Social Blues Hamburg

A lost sale – psychology in business

2009-11-28T12:22:00.000+01:00

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.

Nokia E71.
Originally uploaded by robertopinia

They had one for sale in reasonable shape (a few minor scratches) and for a very reasonable price, €190,00. They usually go for €250,00. But my conscience was bugging me a bit, my old phone still works and I still have to pay my student credit back. So I did what I always do when buying something used anywhere I go, I tried to negotiate and offered. €150,00 for the phone. And that’s when a practically closed sale was lost.
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.

forumWHU at the Otto Beisheim School of Management

2009-10-24T09:43:00.004+02:00

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.

We also had Mr. Mohan Murti, MD Europe for Reliance Industries who showed us many aspects of the prototypical Indian mind. Thoma Wu, founder and partner of MSM Consulting is himself a German-Chinese national and told us his view of how to deal in China and with Chinese businesses.
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.

The other side of the event, the mingling, talking, eating, drinking and having fun is first rate. The organisation is impeccable (well, almost), there is plenty good food and beverages and, because the number of participants is smaller, it is easier to have an overview of who you have talked to already and who there is still to get to know.
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.

Some pictures from the road

2009-10-20T21:40:00.000+02:00

I am on the road for the next 5 weeks or so. I will be all over Germany and, later on, probably Spain and Portugal. For the time being, I leave you with some pictures from the road.

Later I will figure a way on how to put the pics online here, not only a link to the album on MSN.

Head hunting blog series: introducing myself

2009-09-21T20:13:00.002+02:00

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.

Blocking someone on Twitter

2009-09-16T23:42:00.003+02:00

I am doing this mostly for my father (@jbresslau), but I thought that this how-to might be useful to others.

Blocking someone on Twitter is simple enough, but maybe some pictures make it even more clear. There are mainly two ways of doing this and I will show you both.

Through the followers list

First, navigate to your Twitter home page at www.twitter.com. If necessary, log in.

Click on your number of followers, as shown below.

You will get to your followers list below. There, identify the Twitter user you want to block and click on the gear button to the right. A drop down menu will appear, click on “block [username]”.

You will get the following dialog box, please confirm.

Ready, you have done it.

Through the user’s profile page

Go to www.twitter.com/[username] or click on the user’s badge somewhere in Twitter. you will get to a page like the following one:

Click on the linke “block [username]” highlighted above. Confirm your choice on the following page.

Done!

Unblocking someone

One way to do this is to navigate to their profile page and click on the unblock link there.

There you are, you can love each other again.

Now go out and spread your twitter love.

Article series with Atenta’s headhunting blog

2009-09-10T13:04:00.004+02:00

Some of the first people I met in Hamburg in the Twitter community where Alex and Jan, from the Atenta recruiting firm. Their focus as headhunters is to use not only the internet, but also social media for recruitment. They are very innovative and have done some interesting project, like a job search engine for twitter (www.jobtweet.de) and the German language headhunting blog Wollmilchsau (www.personalberater-blog.de).

The name of this blog is interesting by itself: Wollmilchsau means something like “wool giving milk sow”. It comes from a German expression where you say that there isn’t such a thing like a female pig which gives milk, lays eggs and provides wool. And, in the end, companies are looking for employees who can do everything expertly. We all know that that doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t keep looking.

Anyway, this blog has earned a good standing among corporate recruiters and headhunters in Germany, so, when Jan and Alex asked me to write a series of blog articles about the current job market situation from the perspective of a jobseeker, I gladly agreed.

I have written 5 articles already, 4 of which have been already published, but in German. My intent is to translate them to English and publish them here, with a certain delay. So far, the published articles are:

A short introduction of yours truly
How I got my first job in Germany via e-mail
The reasons that led me to do an MBA
A digression on the use of video-CVs

The links above take you to the original articles in German. The next one to be published deals with my job search during and after the MBA and the next one in the production pipe deals with my job search in 2009.

So let me get started translating the first blog article into English.

Komm in die Gänge

2009-08-23T23:47:00.003+02:00

I spent hours on Saturday checking the arts installations in the empty buildings of the Gängeviertel in downtown Hamburg. Those buildings are awaiting demolishment for 7 yeras now and a community of artists proposes that the buildings be refurbished and offered as affordable living and work quarters for creatives in Hamburg.
Unfortunately my battery went dry when I was about half way through my visit, there was so much I wanted to photograph. But I ended up jamming and busking with some musicians I had met at the Mobile Blues Club before, so I wasn't too disappointed.
More info at www.gaengeviertel.info.

SMCHH G1 at Weber Shandwick

2009-08-21T02:57:00.007+02:00

This time the Social Media Club Hamburg meeting took place at the Hamburg offices of the Public Relations firm Weber Shandwick. Today is said to have been the hottest day in Hamburg this summer (the temperature in my room is still 28°C) so the idea of holding the get-together on the building's terrace was a good one. The view was certainly very nice, looking towards the city from the harbour.
Jörg and Mark from Weber Shandwick told us about their experience in using social media for the promotion of the first Android phone in the German market, T-Mobile's G1. I forgot to ask them if they had any for testing available, still ;)
From my perspective, the most interesting aspect of the presentation and the questions at the end was the insights into the relationship between a PR firm and its client and how actors at both sides act.
I made notes of the presentation using my Livescribe Pulse Smartpen and hope that the audio quality is good enough to publish it as a pencast. Let's see if the experiment works out, I have preliminary permission to do so.
After the presentation we enjoyed more of the summer evening on the patio with drinks and barbeque German style: sausages.
I left the event with Jan and Alex from Atenta and we ended up discussing how people will be using their mobile devices in 5 to 10 years. An interesting discussion involving Pokens, near field communication, interfaces, the increasing availability of computing power and storage, different stereotypical technology user profiles, Open Office and open source software in start-ups.
A warm day brings, usually, heavy rains; and I got caught in it, arriving pretty wet home. Nevertheless, it was a great evening meeting interesting people and getting to know acquaintances better.

Oh, by the way, have you checked the 2 posts in the blog series I am writing at the Wollmilchsau blog about my job search? Part 1 and 2. In German, I hope you enjoy.

On the patio, before the presentation

Jörg and Mark presenting in old-school style.

Very good attendance, as usual

More patio, this time with food

Well, almost.

Broken layout

2009-08-19T20:40:00.002+02:00

The supplier of this blog's layout template has had his photobucket account broken.
I will try to fix this later, but, for now, please excuse the broken layout and funny "upgrade now" notices.

Seen in Hamburg: BioBob

2009-08-19T10:53:00.004+02:00

I was showing my cousin around in Hamburg doing a walking tour with www.newhamburgtours.com on Monday and I saw the curious vehicle in the picture.
I like bikes and new bike designs. Foldable bikes, recumbent bikes, trikes, tandem, the red Stadträder, etc. If possible, I will try to live without a car and Hamburg, being flat and having good bike paths, seems the place to try this out. That is, weather permitting ;)
But back to BioBob, this was the first time I saw them and it was pretty obvious that they were delivering fruits. As it often is, you need a second reminder to look something up. I was checking the Hamburg@Work website and saw that BioBob is one of their partners. And BioBob is just what it seems: a bio delivery service of fruits (and coffee, and snacks) for offices, focusing on bio and fair trade products and delivering mostly by bike. Nothing fancy, but nice initiative.
Their page at HH@W sums it up pretty well, but they have their own website also, of course.
http://www.biobob.com/

BTW: New Hamburg (Europe) Tours is also an interesting business model focused on green: walking tours instead of big, expensive and polluting buses and a tips based revenue model, you pay what you think the tour was worth.

Advertising music in the new media order

2009-08-11T17:55:00.004+02:00

I know lots of musicians and am friends with many of them. Because of my own background as a harmonica player, most of them also play this instrument.

I have been observing how musicians cope with the new realities in the music business for a long time (www.techdirt.com is a great blog for copy right and business model discussion) and would like to share one example of smart promotion that I came across today.

Brendan Power, an unconventional harmonica player from New Zealand living in England has posted a video of the solos he played in the album "Back to back", recorded with another extraordinary harmonica player, PT Gazell, from Nashville. It is a 5 minute clip with splashes of the songs. In the background, the cover of the CD, it is about the music.

Brendan is giving his music (and PT's) away in a way that makes his fans happy and doesn't hurt anybody. Hopefully, people will hear the best parts of the album, like it and feel encouraged to buy it. And Brendan gives them two ways to do that: either through his website or through PT's. As the people at Techdirt say: give fans a reason to buy and they will do so.

http://www.brendan-power.com

http://www.ptgazell.com

And probably Brendan can do this because this is an independent CD, not linked to restrictive big label contracts.

StadtRAD Hamburg rent-a-bike

2009-08-09T10:45:00.003+02:00

Stadträder
Originally uploaded by binger1969

Hamburg has a new rent-a-bike system in place since the beginning of the month and I have to say: it works! This is obvious by the number of bikes that you see people riding around on and the number of bikes you DON'T see at the rental stations. There are over 500 bikes available and I tried the system this week out. Three times, already.
What I like about the system is that they took the effort to make it as painless as possible for you to start using it.

1) You can register on the spot, in the terminals or over the web or phone. I registered at one of the terminals.
2) Registration fee is low at €5,00 and it is reverted back to you in credits, so, basically, it is free.
3) The first 30 minutes riding are free. That covers most of the trips people have to do here in Hamburg.
4) Even when trips take more than 30 minutes, the prices are affordable: 4 or 3 cents for the next 30 minutes and 6 or 8 cents after the 60th minute, with a cap of €12,00 a day.
5) The terminals work very well and are easy to use.
6) The bicycles are attractive and good quality.

Hamburg is a great city to cycle. It is mostly flat and has very good bike paths. Furthermore, the subway system, even though it is great, is expensive, at €2,70 for the usual trip. It is summer, so the weather also helps at the moment.
I want to see how things develop in the winter. It won't certainly be as nice as now, wet and cold. Also, I am curious to see if the bikes will hold up. The second bike I rented already had problems with the gears (after less than a month!) and the third bike had a broken bell.
The station closest to my home is 10 minutes on foot away, so it is not an alternative I will take too often, if I can use my own bike. But it is great for when you get back on train from somewhere else and don't feel like taking the metro.
I have two points of critique to the system, though:

1) There is no way to see where other stations are on the terminals. You see the stations close to you, but you cannot check where the stations are in your area of destination. It prevented me from taking a bike at least once.
2) You get a very strange ID number to login to their website, composed of your birth date and some more digits. First, it is difficult to remember. Second, my birth date is the kind of information I don't usually give away to others.

But those are simply solved with a bit of code, so let's hope the system works well also in the future.

MBC 090807 Titus Waldenfels

2009-08-08T03:44:00.003+02:00

Tonight it was the night of Titus, a multi-instrumentalist from Munich. He played different guitars, lap steel, ukulele (as seen on the video), banjo, Stroh violin and accompanied himself on bass pedals and a foot snare. Curiosly enough, he has a Swan bass harmonica on a rack built especially for it. I played a song with him and a singer/guitar player called Benjamin in an impromptu jam while Titus was playing the lap steel, bass pedals and bass harmonica on the rack. Very cool.

Hazmat Modine in Worpswede

2009-08-02T23:14:00.001+02:00

One of the best concerts I went to. Ever.
Last Friday, near Bremen, thanks to a generous ride offer from Steve.

New city, new blog

2009-07-27T17:24:00.001+02:00

I have had several blogs over the past 6 years. Or, better said, different versions of the same blog with different aims at different times in different places and languages.
All started as a personal diary on the internet, in Portuguese, for myself and as an experiment. It later evolved as a link to my family and friends while I was abroad, semi-public (robots.txt: no follow).
The third step was to join an online collective of Brazilian creatives, www.nightripping.com. That was eventually closed down and refurbished to something else by Nix. It was the move from semi-private to 100% public, from a circle of insiders to a general public. Until this point, I was still writing in Portuguese.
The next big change came with my decision to do an MBA. The blog would continue to be an important communication channel with family and friends, but it was clear to me that my audience would change dramatically as soon as I started to connect with MBA colleagues from all over the world. I changed the language to English and focused more on my experience on the 3 different campi I visited: Warwick in England, Kingston in Canada and Mannheim here in Germany. I also set as a goal to publish information I hadn't found on the internet while researching for my MBA, so that I could help prospective MBA students with their choice and daily life. It is cool to see that already the third class of Mannheim MBAs is using some of the info I put together.
After the MBA my blog lost a bit of its purpose. I could write about my job search or my new employers, but writing about what you do in your job is more critical. I was still new at DHL and, later, at the consulting company. After that, my job search took a lot of energy and I spent weeks without posting.
But I want to change that now. I arrived in Hamburg on the first of July and know exactly what I want to post about. Hamburg is such a great city that it is not difficult to come up with ideas and texts. I renamed the blog, changed its skin and believe that the name says it all. I will write mainly about Hamburg.
I will write about Social Hamburg. And, for me, Social has two meanings. First, as a new in town guy, getting to know people and understanding the social dynamics of the city. Second, Social stands for communication, for social media, which is a field which interests me greatly and which is very important to me during this job search, as it is the main channel for me to find vacancies and also an area I want to work in.
And I will also write about Blues Hamburg, in the musical sense. As a blues harp player music is very important to me, especially music in the North American tradition: soul, funk, rock, jam bands, country, southern rock, blue grass, rock 'n' roll, jazz and, of course blues.
Let's see how this goes.

Berlin in April

2009-04-29T00:27:00.000+02:00

Carnival in Cologne

2009-02-26T00:19:00.000+01:00

Pulse Smartpen: quick and dirty review

2009-01-20T03:44:00.001+01:00

**** (that's 4 stars out of 5)
Potentially life changing gadget

I believe the Pulse Smartpen is a fantastic platform for many day-to-day applications. The working principle of it just makes so much sense!
Fortunately, there is an SDK for external developers, unfortunately, file formats and communication standards don't seem to be open, but I am no software expert.

But back to the pen. Very well crafted, looks serious and professional. I can really use it in a board meeting. Although it is kind of bulkier than I expected, but maybe my expectations were too high. On the other hand, it is smaller than many highlighters in the market.

The screen is very good.

Interface quite intuitive everywhere: pen, software, notebook.

Writing recognition works fantastically well! Not only is the transferred "image" very detailed and looks natural, the software recognized my handwriting without any previous "training" when using the search function.

I do seem have to have problems transferring the audio sessions, which can be a deal breaker, but Customer Service has been very responsive so far and I hope to clear this soon.

All in all, I am very happy with the purchase, as long as the audio part starts working properly. I believe there is room for improvement and further development, especially in extra applications for it and am awaiting eagerly to beef up the functionality of my pen.

Written for: http://www.amazon.com/review/R374WV94NBJ5C8/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Downtown São Paulo

2009-01-17T03:09:00.000+01:00

Treme-treme e Mercado Central

Instituto Butantã

2009-01-17T00:50:00.000+01:00

Ins São Paulo we have the very interesting Instituto Butantã, close to the University of São Paulo Campus. It was one of the pioneering research institutes for serumtherapy for snake bites and now has a beautiful biological museum with snakes, spiders and other poisonous animals.

An encounter in Brussels

2009-01-16T22:00:00.002+01:00

Written on my phone on the plane coming to Brazil.

The Belgian who took over my apartment in Brussels is an ex-TV reporter who has once been to an extremely remote area in Brazil to cover a story about seringueiros, castanha-do-pará and indians trying to live in a sustainable way. He said that reality isn't as romantic as it sounds.
He has been living in Congo for years now, working with NGOs rebuilding bridges. More than 80. He told that you just had to free things up, and people would do the rest. He rebuilt the bridges and saw the business men coming, and thinks profit is a good thing to bring on development.
We talked about living with few things. Me with only what fits in a suitcase, him with what he had available in two years of living in the jungle. Less is more.
Another thing he told was that, in his experience, the best thng NGOs could do was to dissiminate knowledge.
Cool guy, this Jan. Good way to leave Brussels.

Caipirinha

2009-01-08T19:04:00.000+01:00

This is how they serve caipirinha at big churrascarias (steak houses) in Brazil nowadays, it seems...

BusinessWeek's slideshow of Queen's School of Business

2009-01-02T14:53:00.002+01:00

My colleague Manish sent us an interesting link to this slideshow at BusinessWeek:

Queen's School of Business Tour

A picture my mother took in central Brazil

2009-01-01T15:50:00.000+01:00

Henrique likes laser sailboats

2009-01-01T14:51:00.001+01:00