While the Alps are far away, we take advantage that there is a lot of snow around us.
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| From 2010-01-30 Von Kettwig nach Winterberg |
Does anybody have tips regarding snowkiting near the Ruhrgebiet?
Does anybody have tips regarding snowkiting near the Ruhrgebiet?
When I decided to move to Hamburg last year I had an ambitious goal, or, better said, two related ones:
- meet people who could direct me to job opportunities;
- make new friends in a new city.
I had spent 3 months in a small German town looking for a job via the internet, after the consulting company that had just hired me had to lay off about a third of their workforce. I have written elsewhere that the job search in 2009 turned out to be very different from the job search in 2008. There were no jobs to be gotten via internet for me this time.
Therefore my goal of building a network in a bigger city with more jobs: I was convinced that I would only get my next job through the indication of a friend or an acquaintance. In the end, that is what happened, although not in Hamburg. But this is fodder for another post.
Back to Hamburg, I was in a new city where I didn’t know anyone at first. But I knew that there were networking events being organized by different people or associations. I searched for such events, got on the guest lists and went out to meet people.
It worked. Pretty well. I may say that it worked better for meeting new friends than for professional goals, but it worked also to get some leads to a few job openings, including the offer from a start up to develop their client base. In any case, I learned that it pays off to go out and meet strangers who are open to get to know new people, and I decided to do the same in São Paulo, in the few weeks I spent there in this end of year.
In Hamburg, I went to events of the following communities:
- Corporate twiter users: Twittwoch and Twittnight
- Social media professionals: Social Media Club Hamburg
- Online media professionals in general: Online Kapitäne from Hamburg@Work, by the city of Hamburg
- Startups, entrepreneurs and business angels: Open Coffee Club
In São Paulo I didn’t have much chance so far. A great event was the end-of-year gathering of the MBA Alumni Brazil, an association of people who have done a full time MBA abroad. They are a great collection of experienced professionals in all sorts of industries. Already in the first meeting I received some valuable tips regarding accountants and lawyers in the city, contacts which I have already used for my new job.
I heard also of other events, like the “Clube da Luluzinha”, a gathering of female internet professionals. Men are not unwelcome there, it seems, but clearly not the target audience.
There are also different internet user groups, like bloggers, twitter and flicker users. As usual in Brazil, theses groups will only be more active after carnival.
A third group that I am sure meets in São Paulo, but I haven’t gotten in touch yet, are expatriates. In Brussels I went to 3 “New in town” meetings organized through the website www.meetup.com, and it was great! I am sure there is something similar in my hometown too, and if I can help the “gringos” with a bit of local knowledge, I will gladly do so.
But for the moment I am starting a new job in Germany, where I will stay the next 6 months. Then it is back to Brazil and time to try the above strategy once more with a bit more energy.
I decided to take part in a social media experiment. Nigel Fenwick, Vice President Principal Analyst at Forrester Research and a colleague alumnus from Warwick Business School (MBA) posted a survey on WBS' forum on LinkedIn and asked it to be shared through social media. I took the survey and am sharing it here and on twitter/facebook.
it is about the penetration of Social Media in the C suite and what we think about that. To sum it up, I believe, as always in social media, the question is not whether social media will be used by C level executives, but rather where, how and when. In some industries, this is a given, especially in B2C communication and brand building. In others, where personal connections (and by that I mean in person schmoozing) are important, it stands in the way.
Well, if you got curious and want to take the survey, here is the link to Nigel's blog for CIOs:
http://blogs.forrester.com/cio/2009/12/can-social-media-penetrate-the-exec-suite.html
The survey is quick and simple, it took me less than the advertised 5 minutes to complete it.
Wishing you all a great new year from Brazil,
Fernando
This is a short post. I was thinking about all the cases where people were fired because they published something on Facebook thinking only friends would see and forgot that work colleagues or even the boss were connected to them. Or when they were tagged by friends in not very complimenting pictures.
First of all, I believe you have to be careful with what you do in real life and on Facebook alike. Don’t want a picture of you drunk in a frat party to pop up on Facebook? Don’t get drunk in a frat party. It is not about Facebook, it is about you, what you choose to do and what you believe is cool or OK. If you do what you think is OK, than you won’t have a problem if it gets published, regardless where.
The second thing is that, in many cases, people didn’t get fired because they got drunk in a frat party. What you do in your own free time is none of your boss’ business, and, usually, bosses know so. I read some cases where people when to a party on Sunday, got wasted and called in sick on Monday. Well, the problem is not getting wasted, it is calling in sick when you are not. And that’s a lie. And that is reason to be fired. So, again, social media is not the cause for being fired, but just another way that the real reason for such was found out. In Brazil we say that lies have short legs (they don’t go far). Internet shortened their legs a little bit more.
Leaving Munich last week, I passed by a used mobile phones store I had been the first time I visited the city with my father. At that time, we bought a simple mobile phone and a SIM card, so he could be in touch with me while travelling through the country. We were very satisfied with the product, the service and the price.
Now, five years later, I went back there to buy a phone I’ve been wanting for some time, the Nokia e71. Not that I really need it, but I was very motivated to buy. I had just earned a nice paycheck in a successful project, I have been using my old phone, a Nokia e61 for a long time already and I knew I was leaving to Brazil, where such phones cost almost twice as much.
I wasn’t expecting to get the price down so much, that was just my opening bid. Actually, I had decided that I would buy the phone for €180,00, or if the sales woman would throw in a simple Bluetooth headset or another accessory in.
The reaction I got was the worst possible. The lady, who had been charming and attentive until that point, snatched the phone from my hand, wished me a good weekend and asked if I thought she didn’t need to make money on a sale.
To be honest, that is the impression I got. My only possible reaction was to turn around and leave. She put me in a situation as if I had offended her and didn’t give me any opening to retract my offer and accept the price she wanted. Had she simply told me that she wasn’t interested in bargaining, but that I still had the option of buying, I would have probably excused me for my attempt and taken the phone.
In the end, as a sales person you have to be firm on your conditions, but you have to give the buyer the possibility of changing his mind. She or he might surprise you.
Similarly to the EBS Symposium at the European Business School, I applied this time to the forumWHU, a the WHU Business School in Vallendar, near Koblenz.
It is a two day forum with about 120 participants from all over Germany, plus some internationals, like myself (but not many). Each day is packed with about 8 talks about a common theme. This year it is about the need for democracy in business, or, better said, how much of it is necessary. The secondary focus is on the BRIC countries, which have been well represented by the speakers so far. Brazil is still missing, but Paulo Sérgio Kakinoff,Executive Director for the Volkswagen Group in South America should speak today.
We had 2 German executives with broad international experience speaking yesterday. Jürgen Meng, Bosch's Head of Controlling with experience in Mexico, US and South-East Asia and Hans-Jürgen Meng, Executive VP of Siemens Russia. Both gave good examples of particular challenges in doing business abroad and where both good examples themselves, showing the difference of two generations of German expat executives.
In my opinion, the most interesting talk was delivered by Subroto Bagchi, who is a founder of Mindtree and holds the curious position of Gardener of the company. His talk wasn't necessarily aligned with the focus of the forum, but extremely relevant nonetheless. He talked about his company, its values and the need for a post-capitalism world order, to be brought by by entrepreneurs and innovation.
Roland Berger's CFO, on the other hand, gave the least inspiring talk of the day. And also the most off-topic. He talked about how Roland Berger views the current economic situation and told us they believe that, by 2010, the recovery should start. It is always nice to hear facts and figures from one of the main management consultancies, but we could have gotten that information out of the report he was reading aloud himself. But I will give him some credit, he was summoned on short notice after the CEO cancelled his talk.
To finish the day we had Dr. Michael Wiehen, a former director of the World Bank and the ethics commissioner of Transparency International. He talked, of course, about corruption, which is seen here in Europe as a main obstacle to business in the BRIC countries. His talk was highly interesting, but dealt mainly with statutory instruments to fight corruption in Germany.
All in all a great event so far. It is not so big as the EBS Symposium and not as international. Everybody here speaks German fluently. The average age of the participants is also somewhat lower, with students still in their first half of their bachelor courses. There are not many WHU students participating, it is an event to show the business school to the public, not necessarily to connect their students to others (which is OK). Because there is always only one talk going on at a time, everybody is much more focused than at the EBS event. There also isn't a career fair, which reinforces this focus. And the "work" schedule is much, much tighter. Which is good.
Today is another day, with two workshops and three talks. It will end a bit earlier with a barbecue, which, after an intensive day yesterday, is a good thing.
But now the first Saturday talk will begin, I have already written too much.
Two weeks ago (put date here) Alex and Jan from Atenta asked me if I wasn't interested in writing a few articles for their head hunting blog Wollmilchsau; I would represent the view of job seekers. As I am myself a Social Media enthusiast and also use it for my job search, I agreed.
About myself: my name is Fernando Bresslau, I am German-Brazilian, was born, raised and went to university in São Paulo. As a young engineer it is always good to collect international experience early on. Germany was a natural choice, as I already knew the culture and the language. The double citizenship made everything even easier and, after five months in China, I was ready to emigrate to Germany.
I have to say, I like it here. I often have to hear that leaving that beautiful country with its beautiful sun, the pretty beaches, gorgeous women and... and... to come to a dark, serious land was a mistake. Naturally, I see it differently. The fantastic infrastructure, lots of green spaces, the smaller cities, the high respect others' rights, the cultural awareness, the regular lifestyle, the bike paths are only a part of that which makes this country pleasant in its own way. And one can find pretty women everywhere ;-)
About Social Media: my first job in Germany I earned through internet fora and e-mail. But this is for the next article.
