Tech Tools: Managing and Sharing Your Calendar

Organizing your Time: The Problem

I was working with a client recently who was having some problems synchronizing schedules internally. My client is a small consulting company with about ten employees who evaluate EPA and OSHA compliance for their clients.

Employees of this company regularly travel to visit with clients nationwide, and each employee tracked his or her own travel schedule individually using Outlook’s calendar. As a result, any time the company needed to schedule something that required the attendence of all employees, they had to ask each employee for a list of dates that would work. Full Story →

Hollywood, the Constitution, and Your Future

I just saw Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness for the second time this week, and I had forgotten what a powerful movie it was. Or maybe I just wasn’t in a position to truly appreciate it when it first came out. It’s like studying Shakespeare in high school: at the age of fourteen you can’t even begin to appreciate the language or relate to the feelings in his plays (years later, that hasn’t improved much). But with time comes perspective, and I saw this movie in a completely different light.

 

Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right? You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period. - Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

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7 Lessons Learned Abroad

I’m back! After a few weeks abroad, I came home with a completely different view of the world. In an entirely too short period of time, I saw Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich in Germany, Zurich, Bern, Lucerne, and Interlaken in Switzerland, Venice, Rome, Naples and the island of Ischia in Italy, Salzburg, Austria, Amsterdam, and Ljubljana and Bled in Slovenia. And a bunch of small towns along the way.

Me overlooking a village in the Swiss Alps. Sweet.

I’d say I probably learned more about the world in the last few weeks than I had in my entire life prior to this trip. Wandering the ruins of an ancient palace in Rome, directly across from Mussolini’s mansion on Palatine Hill, gives you a sense of history that just can’t be found in the States. Allow me to share a bit of my accumulated wisdom with you:

1. The Mario Brothers franchise dramatically skewed my perception of the Italian people

In fact, most of the Italians I met weren’t nearly as friendly as Mario, and could care less if you were attacked by a giant turtle hell-bent on kidnapping the princess. With the EuroCup right around the corner, the Italian people were far more concerned about their soccer team.

2. Americans are remarkably ignorant to the current events of other countries

People in several different countries asked about American politics, named all the presidential candidates, and seemed to know more about our government than the average American. A little more attention to global current events might have saved me a very unpleasant trip to Naples, because I would have been aware of the garbage strike in progress. Seeing people throw bags of garbage out of apartment windows into the street is certainly an experience, but not one I had been looking for. Particularly in the 80 degree weather that really brings out the stink from a giant heap of garbage.

3. The Swiss Alps are deceptively large

Starting off a day of hiking in the Alps by saying “We’ll just hike up to the snow line and then head back down” is a recipe for a very long day. Particularly in June.  That’s when we realized there’s a big difference between walking ten miles in the completely flat Midwestern United States and the terribly vertical Swiss Alps. In case you’re wondering, we never made it to the snow line. Live and learn…

4. Just because you’ve never heard of something, doesn’t mean it won’t be awesome

Case in point: the town of Bled, Slovenia. This little town in northwestern Slovenia was one of the most beautiful and relaxing places I’ve ever seen. Our trip to Slovenia was a spur of the moment decision when other plans fell through, and our expectations were low.

As it turned out, the place was amazing, the people were great, and everything was a fraction of the price of the rest of Europe. What they need most is a good marketing campaign to overcome that skepticism and bring more people to this gorgeous little place.

5. Motivation is really all about the tone and method of delivering a message

While in Slovenia, I went white-water rafting. Our guide explained, in his thick Slavic accent, that with the rain of the previous week and the snow melting, the water volume was much higher than usual. He also told us what to do if the raft flipped, and explained just how critical it was to obey his orders immediately to avoid any potential dangers.

After nearly an hour of paddling, we were getting pretty fatigued. Even so, when our guide yelled “Faster! PADDLE FASTER FOR YOUR LIVES!”, we quickly found that we had pretty deep reserves of energy. He explained later that if we had hit a rock he pointed out, we would have flipped and likely been sucked into a deep whirlpool.

It was then that I realized just how powerful it can be to appeal to people’s emotions. A less forceful command may not have been taken seriously, but when someone screams at you that your life depends on something, you tend to listen.

6. McDonalds must be one of the most globalized companies on Earth

Virtually everywhere we went, we knew we could probably find a McDonald’s more easily than we could find a place to sleep. Even the signs we followed to find the Pantheon in Rome were actually guiding us to the McDonald’s directly across from it.

That being said, it was interesting to see the regional differences in the products McDonald’s offered. They’ve got curly fries in Italy, bacon in Germany, and all their desserts in Slovenia were berry flavored. McDonald’s really does a great job tailoring their menu to the unique wants of each target market, while keeping things recognizable enough to avoid alienating international travelers like myself.

7. Europe is expensive

There are certain things I never really appreciated about America because I had never considered that they could be any other way. For instance, around here we really take public restrooms for granted. When I first saw a public restroom in Italy charging roughly $1.60 for entry I thought “That’s a great way to get your building peed on” (For the record, I didn’t pee on the building). I found that my willingness to drink in a pub declined as a result, knowing that each beer would cost me roughly an extra $1.60 and a trip to the bathroom.

That was just the first of many encounters I had where I found myself paying for things I had always gotten for free. Ketchup in fast food restaurants cost 10 cents per packet. So did grocery bags at supermarkets. I came home with a new appreciation for the verse “O’er the land of the free” in our national anthem, though I can’t imagine Francis Scott Key was referring to public rest rooms at the time.

Now What…

Now that I’ve settled in again, and sorted through the 300+ emails that accumulated in my absence, it’s time to get to work… There’s a chance I’ll be able to do some consulting internationally in the near future, an opportunity I would jump on in a heartbeat. I feel like I’ve got a much better perspective of the world, and myself for that matter, and can’t wait to see where these insights will take me.