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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.