Language: English

Delegation

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I asked some people for invitations to an event, in exchange for services & online branding. The response from the person delegated to do PR activities for the event – you’ll have to wait for a week, we’ll hold a management meeting, and I’ll present the situation to them. What’s the purpose of this person in the company? Why don’t they make some software to gather voice commands, record them, and have them discussed in the meeting? If the PR manager for an event can’t decide a PR package, and each single situation must be discussed at the top level, why did they hire that person? If the skills required are „but she must interpret what you say!”, you could get a 18-year-old person, no experience, very low salary, and just have a simple conversation, get the data, and present it in a meeting. Also, since when a group meeting is the best place to decide such a thing? To me, this is clearly the situation in which a single person must decide. At the Ritz-Carlton, every single employee (even the maintenance folks) has a budget of $2,000 per guest to make things right. On the spot, without asking. Without a doubt, the guest is blown away by this rapid response. A caring person who, instead of saying, „I’ll have to ask my supervisor,” just makes it right. But even more important, I think, is the effect of trusting your people. You’ve already given them the keys to your brand, you’ve already made them the …

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Good movies, poor movies

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A poor movie is one in which people insist to solve things: person A tries to a thing, it doesn’t work, it insists, it works. In Frozen, there’s a race from wolves. They don’t succeed at escaping, but they insist, and they escape. They are ready to jump, they don’t quite make it, but they insist and they make it. This happens with other characters in the movies (they ran from a huge snowman, they insist, and it works, one old guy doesn’t get to dance with the queen, he insists, he makes it and the list continues): A good movie is one in which when there is a trouble, the main character finds a creative solution. In The Bourne Ultimatum, the main character (interpreted by Matt Damon) finds creative solutions for escaping situations (at one time, he goes beneath a platform, so that he won’t be seen). In Skyfall, the 007 Agent (Daniel Craig) shows lots of creativity for solving problmes (at one time he climbs a moving elevator): It’s easy to insist. Most problems, though, don’t get solved this way.

Exits

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Yesterday, in the metro, for a short while, some girls were staring at me and giggling. Perhaps it’s because I look like a modern soldier with all my photo / video equipment on me:

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Or perhaps due to my belly, which has some proportions right now. Anyhow, they were giggling.

My first reaction was defensive – I felt bad for myself, I was angry at them. What could have I done better?

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Thoughts on serendipity-investing

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Rand Fishkin from Moz suggests, in a video, invest in non-measurable, serendipitous marketing. I’ve done this quite a lot in the past years. The trouble is I’ve done more than the suggested 20% of my time on this, and now I face a situation in which I have hobbies which account for more time than my actual work. Not so good. From Nicolae Steinhardt’s point-of-view, this might be not as bad (see Saint Anton of Padua quote), but, still, it’s not so good, either. So, less hobbies, more work.

(Half-) Intelligent decisions

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I was very young when this happened: I was with a friend (her name was Mihaela), she was much older than me. At one point, we saw a big group of people. We went a few steps in that direction, to see what was going on. At some point, Mihaela covered my eyes, so I would not see. I think I heard some screaming. I did not understand much, perhaps someone committed suicide, or something of this sort happened. I was unsure, we went from there, I think listened to her command not to look. A lot of time I thought about this scene, wondering what has happened.

Did Mihaela do good?

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When you buy a product, should you buy it after only seeing it online, or should you go to a store to view it, and only then buy it?

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Let’s say you want to buy something. You can’t decide whether it suffice to buy the product online, or you should see the actual product in store, test it for a while. I talk in this article on tips on how to buy a computer case, a mouse, a keyboard, a CPU, a case fan, a backpack for a photo camera, some electronic cords, some headsets, a flat TV and a computer monitor. I also give basic criteria on what to look for on any of these products. I use, for my research and example, only amazon.com. I also give links to some reviews I made during the past years for some products I mention in this article. The article has both a video and a text version, they tend to complement each other well.

Let’s proceed then.

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Tripod Fancier WF-717A + WF-717AH fluid video head

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Take this product:

which looks, while doing his job, like this:
000-mic

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Canon Legria HF G30 / Canon Vixia HF G30

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Take this product:

, which looks like this:

001-mic

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