, that was, you know, that was a really, that was a really good time. But what are your thoughts? What were your thoughts? Did you think of anything additional about the, you know, about the EU conference that struck you?
Well, the thing that I like the most about the EU conferences today, I feel like you get a different mix of conversations. I feel like a lot of the time, you know, conversations and trade shows can kind of get a little redundant. And what I what my experience was and has been at these EU shows is that you have such an eclectic mix of folks that choose to go with. And because of that, you’re going to have an eclectic mix of conversations. And we certainly did.
Yeah. Now, you know, the one thing, you know, one thing we had when we were walking into this was we had just released right before the North American one. We just released EZ-CERT. So I know that people were loving that when they were, you know, kind of seeing it in North America for the first time. But what was your thought on the reception at EU?
It was incredible, and people were sitting there going, we’ve been looking for this for I don’t know how long, like this is exactly what we want. And so, I mean, that’s the type of thing that, when you roll out a new piece of technology, like the only thing that you can hope is that it solves the problem for the people as much as you conceptually thought it would. And what we’ve seen over the course of the last two shows that we’ve been to is just an overwhelming, positive response to EZ Cert, and what it can potentially do for our clients.
Yeah, you know what strikes me about that, and this is just the way that TCT does what they do, right? Since the very beginning, we’ve always been attentive to our clients’ needs, listened to their needs, wants, and desires, and that’s exhibited with the deployment of EZ CERT. But it was interesting. We’ve had a lot of conversations across both North America and EU, and there’s different approaches to different companies, right? Some of them are up to their eyeballs in bullshit and snake oil type of a deal, and then there’s companies like TCT that we actually listen to the clients. We want to sit down and do things properly. We want to be able to deploy solid capability to go put in their hands that actually works instead of it being smoke and mirrors bullshit. So I think in many ways, the conversations that I had with the folks, especially in Europe, because we were able to get to a greater level of depth, I think they find it refreshing sitting down and talking with us because the way you and I are talking right now, it’s the same way that I’d go and have a conversation with a client or go have a conversation with a CEO of another company or whatever. We’re just real people trying to help people. It’s fun.
Partin shots and thoughts for the folks this week, Adam.
Well, uh, again, had a freaking great time in, uh, uh, in, in Amsterdam, uh, you know, really enjoyed being able to get out there, meet folks, all that fun stuff. Um, yeah, a couple of things I want to, want to kind of mention is that, um, you know, certainly we’ve gotten several requests from listeners for, Hey, it’d be really cool if you guys did such as such a topic. So just a friendly reminder, uh, if you’re listening to this and you’re saying to yourself, you know, it’d be cool. If the guy’s covered, um, then send us an email it’s, uh, compliance unfiltered at total compliance tracking.com. Um, you know, go ahead and send us a, send us a note. We’d love the, uh, love the interaction, love the feedback. Uh, you know, love to hit the mark with the, you know, with the pod as well. So, uh, let us know what you want to hear more about or have us cover a little more in depth, we’d be happy to do it. Um, you know, again, thanks very much to the, you know, to the council, to Gina, uh, for all the hard work and, uh, putting on another, another great conference. Um, I’m really looking forward to, uh, next year’s EU, um, EU, um, community meeting is going to be in Edinburgh. And, uh, we had a stellar time in Dublin and I’ve heard from a number of sources that Edinburgh has a, uh, a very similar feel, uh, to, uh, to, to the fun we had in Dublin. So, uh, that I am very much looking forward to, uh, to participating in. That should be a good time.
No doubt about it, Edinburgh is one of my favorite cities in the world. And that right there, that’s the good stuff.
And that right there, that’s the good stuff. Well, that’s all the time we have for this episode of Compliance Unfiltered. I’m Todd Coshow and I’m Adam Goslin, hope we helped to get you fired up to make your compliance suck less.
