Business Quests in the Information Age

Great to be in North America

First of all, I want to share with you something that has nothing to do with the post itself, that is my great excitement at being in North America for a week or so. I just landed and the welcome is really professional and at the same time very warm. Went through New York border controls where there was that smiling police woman who delivered a real piece of wisdom when I greeted her asking how she was: "I'm doing pretty good and trying to enjoy every moment 'cause one never knows when one will close their eyes forever".

Anyway starting next Monday I will be attending the AlwaysOn Media NYC conference, which I expect to be great. I am genuinely impressed with the way this conference business is being managed by Tony Perkins & team.

First day in Toronto, Ontario

First day in Toronto. First impressions outstanding. Nice people, nice city, exceptional blend of cultures and styles. A great feeling of openness, freedom and respect.
In fact I came here because a dear couple of friends is living in Toronto (and they love it)... So for me it is a great opportunity to discover a new place and discovery sometimes leads to interesting inspirations. Who knows?
I was stunned this morning in the underground reading a poster of the TTC, the local public transports organization, stating that they are able to provide information and service to their customers in 70 languages... Amazing! Canada seems to be a surprising blend of a developed country and a country that still has a lot of development opportunities for the future.

Today was a lot of walking downtown. China town is a beautiful experience and a great place for anyone who wants to study commercial talent... Tomorrow's schedule says "Greek part of Toronto" (how could I not go there after all?) and uptown... Let's see what the impressions will be.

Quicker & more relevant than Le Monde

Remember a few days ago my story about "flower power", Thomas Plassard and his association?

Well it seems, my post beat Le Monde and AFP on this one (although I am pretty sure I am not the only one to have done so and that speaks volumes about what is happening to traditional media). On top of that, my story is about something far more relevant to the European & French readership. No matter which journalistic performance indicator you choose, my blog was better than Le Monde and I am proud of that! A zillion thanks to Thomas for offering me that gift in return for my driving him to beautiful Saint-Malo.

Below is an attachement with the "flash" article from Le Monde and AFP.
Download 20050830_LeMonde_RoulerALHuileDeFriture.pdf
The picture on this post is courtesy of La Poterie du Marais.

Great traveller

One of my former colleagues (who used to be a globetrotter in his days as head of sales of the company we were working for) has started a great trip around the globe that has taken him from Latin America to New Zealand. I trully admire his daring nature and his way of always being in action. Lodewijk shares some of his considerable travel (and adventure) experience on his web site, Silk-on-the-Road. Beautiful pictures of awesomely beautiful places on the planet. A source of inspiration for something completely different.

Flower power?

Returning from Brest, Britany, France on 14 August last, I spent a little bit more than an hour with a hitchhiker, who turned out to be an extremely interesting and multifaceted person.
When I saw him waiting for someone to give him a ride, with his monocycle lying at his feet, I had a positive intuition... Go figure! So we started talking about his monocylce because I have a good friend who is painstakingly learning to ride one. So Thomas told me he was going back home after spending a few weeks with a Gypsy circus which happens to give shows that fully exploit the power of metaphors and of the subconscious (that's an interesting point too, because I am now working on a new type of training programme based on metaphors...) Anyway, Thomas is not an artist or at least not exclusively an artist. He is a physicist. He is also one of the people behind a French organization called "Roule ma fleur", which trains people around France on how to use vegetal oil instead of diesel to power their engines. It seems one needs only very limited changes to the engine of a car or other vehicle to be able to use sunflower oil (but it also works with other types of oil) as fuel. Given the rising price of crude oil these days, it might be interesting to examine more closely this type of options, especially since they also seem to provide solutions to the green-house effect that some developed and developing nations don't give a dime about.

Why Magritte

At times in Belgium, where I live, I am amazed to see a very strange phenomenon that I have never observed anywhere else. At least not with such intensity. It is this strange combination of buildings or trees in the foreground that look dark at the very time the sky behind them seems full of light. Seeing this I can understand why Magritte was so inspired. This picture was taken on July 16th 2005, around 11:00 AM in the park of the 'Chateau de La Hulpe'. I just wanted to share a beautiful moment captured in this picture. Beautiful images, paintings and music speak the language of peace and quiet to our souls. A peaceful and quiet soul is a must for those of us who want to strive for excellence (not perfection, and yes it is very different) without paying the ridiculous price of stress and poor health.

In praise of art & creation

I took a few days off to visit a few friends in Vienne, France and in Switzerland. Now is this a beautiful country! We put on our snowshoes and spent a good part of last Saturday wandering in a stunning snow-covered landscape one hour drive from Lausanne. It felt good and I strongly recommend it to anyone who needs to breathe some fresh air and take a good break from a hectic modern life. It's a good form of "deceleration" for me.

Well, to tell you the truth this was not a "complete" break for me, as I did a bit of work visiting my favourite blogs and adding some content on this blog. I actually spent enough time blogging for my good friend Arnaud Du Jardin to sketch me as I am intently blogging. Many thanks to you Arnaud, not only for your lovely creation, but also because you made me realise that art and creation can really be everywhere in our everyday lives. I am in bewildered awe every single time I am lucky enough to discover a piece of creation that moves me. This one does, not because I happen to be the subject, but rather because it came as a complete surprise in the middle of a beautiful Sunday afternoon and made me realise each second of Life can be art and creation.

I certainly believe there is an aesthetic dimension to my professional activity, seeking Harmony in the production of my deliverables for my customers. Actually working in IT / tech projects I like it when methods and approaches are humane rather than procedural and robotic. That is probably one of the reasons why I endorsed the agile manifesto. And because I believe that the information age is simply the last nail in the coffin of bureaucratic organization of human activities, I chose to devote time (therefore life-energy) to developing and refining tools for organizational design modelled after living organisms. In a sense, that is also what I mean when I say that it is people that make the world go round (or not). This too is a manifestation of Harmony for me.