You know what I feel really frustrated about?
It's when I learn that there was a great event.... yesterday or last week.
When I just missed really good opportunity. When I had the chance to hear some cool new idea, to share things with people from my crowd, when I didn't know I could have been at that relevant event and find out just too late.
They say the things you regret are the ones you did not do.
What I need is a way to find out what happened at an event that did not get too much press coverage, or for which the reports and reviews are very scattered, very diverse.
Tonight there was an event about "how to plan a world tour" if you are a student looking to go around the world on an ethical, social tour. I could not go.
But I would love to get the information!! and not just from the reviews by journalists and professional bloggers, but also visiting experts who don't usually blog, and just the average attendant.
I need a "rewind" button on the events I missed, and to be able to reply them in front of me as well. I need a mash of ideas, pictures, media, that bring to life the course of the discussion.
Just like TED.com does. Only for more events, for more people, more often.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Social Networking
Last Saturday, I found out on twitter that there were some movie tickets to win. I am following the SonyPictures French twitter account. So I answered the 3 easy questions on the quizz, filled in the contact fields, and went to bed, and then worked for the whole week.
A few days later in my mail was an invitation for 2 people to go and see the movie!
Awesome feeling, and great positive example of corporate marketing on the social network :
- Sony gets it right by offering contests and game on twitter;
- the winners are hooked: i'm sure to follow it regularly now, and to participate in the next games.
- it also succeeds in generating traffic towards the facebook page,which I have now visited, and otherwise wouldn't have.
Ironic fact: I won tickets to see the movie about Facebook... thanks to Twitter :)
True, yet awesome, story!
A few days later in my mail was an invitation for 2 people to go and see the movie!
Awesome feeling, and great positive example of corporate marketing on the social network :
- Sony gets it right by offering contests and game on twitter;
- the winners are hooked: i'm sure to follow it regularly now, and to participate in the next games.
- it also succeeds in generating traffic towards the facebook page,which I have now visited, and otherwise wouldn't have.
Ironic fact: I won tickets to see the movie about Facebook... thanks to Twitter :)
True, yet awesome, story!
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Amsterdam - SAIL 2010
One of the largest events of old ships in the world. With ships from Russia, France, Poland, UAE, ... Amsterdam got crowded!
Bruxelles - Musée de la BD
Explication schtroumpf - où l'on apprend l'origine de la langue schtroumpf. Approximativement.
European Tour - week 1
l'itinéraire est simple. Toujours en train. Hébergement chez des amis dès que possible.une super semaine !!! :D
Larguez les amarres
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Living the right life
For the past weeks and months, I thought I had it figured out.
I thought I had everything, or most of it, under control: manage work before it gets too big, keep time on the side for personal interests and projects, and enough social interaction to produce new opportunities regularly.
It was without counting with family! Family gets happy or gets sick, relatives visit you or they need you at their bedside. Family needs to talk, and you'd better be there to listen, because they have been there for you before.
I need to be honest here: oftentimes lately I feel like I should just send whoever to hell, go traveling round the world. I feel hindered by my relationships to a certain place, a certain history, and that it's gonna keep me from realizing my dreams.
Luckily, I have been reading a bit. "The 7 habits of highly effective people" and Dan Buettner at a TED conference provide me with an answer for this situation:
- be trustworthy and caring with those close to you and you'll build up an "emotional account" that is beneficial both to you and to those people, by making the relationship easy and a source of positive feelings
- live by principles, so that when you disagree with someone, you have enough confidence and wisdom not to make it personal or aggressive; it's just that you are different, and if you are mature enough you'll respect each other for having different views on some topics
- the moment I start feeling "hindered" by my family, I know that I need to change perspectives, and see the opportunity. My life balance principle tells me I should not try to avoid all contact and responsibility just because I feel like being on holiday.
It is a huge opportunity to:
- show your gratitude to the people who raised you up. It is not about "I sacrifice for them because they sacrificed for me". I don't like the idea of sacrifice, there is guilt and regret associated to it. It's about openly, proactively, extending a generous hand, lending time, feeling actually glad to be able to help.
- listen. We like to talk, we fill our living rooms with the sound of music and TVs. But to have the chance to listen to someone, who has lived a rather long life, share some of the wisdom and talk about insignificant event of the daily life makes you reflect on your own life. And think twice about what you really want to give priority to.
- connect. I believe when you manage to listen and empathize, and as you are here you have shown your involvement and caring, a connection between you and another individual simply happens, that participates to the feeling of fulfillement of someone's life and sense of purpose and achievement.
What do you think? I'd like to read your thoughts about it.
I thought I had everything, or most of it, under control: manage work before it gets too big, keep time on the side for personal interests and projects, and enough social interaction to produce new opportunities regularly.
It was without counting with family! Family gets happy or gets sick, relatives visit you or they need you at their bedside. Family needs to talk, and you'd better be there to listen, because they have been there for you before.
I need to be honest here: oftentimes lately I feel like I should just send whoever to hell, go traveling round the world. I feel hindered by my relationships to a certain place, a certain history, and that it's gonna keep me from realizing my dreams.
Luckily, I have been reading a bit. "The 7 habits of highly effective people" and Dan Buettner at a TED conference provide me with an answer for this situation:
- be trustworthy and caring with those close to you and you'll build up an "emotional account" that is beneficial both to you and to those people, by making the relationship easy and a source of positive feelings
- live by principles, so that when you disagree with someone, you have enough confidence and wisdom not to make it personal or aggressive; it's just that you are different, and if you are mature enough you'll respect each other for having different views on some topics
- the moment I start feeling "hindered" by my family, I know that I need to change perspectives, and see the opportunity. My life balance principle tells me I should not try to avoid all contact and responsibility just because I feel like being on holiday.
It is a huge opportunity to:
- show your gratitude to the people who raised you up. It is not about "I sacrifice for them because they sacrificed for me". I don't like the idea of sacrifice, there is guilt and regret associated to it. It's about openly, proactively, extending a generous hand, lending time, feeling actually glad to be able to help.
- listen. We like to talk, we fill our living rooms with the sound of music and TVs. But to have the chance to listen to someone, who has lived a rather long life, share some of the wisdom and talk about insignificant event of the daily life makes you reflect on your own life. And think twice about what you really want to give priority to.
- connect. I believe when you manage to listen and empathize, and as you are here you have shown your involvement and caring, a connection between you and another individual simply happens, that participates to the feeling of fulfillement of someone's life and sense of purpose and achievement.
What do you think? I'd like to read your thoughts about it.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Business ideas
This morning was very productive in many ways!
As I worked my way through a critical step of my main project in the office, some thoughts I had been following for the past weeks finally fell in place. Now I can formalize a few ideas for new business that arise, mostly, from discussions with friends and colleagues , based on topics from the "4-hour work week" best selling book by Tim Ferris.
1. price minister online shop :
as I realized last time I shopped online, there are more and more entrepreneurs opening shop on PriceMinister, eBay, and other "P2P" online trading platforms. In France, this has become increasingly easy thanks to a new administrative status introduced in 2009.
The idea, if you follow Tim Ferris' advice, is to keep yourself out of the picture: setp up the shop, but make sure that customers orders are sent directly to your contractor, which will in turn manage by itself production and delivery of the goods, BUT ALSO after-sales service. Or find a thirf party to do it. After all, if such opportunities are available nowadays, why would you want to spend hours and hours answering customer emails when a specialist can take care of it for minimal fees?
2. diversity agent
A friend sent me a link to a very interesting blog on "social spelunking" (sorry French people, it's hard to find a translation for that....)
On this post about women in technology & tech conferences, the author explains that the majority of web users are female in North America, and that the largest population on the Web is Asian.
So?
So, it means that for companies such as Mindvalley, and of course plenty others, their activity of online marketing and advertising strategies would benefit from identifying those trends as soon and as precisely as possible.
I am confident there is still today a market for this kind of activity: as traditional advertisement becomes less effective, creative companies are in need of hard facts to identify the trends they want to surf.
Alright, that's all for today folks. Reactions welcome.
As I worked my way through a critical step of my main project in the office, some thoughts I had been following for the past weeks finally fell in place. Now I can formalize a few ideas for new business that arise, mostly, from discussions with friends and colleagues , based on topics from the "4-hour work week" best selling book by Tim Ferris.
1. price minister online shop :
as I realized last time I shopped online, there are more and more entrepreneurs opening shop on PriceMinister, eBay, and other "P2P" online trading platforms. In France, this has become increasingly easy thanks to a new administrative status introduced in 2009.
The idea, if you follow Tim Ferris' advice, is to keep yourself out of the picture: setp up the shop, but make sure that customers orders are sent directly to your contractor, which will in turn manage by itself production and delivery of the goods, BUT ALSO after-sales service. Or find a thirf party to do it. After all, if such opportunities are available nowadays, why would you want to spend hours and hours answering customer emails when a specialist can take care of it for minimal fees?
2. diversity agent
A friend sent me a link to a very interesting blog on "social spelunking" (sorry French people, it's hard to find a translation for that....)
On this post about women in technology & tech conferences, the author explains that the majority of web users are female in North America, and that the largest population on the Web is Asian.
So?
So, it means that for companies such as Mindvalley, and of course plenty others, their activity of online marketing and advertising strategies would benefit from identifying those trends as soon and as precisely as possible.
I am confident there is still today a market for this kind of activity: as traditional advertisement becomes less effective, creative companies are in need of hard facts to identify the trends they want to surf.
Alright, that's all for today folks. Reactions welcome.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A good day for business, bad day for me
Here are a couple of business/non-profit project ideas that I had in the past week,but that are already taken:
- a website for happiness : behappy.fr or something like that...
the idea would be like a blog, or a twitter, and everyday I would give a hint on how to be happy, how to engage in activities that foster the factors of happiness.
Mostly based on the How to be happy wiki, except the points that I dont agree with. it would link everyday to a different topic, like www.vie-de-reve.com, www.dreaminder.com, etc.
- a website for energy audit for companies: the aim is to provide an online tool for companies to be able to assess their energy consumption by themselves, to identify the main sources of energy consumption, and to provide some guidelines for reduction of carbon footprint.
Then on top of that, I was thinking of building a "freemium" model, i.e. Free + Premium, where one can sell consulting and expertise about energy audit, training for CSR/SD (corporate social responsaibility & sustainable development responsible in companies, etc. One name I had thought about was "Elec'onome".... and it's already taken! by the syndicate responsible for the local distribution of electricity in France.
well... more to follow, soon. I need to get ahead of the trend, now I 'm just having ideas that someone already had before!
- a website for happiness : behappy.fr or something like that...
the idea would be like a blog, or a twitter, and everyday I would give a hint on how to be happy, how to engage in activities that foster the factors of happiness.
Mostly based on the How to be happy wiki, except the points that I dont agree with. it would link everyday to a different topic, like www.vie-de-reve.com, www.dreaminder.com, etc.
- a website for energy audit for companies: the aim is to provide an online tool for companies to be able to assess their energy consumption by themselves, to identify the main sources of energy consumption, and to provide some guidelines for reduction of carbon footprint.
Then on top of that, I was thinking of building a "freemium" model, i.e. Free + Premium, where one can sell consulting and expertise about energy audit, training for CSR/SD (corporate social responsaibility & sustainable development responsible in companies, etc. One name I had thought about was "Elec'onome".... and it's already taken! by the syndicate responsible for the local distribution of electricity in France.
well... more to follow, soon. I need to get ahead of the trend, now I 'm just having ideas that someone already had before!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Keep Walking in 2010
First : I wish all of you readers, and your relatives & friends, a very happy new year 2010.
Now. Digging up what I had or hadn't posted for last year's season greetings, I ended up cross-checking the objective(s) of tyhis blog, detailed in my very first post : The ambition of leadership.
Quoting myself (I know, very unpolite!): "Let's try to find out more about [...] what it means to be human. Here as in many other situations, the final destination - ultimate knowledge - is not as interesting as the path towards it."
What do I mean by "keep walking"? Mostly 3 things:
1. keep going towards what you like and enjoy most
2. keep paying attention to how you are maturing, what you are learning
3. adjust your direction accordingly (back to 1)
What is there in 2010 for me?
1. I keep looking towards the renewable energy sector, learning more facts, techniques, business stakes
2. I have my personal plan for the " coming years, with deadlines & checks regularly spread out
3. I still read a lot and enjoy it, which helps me to look at my choices critically as I go.
There are tons and tons of things I would like to do, but at the moment I am rather trying to simplify my life around priorities, therefore I am doing less things, and more of them.
As usual, I will try to post some of my initiatives or business ideas around these pages.
In the meantime, why don't you try the exercise for yourself:
What is there in 2010 for you?
Keep walking, I hope your footsteps bring you back here from time to time.
Once again: i wish you a VERY HAPPY 2010.
Now. Digging up what I had or hadn't posted for last year's season greetings, I ended up cross-checking the objective(s) of tyhis blog, detailed in my very first post : The ambition of leadership.
Quoting myself (I know, very unpolite!): "Let's try to find out more about [...] what it means to be human. Here as in many other situations, the final destination - ultimate knowledge - is not as interesting as the path towards it."
What do I mean by "keep walking"? Mostly 3 things:
1. keep going towards what you like and enjoy most
2. keep paying attention to how you are maturing, what you are learning
3. adjust your direction accordingly (back to 1)
What is there in 2010 for me?
1. I keep looking towards the renewable energy sector, learning more facts, techniques, business stakes
2. I have my personal plan for the " coming years, with deadlines & checks regularly spread out
3. I still read a lot and enjoy it, which helps me to look at my choices critically as I go.
There are tons and tons of things I would like to do, but at the moment I am rather trying to simplify my life around priorities, therefore I am doing less things, and more of them.
As usual, I will try to post some of my initiatives or business ideas around these pages.
In the meantime, why don't you try the exercise for yourself:
What is there in 2010 for you?
Keep walking, I hope your footsteps bring you back here from time to time.
Once again: i wish you a VERY HAPPY 2010.
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