3rd Stop - Nuremberg

Short but sweet time in Nuremberg! Gabi Strauss from JCI Nuremberg hosted for one night, on my way to Prague. The drive was great, I think this must have been the first time I didn’t get lost!

I got in late in the afternoon and Gabi asked, “Are you tired? We could stay in or go meet a friend at a beer festival in Erlangen.” Hmm, didn’t have to think long on this one. Despite the road fatigue, I couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity to go to a German beer festival. So we grabbed our coats and hit the road again!

We made it there around 8 pm and met with Gabi’s friend Christian, another JCI member. With Christian, an Erlangen beer festival regular, we felt right at home. I just wish I had been wearing some lederhosen!

It didn’t take us long to get down to the purpose of our visit, indulging in fine German beer served in 1 liter beer steins. Three liters later, we were singing and dancing in the rain until the wee hours of the night.

Thanks Gabi for hosting me and bringing me to my first-ever German beer festival. Looking forward to coming back to Nuremberg for the German National JCI Conference in 2012!

Next stop: Prague!

2nd Stop - Munich

Left Paris for Munich early Wednesday morning with Maimouna from Senegal and Akkar from Tunisia. We hooked up on-line via www.covoiturage.fr and shared the road from Paris to Strasbourg. Thanks to both of them and especially Maimouna for bluetoothing me some great songs (including Chris Brown - Forever, click here to see an awesome music video).

Made it to Munich late in the evening with some difficulty. I should really have a GPS. I guess it makes things more adventurous to just have mapquest or mappy print outs.

Iris Barnert from InterCultConsult hosted me for 5 days and we had a blast. The first two days we did a lot of work on our own but also managed to share some best practices for business. Iris was really happy to learn about Nomadesk, a file synchronization software, which allows her to keep all of her files synchronized on her 3 computers and an on-line server. No more headache with back-ups and external hard-drives!

On Saturday, we went out on the town by bike and happened upon the annual Streetlife Festival on Leopoldstrasse. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to stick around because we had a powwow to attend with some translator colleagues...

Thanks to Martin and Chao Ling for joining us at Schwabinger Wassermann’s for cocktails and dinner. We had a great discussion about intercultural issues in international business and corporate social responsibility. I really liked what Martin said, “The borders of my language are the borders of my world.” And did you know that if you ever have to send a quote to a Chinese client, you should avoid the number 4 (death) and go heavy on the 8’s (lucky number)?

On Sunday, I made crêpes for breakfast, then we headed out to the Garden show in Rosenheim to see a friend of Iris’ put on a concert, Bea from Bea and the Franks. It just so happened that this concert took place on the ark stage and most of the people in attendance were from a women’s catholic group. Great fun, I’ll get the video out soon... thanks Bea for the concert!

Thanks again Iris and looking forward to attending another one of your excellent trainings in Aarhus in a couple of weeks!

Next stop: Nuremberg!

1st Stop - Paris

Ok, you’ll have to excuse me, I didn’t think it would be so hard to keep up a blog when you’re on the road... 12 days and 4 cities later and I still haven’t told you all about Paris!

So for starters, I’ve got some really great news. I have a new business partner for my translation activities and a new bednets sponsor: Password Europe.

I met Gabriella Merello, one of Password's owners a little over 3 years ago and we immediately hit it off. It didn't take us long to realize that we shared the same values and visions for our respective companies: quality, transparency, innovation, commitment, honesty, and a constant effort to be better at what we do, not only for our customers' sake, but also for our own.

Password has been in business since 1993 and specializes in localization and marketing translations in all European languages and American English. They have a team of 10 project managers, in-house translators and proofreaders but also work with qualified freelancers. The quality of their work has earned them the trust of clients such as Adobe and SAS Institute.

While I'm on my trip, I'll be entrusting Password to manage Apex's clients and their translation needs. I will however continue to translate and proofread for them. So please don't hesitate to contact Gabriella or Martine for all of your translation and localization needs: www.password-europe.com

As far as the bednets are concerned, Password has agreed to donate 1% of all sales derived from my clients or referrals over the next year to purchase bednets. Don’t forget to mention it when you order!

Finally, I want to thank Gabriella and Saliou for hosting me and allowing me to buy 6 bednets in their name. We had some great weather in Paris and a chance to go to the Bois de Vincennes for a nice walk. I'll put together a video as soon as possible and upload it to the site...

Next stop: Munich!

Goal Setting

I had the opportunity a few weeks back to teach a course on time management to JCI members during a training weekend organized by JCI Marseille. One of the most important questions that comes up during this course is “What to do with your time?” To this question, there are three answers:

1. Define your goals.
2. Write down the actions you need to take to achieve them.
3. Free up time to accomplish said actions.

First things first, we have to define our goals. Your goal has to be SMART or Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

I’m going to use my Around the Worldfast project as an example: my goal is to raise $20,000 to purchase 2,000 malaria-preventing bednets by March 2011. This goal is specific, measurable, and time-bound. It is also relevant as it is in line with my values. But is it attainable?

I’ve realized over time that it is important to set ambitious goals. When you take aim at something, you rarely fall far from your mark. For example, I recently sent out a newsletter to more than 2,500 people, 750 of whom opened it. I set a goal to raise $200 with this newsletter by encouraging readers to purchase bednets. The result: 15.5 bednets. Here is a case in point: sometimes we don’t always reach our goals but if we’ve defined them and taken steps to achieve them, we’ll be closer to accomplishing them in the end!

I want to thank Elizabeth, Nicholas, Corinne and Agnès for helping save lives and getting us closer to achieving the UN Millenium Development Goal to have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

More to come about my stay in Paris in the next post...