Monthly Archives: December 2011

Thought for the day

Although here at MeetingWorld we have a section relating to romantic meetings, until now we’ve not found a book on the subject we’d like to draw your attention to. Anyway, here is one that might be good. I haven’t read it ‘cos I’m already with a wonderful long-term partner. But for those of you who aren’t, this might be worth the modest purchase price. Anyway – Meeting Your Half-Orange: An Utterly Upbeat Guide to Using Dating Optimism to Find Your Perfect Match""” target=”_blank”>(Kindle version)

This is what Amazon say: “Discover the power of positive dating! ‘Half-orange’ refers to the Spanish term ‘mi media naranja’, which is used to describe one’s beautiful, sweet, perfect other half. Now relationship expert Amy Spencer provides women with a step-by-step programme on how to grow one’s ‘half-orange’ from soil, seed, to ‘fruit-ion’ – by harnessing ‘Dating Optimism’. Rather than admonishing readers to make themselves more available, or turn dating into a full-time job,
“Meeting Your Half-Orange” teaches how to focus on the relationship they want with such intensity, the right person will come within a short period of time after completing the following phases: phase one – get your soil ready: believe you can have it; phase two – hit the garden shop: admit you want it; phase three – how to choose your seed: what do you want?; phase four – how to plant the seed: focus and imagine feeling it; phase five – dream of the perfect fruit: openly hope for it, like you’ve never hoped for anything before; phase six – nurture your sapling to bloom: live a happy life; and, phase seven – know when to pluck: how to recognize your half-orange.”

Tip of the day

Picture the scene with you as an entrepreneur in happy conversation with a potential investor. Yes, it’s an investment meeting. Feeling pretty good are you? Of course you are. That’s because I’ve gone out of my way to help you feel like that. What a decent chap I am. Or am I? Read on dear entrepreneur.

What every serious potential investor (like me) will ask before considering an investment in your company. Are these sales imaginary? Companies don’t go bust through lack of profits. They go bust through a lack of cash. It’s true. Very true! Speaking of cash, it’s important to realise that ….. http://bit.ly/q7S7N0

Thought for the day

“There are many ways to make decisions. Sometimes, the most efficient way to make decisions would be to just let the manager (or CEO, or dictator) make them. However, efficiency is not the only criteria. When choosing a decision-making method, one needs to ask two questions. Is it a fair process? Does it produce good solutions?”

© C.T. Butler, 1987

Tip of the day

Meetings are an absolute doddle are they? Really? Possibly – but in our experience only rarely. Avoid the assumption and self-delusion that if you’re competent in a few aspects of running a business that axiomatically you’ll be competent or at least ‘reasonable’ in all the others. This is a potentially fatal error. It really is.

My advice is for you to ……… http://bit.ly/pCnVO5

Thought for the day

Here’s what I try to do when chairing a meeting or indeed mentoring potential chairpeople. I try very hard not to distort new evidence made available during a meeting. By this I mean that I consider carefully whether that evidence could be interpreted as disconfirming my beliefs rather than supporting them. How successful am I are achieving this? Frankly, not as consistent as I’d like to be. But I’m getting there. (Howard Popeck)

Can avatars and hyper-real video conferencing replace business meetings? By Sharif Sakr

Extract . . .

With eery, childlike eyes staring out of a blank plastic face, the Telenoid R1 does not look like a serious tool for business.

Continue reading the main story

“You can actually feel the presence of another person”

Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro Osaka University

Its movements are jerky. Limbs are conspicuously absent. And in terms of function, it is essentially just a $3000 video conferencing system, doing what Skype does for free.

But Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University believes his invention meets a real business demand, for hyper-realistic, face-to-face communication over long distances.

“Text communication is very limited, and so is normal video conferencing. But with the telenoid, you can actually feel the presence of another person.”

Read more here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11493961

Top Tips for the Newly Appointed Sales Manager. Written by Roger Billings

Extract . . . 

Know your company’s strategic and business objectives and align your team’s goals with these. Interview your boss in order to identify key performance indicators that must be achieved and share this information with your team. Provide your boss with regular updates and highlights of your team’s progress, thus avoiding surprises. Ensure that you reinforce their decision to appoint you as manager. Set individual goals for each member of your team that reflect the key performance indicators. In this way, people will focus on the right goals.

Read more here:

http://www.cmctraining.org/top-tips-for-the-newly-appointed-sales

Tip of the day

Should we meet at Head Office? At the factory? Down the pub?

Wherever you meet, don’t do it without this http://bit.ly/bWyiHP